Two Roman Roads at Seaton (“Fleot”) and a Saxon Charter
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- These history walk videos are about the English landscape in and around the south west of England (though I make the odd foray into Wales). I often use ancient charters (such as Saxon charters) to give me insight into the way the landscape was viewed in the past.
But it is not the Saxons that interest me the most (though they do) but the prehistoric world and its ancient monuments, trackways and ditches.
#Archaeology #oldenglishcharters #antiquarians #historywalks #britishhistory
I just saw one of your later videos and you mentioned Seaton. That's where I live so I had to have a watch. The pond, called Borrow Pit, was made when the earth was 'borrowed' to make high banks for the path to the bird hide next to the river. It's one of my favourite places to walk and take photos. So lovely, whatever the time of year. Great video and really enjoying the Anglo-Saxon interpretations too. Thank you. :)
Yes I saw that on the information board and said a rude word, but I can’t prove what I think. I think it is a burrow of some kind, that is an excavation, either recent or old. I would like to see what the Tithe map says. Even if it was excavated to make the hide I suspect our foreman didn’t understand his workers’ vernacular. I used to work with some very hairy-a**ed sons of toil who taught me a card game called myth because one of the cards in my hand was mything. They took my shirt.
@@AllotmentFox I had tithe maps for the area in my useful links folder but sadly they aren't available from that source anymore. I'll have a better search tomorrow and let you know if I find anything. Looking at a recent map, it looks as though the pond area would have taken more earth out than is banked up along the path so it'll be interesting to see if there was a hollow there beforehand. My advice is not to go mything in the mean time. ;)
My aunty used ro call sea kale (feature in your footage) "war cabbage" because it was common for people to harvest it for food during WW2.
Another great program. Thanks very much for all of the hard work you've put into all of them
Thank you for the important role of watching them Nic
Very relaxing watch. I live on a river estuary and the Sea Beet is in full swing right now in early November but the Marsh Samphire season ended back in September. Its still there and its stalks have turned a lovely red colour but its now very woody and not really edible.
I've recently found you after seeing you on a Paul Whitewick video and have been binge-watching. Lovely videos, thank you for taking the time to make them. I'm fascinated by the Anglo-Saxon charter boundaries and will certainly be joining Bristol's 'Jack in the Green' next year - pausing for refreshment as required.
It used to be some heavy drinking but I think of the hundred people there I was sinking them the quickest. Only for old times’ sake though. There used to be some earthy humour too but I think that is all gone
Hi, great video. I never knew you could eat so many of the plants so close to the sea!!
I was wondering if the track bed of the old railway was built over one of the Roman roads. I found one on a site dedicated to Saxon history but that was the 5a and is located on the eastern side of the river. I have some fond memories of travelling on the tramway and spying a Kingfisher, many years ago now!!
Very enjoyable video to watch, you caught some great shots of the wildlife.
Well done, all the best!!
Ooooh - those Roman roads sound enticing. Such a long way to go, but I might have to.
Really nice to see you on the coast. A richness to the landscape there.
That island in the middle of the tarn/lake looked worthy of a votive offering or two.
It’s called Borrow Pond as well. The information board rained on my parade with a modern explanation but I know what I think …
Beautiful video, perswasive argument, really enjoyed it, thanks
Thank you, Harley
Yes, there are roads linking the Hadrian's Wall forts, now called the military way, but it may only have been laid when the major forts were added, & not when there were only milecastles. There also seems to be a road linking the Antoine Wall fort. Even at the start of the walls one would expect a useable track running along behind it, to bring in building materials, foodstuffs etc.
Interesting, the straighter southern Fosse way, & lovely wildlife captures - what a beautiful place to visit. I love to forage a bit of seafood & greens - that's what buckets and spades are for 🤣(after the mauve mallow I think there's an egret; after the heron, a cormorant drying it's wings & a blushing bracket on the tree). PS. Cawl = Welsh stew 👍
A cormorant! Thanks for the id
Lovely watch. Thank you for creating and sharing. The River Usk near Chepstow has a similar sound to Axe, Isca, etc.
Yes, thanks for reminding me, that was the other place and is, adcording to Ekwall, the same as Exe and Axe
Totally love your presentations; I've noticed you portray a slight hesitation to accept Ekwall - is there a better compendium to consult?
Very little hesitation. I only hesitate to accept his view if better evidence has come along. He tends to be an abiter with me but the more you read him the more you can see him developing his thought which means some entries are more developed than others. The English Place Name Survey website has more data but is not as joined up as Ekwall. Overall if he says it I will almost always accept it
Cows are still referred to as Kye in Orkney and I think Shetland too.
Where I live in Orkney there's few words that my Orcadian friends are very proud of as Orcadian words but I believe many are old English like Peedie in Orkney (small) (Peerie in Shetland) there was a debate on the local BBC radio station about this some years ago.. that's where I heard it.
Those Devon Reds look very contented, along with the herons and other wildlife. A peaceful water meadow scene that could have been lifted from any century in the last millennium or two. Yes , dreary weather here in Somerset for the last 2 or 3 weeks as well.
Thank you for the identification, I was hoping someone would say!
It's not gone well, has it. But we must soldier on. My guitars won't make themselves, and neither will your videos. It appears that the boredom of a sort that we both crave will have to be locally sourced. I too appreciate Schama. He's a wonderful historian. In the meantime, let's hope that we aren't the unfortunate subjects of what will undoubtedly be an interesting book for the future. If they are allowed to read it. Oh, and another fine offering from you. Thanks, Tom.
The people have chosen and unambiguously so I am phlegmatic or sanguine or something. I have been railing at the centre-left to listen to the bread and butter needs of the working and lower-middle classes for a couple of years now and quite frankly the chickens have come home to roost. I am confident your constitution can weather the storm. His foreign policy I suspect will be barking/surprising. Thanks, Jim. Good luck!
@@AllotmentFoxand the working class responded neither to the pleading nor the threats from millionaire celebrities. Hmm. Wonder why not.
The 'p' was not in the British sound, but Latin, as the Germanic gave the 'f' sound.
In Scotland the word 'whisky' is related, meaning 'water of life,'. Rivet & Smith refer to the meaning of Moridunum, as really being Maridunum, that is 'fort' by the sea. This should originally be a native, not Roman, fort, so they look to the nearest such fort, then a Roman place to which the name may have been transferred. This has to be of course on a road to occur in an itinerary, but it needs not being a major settlement or City. A simple road station, Mansio or Mutatio, may be good enough, as these itineraries are essentially recording stopping places. The Axe & Esk rivers in Roman days could easily have the same name, if they had other, identifying elements attached. Isca Dumnoniorum would be distinct from other 'Isca' named places, they could remain iscas. In the same way that later there were many 'ham' places, but these had other elements to differentiate each, like 'east', 'west', etc, among many similar name types. Still we still have multiple 'Norton' & 'Sutton' places for example, & managed mostly to not confuse them. We can distinguish them by location, & by other clues, so I'm sure the Britons of old could do the same.
Oh yes please, for a short while we lived there and I am a little more interested now in what happened over Windwhistle hill in South Somerset between Dinnington and the top. th-cam.com/video/kYTDHeW_rJQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=7Kru1SaMd8Eecn8y I was going to ask you to look at this area!
Yes, I sat peering blearily at the Lidar looking for that. Why I think the road is in the valley is the Stratford stream, placenames are my main tool and it seems unequivocal. Do you think a drone with infra-red might pick up the road?
Isca actually means 'fishy water', that is river, related to 'fish', pisces in Latin. So there were numerous 'Iscas' in Britain, because the word means river, just as there were many 'Avons', bright waters, rivers around the place. Each Isca, like each Avon, would have had a further distinguishing name, so that you would now which 'river' one was referring to. Locally though one would just talk of 'the river', that is 'Isca' or 'Avon', as we do today when we live by a stream. In York we might say we are crossing the 'river', hardly ever using the word Ouse, & in London we say the 'river', meaning the Thames. Somewhere at, or near, Seaton was a place in Roman times called 'Moridunum', that is 'sea fort', possibly referring to an ancient hill fort a little up river, not necessarily close by the sea itself, though the name may have been transferred to a low lying settlement from the nearby hill site, because it is on the Roman road Itineraries (Ant Itin XV). The suggestion of Rivet & Smith (1979) is that Moridunum refers to Sidford, on the Roman Road, having taken the name from the nearby Sidbury Castle.
What happened to the p? Saying something is actually something doesn’t necessarily require a citation but when someone is being corrected who has cited (Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Placenames, 4th Edition) it would be helpful if you could do so so we can see if there is any merit to what you are saying. I shall have a look at what Rivet and Smith have to say on Moridunum and get back to you. I don’t really have a dog in the fight but I think (i) a major port is likely to be served by more than one road making Seaton (or Axmouth a mile away) a good candidate and (ii) Axminster, a popular candidate, is miles away from the sea. I understand Seaton is one mile out of matching the Antonine Itinerary.
The Fosse Way was a very early Roman frontier. It obviously predated the establishment of Exeter. The mouth of the Axe would therefore likely have been a critical supply port for the temporary fortifications along the Fosse Way. However it obviously became irrelevant as the frontier moved farther west, hence the diversion of the Fosse Way to the much better location at Exeter.
@ yes but how do we know that? Could it be that the word fosse (ditch) has misled us even though Fosse is probably not of the Roman age? Why is the front line not the Severn? I accept that we can’t always choose our conditions but failing the Severn why not the great ridge 10 or so miles to its east running in a similar direction, that is easily defensible and is scattered with Iron Age forts with a high escarpment and marsh below it. Can you name any road that is a frontier? I’m genuinely interested why this is thought to be the case, I would love to hear your thoughts.
@AllotmentFox While we have no documentation for the construction or use of the Fosse Way, it is clearly *very* early Roman, because the subsequent developments of the road network were all influenced by it. It connects four early legionary fortresses: Ilchester, Cirencester, Leicester, and Lincoln, whose earth ramparts controlled the developments of the towns that they evolved into once the army moved on. This was during the invasion, not the *occupation* of Britain. At this stage the Romans were totally focussed on logistics and mobility. Defence was a very low priority as their frontier was a base for offence. The highest priority was on the ability to supply the legions as they continued their advance, and on the ability to quickly move forces laterally to wherever an opportunity or a threat was identified. This is completely different from the later occupation frontiers in Wales and along the Stane Way and Hadrian's Wall. The two ends of the Fosse Way necessarily rested on harbours because seaborne transportation was an order of magnitude more efficient than land transportation. Note that beaches, like those you show at Seaton, were ideal for loading and unloading the flat bottomed transport ships supporting the Roman invasion. As you know the Saxons, and Vikings, generally did the same with their more primitive logistics.
There were many temporary supply bases established often only for a year or two along the shores of Britain. Of course archaeologists have only identified a handful of these, for example at Fishbourne near Chichester. If the port at Seaton was at or near the existing seacoast it will have been entirely washed away. However it was probably farther up the Axe, assuming that silting has filled in a deep estuary, as at many other places along the coast of Britain. This would protect the logistics base from storms, and provide an elevated dry site for storage.
Note that I studied under Graham Webster of Gloucester U., who applied the military perspective on logistics and movement that he acquired during WWII to a practical analysis of the Claudian invasion.
@ yes, I can see a strategic mindset. I studied under lecturers that shall remain nameless, some of whom brought in revolvers to lectures and denied the full horrors of war in the Balkans. It was the 90s you know.
Okay, let’s take a different approach. I am a captain of the Dubonni or Silures or Dumnonians. I have no idea whether any of those tribes resisted well or not but bear with me, I’m a hypothetical Briton who did. You have built forts all along the Fosse. I can’t attack those forts because, well, I am an Iron Age Briton, but what I can do is harass your engineers while they are building the road and then run for it when the patrol arrives. Because your supply lines aren’t behind your front line but on your front line I will direct my people to mash up anything that moves at any point along a couple of hundred miles of road and then scatter. The logical approach is to set up supply lines behind your front line and then have connecting roads to forts. If that had been the Roman approach then because I have to go deep to attack your supply lines the risk of being cut off increases greatly. It will quickly become clear the cost is greater than the benefit and I will be forced to rethink.
While a beautiful Roman road is on the frontline I shall even use the road myself, all my raiders being on horseback, using your excellent engineering to my own benefit. Ocassionally I shall luck out with a treasury wagon, arms supplies, ambushing and neutralising reinforcements, take messengers and their messages, take diplomats as hostages, as well as the usual harassment of setting fire to barns, stealing cattle, killing cattle and poisoning wells.
With the road being the frontline I have a smorgasbord of options. The Romans will definitely have protected their supply lines so making a road a frontier would have hampered them. If the Fosse is early that would make me think that the real enemy was to the north-east.
If the line of the road is only a line of control then building the road after the west Britons were rapidly pacified then yes I can see it. If they hadn’t been pacified then moving along the Fosse would’ve been pretty risky.
It would’ve been very expensive to send stuff across the channel only to have it nicked/destroyed at the other end. That could explain Seaton being behind the line to Exeter.
All hypothetical, I don’t have a shred of evidence!
Isca means water in Irish as in Uisce Beatha = water of life= whiskey.
Oh wow! That took me by surprise. Are you an Irish speaker?
But the Whin Sill, the site of Hadrian's Wall, is not a defensive position. Rather is it offensive in that it looks out from an elevated position, over an extensive area of country to the north, even more so with the Wall & it's Towers on top.
So the troops were able to see any trouble coming a long way of, & send out patrols etc to apprehend any offenders.
Come now, a wall is the most static thing I can think of. The Roman army may have had an offensive strategy in principle but the wall locks down that flexibility until a new wall is built beyond the horizon reflecting new conquest. The expressions of powers you name even have geographical and temporal limits because patrols go somewhere and then come back, maintaining the status quo. Its strategic and tactical value is static even if patrols or even invasions are launched from there.
The Fosse Way never was a 'frontier', but a strategic road. To act as a boundary it would have needed defensive works, Towers & forts etc all along it's whole length, which it does not have. The Stanegate is not much better, though this does have some military sites on or near it. Still it hardly constitutes a frontier, except, maybe, one of a temporary nature. The Romans didn't build forts or fortresses in enemy territory, but only in safely incorporated land, & they didn't leave places unsettled on their flanks. Only temporary campaign camps would be made in enemy areas, during times of advance. The Legions spent winters in their fortresses, well within Roman held land, protected by a screen of auxiliary forts, between them & the unconquered areas. The Romans had an offensive, not a defensive, strategy. The forts & fortresses were for safety, not like castles to defend, but bases from which to patrol, police, & advance, to attack.
The western areas you cite as most Roman were like not so, but almost remained the least Romanised regions, far from the much higher developed east. There language might really have been a sort of relict, from a much earlier time, & quite different than that of most of Roman Britain. Indeed, it may have become the most Roman it ever became, at the time of Gilda's, because of Christianisation. But this would have been a very poor reflection of the reality of Roman Britain in it's hay day. In some respects the militarised area, around Hadrian's Wall, may have remained most 'Roman', with it's long association with the Roman Army, & wherever some troops remained, & many must have, they could continue their 'Roman' lifestyle for as long as maybe beyond any real contact with Roman authority, well into Gilda's 'dark age' & beyond.
You should visit Gloucestershire, see the absolutely packed Roman infrastructure there is there. I agree with Fosse not being a boundary
could have watched that heron for at least another 20 minutes
I have a lot of minutes of him because he had his eye on a fish and he couldn’t care less what I was pointing at him at that stage. That’s how I was getting close to him.