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vestiges of Roman occupation. Moreover, the
river-valleys of the Medway and the Darent are likewise lined
with the scattered stone buildings which we may ascribe to the
more prosperous farming gentry, and with the less definite
evidences indicative rather of peasant occupation. In these
valleys, as along the Watling Street, there are suggestions
here and there of local concentrations which, without
attributing to them any special corporate status, we may
provisionally describe as villages or minor towns. And away
from the Watling Street and the valleys, a few open and
accessible regions—notably Thanet— seem to have borne
small communities which are here relegated, without prejudice,
to the Topographical Index rather than to the present section.
If, under these circumstances, our present
selection of these sites from a multitude of potential
claimants 3 is often
necessarily arbitrary, it is possible in one or two cases to
summon to our aid the evidence of the Antonine Itinerary or of
the Peutinger Table. The mysterious Noviomagus which intrudes
into the second Itinerary of Antonine still baffles
identification; but the settlement which grew up beside the
Watling Street at the crossing of the Darent valley may safely
lay claim to the name of Vagniacae, whilst Durolevum, though
less securely vouched for, lay probably within the vicinity of
Faversham. It may be supposed that places such as these,
singled out for special mention in the Roman road-book, were
at least capable of supplying the needs of man and beast and,
as such, were doubtless also small market-towns with something
of an urban status, if on a poor scale.
On the whole, our picture of northern Kent in
Roman times must be one of a busy, well-populated countryside
in which no man was far from his neighbour.
2. CANTERBURY
Canterbury lies in a small valley beside, and
indeed amidst, the waters of the Stour, which here divide and
flow in several channels through the north-eastern quarter of
the modern town. The site is sheltered and pleasant. But it
possesses no obvious natural advantages to explain why a town
has grown up here. It can boast no great military strength or
unusually fertile neighbourhood. In the Middle Ages, its
shrine and its Continental traffic did much for it ; but the
first of these forces did not exist in the Roman period, and,
though the second may even then have counted for something, it
can hardly have caused the origin of the place. It is,
perhaps, worthy of note that, at or about Canterbury, the
river-valley begins to broaden out into what was probably in
Roman times a small estuary. Even until the 17th century
coastal craft were able to penetrate to Fordwich, only two
miles below the city. It may be, therefore, that the Roman
town was placed as a convenient crossing and landing-point at
the then navigable limit of the Stour. Otherwise we must admit
that the first choice of this, as of many town-sites, was
determined by factors which we cannot now discover.
We are equally ignorant of the date when the site
was first occupied. The Celtic name and tribal epithet which
it bore during the Roman period 4 indicate a
political relationship with the pre-Roman tribal
administration.
3 See
Topographical index, under Eccles, Upchurch, Rainham, Thanet
(Westgate, Birchington, Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate,
Pegwell, Minster and St. Lawrence), Deal and Walmer,
Folkestone, etc.
4 See below, p. 63. |