The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past

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Impossible to summarise and delightfully absorbing, Hadley's book is comfortably the most unexpected history book of the year' Sunday Times

The central forum of Rome contained a monument – the Millarium Aureum or Golden Milestone – erected by Rome’s first Emperor, Augustus in 20 BC. It is believed that the milestone listed all of the Empire’s major cities and their distance from Rome – a symbol of the Roman culture’s greatness in engineering, and where the idea that ‘all roads’ emanated from. Roman Roads in BritainIn this magnificent book. . . Hadley takes us down a different way, looking through a gentler window on that road's long lost days. He reveals The Road's own intimate knowledge of the land it knew and the folk it's known, turning the tables on what we think we're reading; because The Road is not really about it, it's about us” - Mythical Britain, Michael Smith author of King Arthur's Death For two thousand years, the roads the Romans built have determined the flow of ideas and folktales, where battles were fought and where pilgrims trod. Almost everyone in Britain lives close to a Roman road, if only we knew where to look.

His passage is not always easy. Time and nature have erased many clues; bridges rotted and whole woods grew across the route. But what difference did Roman roads make to the conquered lands they built them in? Here we explore the impact Roman roads had on the Roman Empire, in Britain, and their legacy today. The impact to the empire Have you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road? The Romans built thousands of miles of roads. For two thousand years they have determined the flow of ideas and folktales, where battles were fought and where pilgrims trod. Almost everyone in Britain lives close to a Roman road, if only we knew where to look An absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year’ Sunday Telegraph This kind of energy to a piece of writing, or a ‘posher than the queen’, deliberately obtuse Brian Sewell quote, always reminds me of the infamous tale recounted in Sir Kenneth Dover’s autobiography where, when walking in the Italian hills, he was so overcome with the beauty and poeticism of the moment that he proceeded to masturbate to completion. Sir Dover is the only one afflicted by the deeply self-obsessed British public school old boy mentality, in my opinion, who has ever so honestly and openly recognised it for what it is - wanky sybaritic self-indulgence.Establishing supply lines from the harbours to the marching camps and forts, a network gradually took shape from individual roads built for a specific military purpose – both a symbol and a concrete expression of Roman imperial might." In it, the former journalist takes readers on a walk across East Herts and West Essex and deep into the mists of time, tracing its path from Braughing to Great Chesterford and excavating the myriad layers of history, myth and folklore that now cover the original cobbles laid by the Empire’s legionaries. The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past (62109714)

Hadley leads us on a hunt to discover, in Hilaire Belloc's phrase, 'all that has arisen along the way'. Gathering traces of archaeology, history and landscape from poems, church walls, hag stones and cropmarks, oxlips, killing places, hauntings and immortals, and things buried too deep for archaeology, The Road is a mesmerising journey into two thousand years of history only now giving up its secrets. The A10 is one of London’s oldest Roman roads, spanning from London Bridge to the port town of King’s Lynn, in Norfolk. Its path from London to Royston, in Hertfordshire, passing the towns of Ware and Cheshunt, largely retraces the route of an ancient Roman road: Ermine Street, an ancient pathway that led all the way to York in its heyday. We tend to joke that ‘All roads lead to Rome’, but actually they did – and indeed they led away from Rome too.

The golden milestone

An ingenious meditation on what history, in all its complexity and unevenness, really is’ Rosemary Hill in The Guardian In our Book of the Month for January 2023 – T he Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past – Christopher Hadley takes us on a lyrical journey searching for an elusive Roman road that sprang from one of the busiest road hubs in Roman Britain. While time and nature have erased many clues, Hadley gathers traces of archaeology, history and landscape in a mesmerising journey into 2,000 years of history only now giving up its secrets.

Long swathes remain today, which are mainly the preserve of the hiker, the biker and the occasional off-roader. In the years of fighting that followed, as the legions pushed onwards across what is now England, into Wales and north into Scotland in search of booty, mineral wealth, land and tribute, they left behind a vast road network, linking marching camps and forts, changing the landscape, etching the story of the Roman advance into the face of the land, channelling our lives today. Christopher Hadley, acclaimed author of Hollow Places, takes us on a lyrical journey into this past, retracing and searching for an elusive Roman road that sprang from one of the busiest road hubs in Roman Britain. broke up its milestones to mend new paths. Year after year the heavy clay swallowed whole lengths of Have you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road?For two thousand years, the roads the Romans built have determined the flow of ideas and folktales, where battles were fought and where pilgrims trod. Almost everyone in Britain lives close to a Roman road, if only we knew where to look.Almost everyone in Britain lives close to a Roman road, if only we knew where to look. In the beginning was Watling Street, the first road scored on the land when the invading Romans arrived on a cold and alien Kentish shore in 43 CE.