THE ROMANS
When the Romans occupied Britain in 43 AD, they set about building cities, walls and hundreds of miles of roads that we still use today – but one of their greatest lasting legacies was their impact on our wildlife, says Miles Russell
The Romans built cities, roads and walls to extend their empire across Britain. Mike Russell charts their rise
In 410 AD, the Western Roman emperor Honorius, finding the security of his empire threatened by invasion and civil war, wrote to the cities of Britain to tell them to look to their own defence. For the first time in nearly four centuries, the people of Britannia were no longer under the control of Rome.
Britain, in the first century AD, had been an obvious territory for the resource-hungry Roman Empire to annexe. A great source of iron, lead, copper, tin and gold, the island was also rich in cattle and grain. Taking control of such resources had made sound economic sense to the emperor Claudius, who, in 43 AD, authorised a full-scale invasion of the island.
Pre-Roman Britain had comprised a patchwork of Iron Age tribes, each with their own distinctive customs, culture and leaders. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, those tribes who had swiftly surrendered benefited from direct imperial patronage, retaining a degree of autonomy under the ever-watchful eyes of the Roman government.
New tribal towns, each with a regular street grid, forum, basilica, theatre, amphitheatre, temples and bathhouse, were established across southern Britain, many being subsequently filled with high-status houses.
One extremely opulent house can still be seen today at Fishbourne in Sussex. Fishbourne Palace is one of the more famous Roman sites in Britain comprising, in its main phase, a public wing containing a large entrance hall, an impressive dining room, a private range and a guest wing all arranged around a large central courtyard with formal gardens. At just over 150m square, its footprint is greater than that of Buckingham Palace. We have no record who originally lived here, but it was probably either a newly installed administrator or someone who had aided the Roman cause, perhaps a British aristocrat with connections. Fishbourne represents the height of Roman architectural endeavour and shows what one could achieve with money and artistic flair.
WELL CONNECTED
In order to function effectively, central government required a network of direct, reliable roads linking all the new towns and forts to the harbours, mines and farms. Thousands of miles of thoroughfares were constructed in arrow-straight sections across the landscape – with many routeways, such as Watling Street, the Roman road joining Dover, London and Wroxeter in Shropshire, remaining in use to this day, in this instance as the modern A2 and A5.
In the countryside, the well-connected spent their money in creating extravagant new villas; the Roman equivalent of the stately home. Here owners could develop business opportunities and dabble in politics. The bulk of the population in Roman Britain did not live in such grand accommodation. Wattle-and-daub or thatched
timber-framed long or roundhouse were the more normal form of domestic structure.
Britannia proved to be a successful contributor to the Roman economy. A late third-century writer observed that it was “a land so rich in harvests, with such abundant pasture, shot through with so many seams of ore, a lucrative source of so much tribute”.
All this had to be offset, however, against the cost of maintaining a large military presence on the island – a tenth of Rome’s entire military was permanently based here – together with the expenditure associated with large building projects, such as Hadrian’s Wall. From a social perspective, the Roman ‘experiment’ was arguably something of a failure, as only a small minority of the British population fully adopted Roman lifestyles and identity.
CHANGES TO THE NATURAL WORLD
Arguably Rome’s greatest legacy in Britain was not the towns, villas, mosaics and forts, but in the changes that it brought to the natural world. Roman farming regimes, which overemphasised the production of beef and pork, also introduced ‘alien’ species of animals and plants to the British Isles. These new additions included the almond, sour cherry, plum, damson, cucumber, fennel, fig, grape, sweet chestnut, sycamore and walnut and probably also coriander, peach and the common elm together with cultivated forms of carrot, parsnip, apple and pear. New animal species introduced to Britain by Rome included the chicken, edible and garden dormouse, fallow deer, rabbit and Roman snail, and also probably the brown hare, common carp, pheasant, and new forms of domesticated cat and dog.
Less favourable additions, arriving with the intensification of Roman grain production, were the black rat, dark mealworm, granary weevil and saw-toothed grain beetle. During this time, native British species such as the elk, beaver, wild boar, bear, wolf and lynx, all went into serious decline, thanks to a combination of industrialised farming regimes and increasingly sophisticated hunting strategies.
Although from a cultural perspective, the Roman Empire had little effect upon the social development of Britain, its influence upon landscape and environment, particularly the flora and fauna, was significant – the fallout of which continues to affect us to this day.