ROMANO-BRITISH SOMERSET
History Contents Page
INTRODUCTION
See also
Roman Ilchester
The Villas
Industries
Romano-British Temples
Roman Bath
The End of the Roman Occupation
Map showing the extent of Romanisation in Somerset
The Roman invasion which brought Britain as a province into the vast Roman Empire began in A.D. 43. There had been increasing commercial contract between Britain and the Continent, and the Emperor Claudius wanted to gain control over the British exports of corn, cattle, metal and slaves, as well as to stop political intervention by people from southern Britain in the affairs of Gaul. Four legions under Aulus Plautius crossed the Channel and quickly subdued the south-east. The Second Augusta Legion, commanded by the future Emperor Vespasian, attacked the west and fought its way to the mouth of the river Axe on the Devonshire coast. The campaign in what is now Somerset involved the taking of two Iron Age hill fortresses, Ham Hill and South Cadbury, at both of which there was intense fighting. Recent excavations at South Cadbury have revealed human remains, scattered and disjointed as if the bodies had been left unburied and then torn to pieces by wild animals and birds of prey. The evidence suggests a battle and the massacre of the British defenders with their wives and children. Iron weapons, both British and Roman, were found, including swords, lances, javelins, arrowheads and shield-bosses, as well as about 150 bronze brooches and a beautiful bronze plaque. Those who resisted were crushed, but many Britons submitted. To secure the area and to render further resistance more difficult, the Romans constructed a new system of roads, probably employing the local inhabitants, under close military supervision as a labour force. While most of the Roman roads in Britain radiated from London, in the west a frontier zone was established with a boundary line running north-east from the Axe across Somerset to the Cotswolds, through the Midlands to Lincoln, marked and defended by a military road, the Fosse Way. A section of this road, uncovered by excavations at llchester, shows that it was constructed on a foundation, five inches thick, of local lias stone, which had been packed with flinty gravel and lime mortar and then surfaced with fine gravel to a width of over 14 feet. Where it crossed marshy ground the road was built on an embankment or agger in some places several feet high. When completed, this road enabled the Roman administration to function, with rapid troop movements to support officials in their task of Romanisation or to put down any resistance by the Britons.

To gain full economic advantage from their conquest, the Romans were quick to exploit the lead mines of the Mendip Hills. They already knew about the richness of this lead which contained a high proportion of silver, and by AD. 49 were stamping lead ingots or 'pigs' with the Emperor Claudius's name, for the right to mine precious metals was vested in the Emperor and the mines were worked as a state concern, probably with forced labour under military control. A branch road was constructed to link with the Fosse Way, and the lead was exported through Clausentum, near Southampton, or Noviomagus, the Roman name for Chichester.

Threats to the frontier area after A. D. 47 from the Silures in South Wales led to the extension of the military occupied zone to the north coast of Somerset and Devon. Abonae, the modern Sea Mills, near Avonmouth, provided a harbour for a Bristol Channel fleet, and small forts on the Exmoor coast were no doubt used as look-out posts against invaders. Minor settlements at Doniford near Watchet, and at Combwich and Puriton, on either side of the Parrett estuary, show that the Romans were concerned, probably at first with coastal defence and later with trade. A small fort at Nunnington, near Wiveliscombe, is also connected with this early period. Most of the Romanised part of Somerset, however, was in the east and north of the modern county. The highlands of the west, the vale of Taunton Deane and the greater part of the marshy lowlands were never fully settled by Romanised Britons, though Roman influence was doubtless felt and some traces of occupation are scattered in this area.