Big New Roman Find In City

[Viggen]

Experts believe they have unearthed a Roman road in the heart of Chichester and now have hopes of discovering a 1st-century fort. They have hailed the find an 'archaeological jackpot' for the city. The road was found during an excavation before work on a major new housing and shopping development began at the former Shippams factory site off East Street.

 

full article at Portsmouth Today

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

So does that mean the housing projects and parking lots thing is never going to be built?

[Sextus Roscius]

It depends on the ruling of the local and national officials, but hopefully they will be able to excavated the site. History should come before a new group of houses.

 

Also, any city with "chester" in some part of its name (e.g. westchester, etc) were likely roman forts by defualt of the name. Chester comes from a latin word meaning "fort" essentaily, so it would be expected that most towns with the word in their name were originaly some form of ofrtification with a town that grew up around them (as often happened with forts)

[Plautus]

Thanks for the fact about Chesters. I didn't know that . I recall when I lived in Blighty, in my few attempts to drive out of London, if I was on a perfectly straight road as far as the eye could see, it was a Roman road.

 

Question: Do you think the Romans drove on the left or right side?

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

Chester comes from the word castrum, the change in spelling resulted from the inability of the Celts and Picts to master the accent and language of the Roman language.

[Sextus Roscius]

thank you for providing the latin word flavius.

 

 

 

Question: Do you think the Romans drove on the left or right side?

 

A very interesting question Platus. I would assume that they drove on the left side of the rode for the same reason that the people of france and britian did, which is that when a horse is pulling a cart of some sort, it is generaly whiped on the right side causing it to move slightly to the right when it walks. When the horse drove on the right side of the road, the horse would go off the road and onto the side walk, wheras when drive on the left side, it is forced to stay in alighnment rather than shift becuase their is carts bypassing on the opisite side keeping it from moving that way too far.