Downloaded from http://pygs.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on October 1, 2021 PEOCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL AND POLTTECHNIC SOCIETY &t 0)1 SiSeet ^tCamg of gnftsl^ite, AT THE FIFTY-SBVEHTH. MEETIHG, Trp.T.Tt XS THE lECTDBB BOOH OF THE UCTEKABY AND PHILOSOPHICAI. SOCEETT, HAT.TTAX, OH FBTDAT, JULY 12TH, 1861, AT THEEE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTEENOON. JOHN WATEKHOUSE, ESQ., F.E.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. On the motion of Dr. "Wm. Alexander, Dr. Lister, of Shibden Hall, near Halifax, was elected a member of the Society. The Chairman then called upon FRANCIS A. LEYLAND, Esq., to read the first paper, entitled— SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ROMAN ROADS IN THE PARISH OF HALIFAX; WITH THE RESPECTIVE CLAIMS OF ALMONDBURY, SLACK, AND GREETLAND TO THE SITE OF CAMBODFNUM CONSIDERED. The subject I have been requested to bring before you to-day, relating to the roads of Boman construction or adoption, which are beKeved to have passed through the parish of Halifax, is one of general as well as of local interest; for, whatever tends to throw light upon the distant and obscure periods of local history, renders more clear the general view of times and events which relate to the country at large. And it is the primary object of Archaeological investigation to multiply the evidences of legitimate history by furnishing indisputable data on which to form correct Downloaded from http://pygs.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on October 1, 2021 183 ideas of the ages remote from our own. But I am con­ strained to admit that I approach the subject of my Paper with considerable diffidence; for, in my search after informa­ tion relating to it, in the pages of our local histories, I have found little to assist, and much to discourage. On these authorities the ancient roads of our parish would seem, even a century ago, to have been few in number and traced with difficulty. Watson enumerates two—one from York to Manchester ; the other from Manchester to Aldborough. Of the former he says, " that having gained the height of Lindley Moor, it exhibited ' a curious remain of antiquity ;* that it was considerably raised above the level of the ad­ joining ground; that it entered ' a field called Tarbarrells,' and afterwards, being lost in the enclosures, could be traced no further." * The late E,ev. Joseph Hunter says of this iter, "that all idea of actually tracing it by indicia yet remaining is vain." f This learned author is also silent about the branch of the same road which must inevitably have passed by the station at Lindwell, in the township of Greet- land, the spot where the altar " Divis Civitatis Brigantum,"^: and other heavy remains of the Roman town, which he believes to have been the Cambodunum of the Itinerary, were found in the sixteenth century. Of the road from Manchester to Aldborough, Watson says nothing. Indeed, he does not follow any road which attracted his attention, to any great distance from the point at which he commences it; and he generally ends with an expression of his inability to say anything definite or conclusive about it. Dr. Dunham Whitaker, in his account of our parish, affi)rds no support to the present inquiry; from his silence, one might infer that • Watson, p. 39, + Communication to the Society of Antiquarians on the Site of Cambodunum, p. 4. } Divis Civitatis Brigantum, et numini Augustorum, Titus AureJius Aorelianus dedicat pro se et suis susceptum merito animo grato solvit. Downloaded from http://pygs.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on October 1, 2021 184 no Roman roads at all existed in this parish at the time he was employed on his Loides and Elmete. It is unnecessary to multiply instances of the unsatisfactory allusions to this subject which are found in the local topo­ graphies of our neighbourhood, and which so much discourage any further inquiry into the ancient roads of our district. But I may add other obstacles and diflB.culties which, in more recent times, have been thrown in the way of the subject on which we are engaged. They are of the kind which have arisen from the operation of the general and local Turnpike Acts, passed in the reign of Geo. lY., by which the repair and improvement of highways was vested in trustees. That the trustees, appointed for the purpose, energetically em­ ployed the powers entrusted to them, the highways of this district abimdantly show. Such have been the renovations, reconstructions, diversions, and enclosures, directed by the Acts referred to, that the highways which formerly retained their ancient pavements, as a general rule, no longer exhibit any of the usual characteristics of either British or Roman roads. Several instances occur in this parish, of the Com­ missioners of Turnpike Trusts, in carrying on the repairs of highways of known antiquity, under their supervision, having unavoidably, no doubt, obliterated all traces of ancient construction, which old and still living witnesses remember to have existed before the passing of the local Turnpike Acts. Warburton, the author of an account of the Roman wall and a herald, I believe living in the 17th century, says, in a MS. work of his, preserved in the British Museum, that when he traced the military way from Aldborough to Manchester, through this parish, it was paved all the way. The pavement of the iter from Ilkley to Manchester may still be seen in Fincle-street, in the township of Sowerby, and elsewhere along its course. Downloaded from http://pygs.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on October 1, 2021 185 On Lindley Moor, the commissioners in trust of the road from Outlane to E-astrick, have formed their turnpike by the side of the great military way from Eboracum to Mancunium, in order, as it would seem, to avoid the trouble and expense of levelling what remained of the ridge, or of restoring what has been lost, at this point, of the second iter of Antonine. But at another place, as on the north west WatHng-street, * a road which does not appear to have been raised above the groimd anywhere on its passage through this parish, but rather sunk into it, the trustees have changed its direction; and, in the fields adjoining, the Hne, which had been worn hollow by the traffic of ages, or deepened and narrowed by natural agencies, may still be seen of a Kghter tint than the surrounding vegetation, and still retaining to some extent the depression of the original course. In addition to aU this, the obstacles thrown in the way of our inquiry by the Greneral Enclosure Act,t which provides that every kind of road, ''not set out" by the commissioners, is declared to be extinguished; and the spirit of improvement, which in these days animates society at large, but more especially that of the manufacturing districts, would seem to render hopeless the satisfactory elucidation of a subject invested with so much interest. It is true, that in the out-townships of our parish, on their unreclaimed moors, their lofty eleva­ tions, and in their secluded valleys, much still remains to encourage the inquiry. But the society will allow me to express my regret, on account of the difficulty which attends it now, that so much which might have been weU and effec­ tually done by abler hands than mine a century ago, has to be taken up and investigated at the present date, under the accumulated drawbacks I have enumerated. Then, as so little aid is to be derived from those local channels of information, to which I would gladly have referred, it • The Ilkley iter. + Geo. 3, c. 102. Downloaded from http://pygs.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on October 1, 2021 186 •veill be necessary to seek elsewhere for such data as may be of use in the present inquiry. To do this effectually we must take up entirely independent ground; and, avoiding all inconclusive speculation, deduce from the well known facts of E-omano-British history the materials which the obscurity of our subject requires. By adopting this plan, I trust we shall ultimately arrive at a more satisfactory conclusion than we should were we to adopt the principles on which the inquiry appears to have been hitherto conducted. In their search after the ancient roads through this parish, our local historians seem to have been under the impression that most of the channels of communication between the cities and towns of Brigantia, if ever laid down either by the Aborigines or their Roman conquerors, had been diverted and lost in very early times. One would infer from the imperfect success which attended their search, that the excellent roads which the Saxons found everywhere, in firm condition, throughout the island, were unsuited to their wants, and that either they or succeeding generations incurred the labour and expense not only of enclosing the ancient roads within their pastures, but of forming new ones, more circuitous in their direction, and less durable in their construction ! History is at variance with this theory. But it seems never to have entered into the speculations of our antiquaries that the cities of Brigantia stood, if possible, in greater need of roads between them than the cities of any other province of Britain, or that such roads might actually have been constructed. And they appear never to have entertained the possibility of the ancient pack-horse roads, on which they pursued their archaeological investigations, being entitled to an antiquity beyond that of a few generations, but whose age they were unable to determine. It seems never to have occurred to them that Roman legions might Downloaded from http://pygs.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on October 1, 2021 187 htLve inarched over their enduring pavements and along their direct lines, at the behest of an emperor keeping his court at Eboracum; or that couriers from the seccmd city of £rkain might have sped along them with despatches to the other towns and fortresses of Brigantia ! Hence, as they did not follow the beaten track—the date of whose construction they were imable to show—^they sought for iters where perhaps they had never been made.