Aqueduct (water supply)
An aqueduct is a watercourse constructed to carry water from a source to a distribution point far away. In modern engineering, the term aqueduct is used for any system of pipes, canals and other structures used for this purpose; the term aqueduct often refers to a bridge on an artificial watercourse. The word is derived from ducere. Aqueducts were used in ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient Rome. In modern times, the largest aqueducts of all have been built in the United States to supply the country's biggest cities; the simplest aqueducts are small ditches cut into the earth. Much larger channels may be used in modern aqueducts. Aqueducts sometimes run for all of their path through tunnels constructed underground. Modern aqueducts may use pipelines. Agricultural societies have constructed aqueducts to irrigate crops and supply large cities with drinking water. Although associated with the Romans, aqueducts were devised much earlier in Greece and the Near East and Indian subcontinent, where peoples such as the Egyptians and Harappans built sophisticated irrigation systems.
Roman-style aqueducts were used as early as the 7th century BC, when the Assyrians built an 80 km long limestone aqueduct, which included a 10 m high section to cross a 300 m wide valley, to carry water to their capital city, Nineveh. The Indian subcontinent is believed to have some of the earliest aqueducts. Evidence can be found at the sites of Karnataka; the massive aqueducts near river Tungabhadra supplying irrigation water were once 15 miles long. The waterways supplied water to royal bath tubs. In Oman from the Iron Age, in Salut and other sites, a system of underground aqueducts called falaj or qanāts were constructed, a series of well-like vertical shafts, connected by sloping horizontal tunnels. There are three types of falaj: Daudi with underground aqueducts Ghaili requiring a dam to collect the water Aini whose source is a water springThese enabled large scale agriculture to flourish in a dry land environment. In Persia from early times a system of underground aqueducts called qanāts were constructed, a series of well-like vertical shafts, connected by sloping tunnels.
This technique: taps into subterranean water in a manner that delivers water to the surface without need for pumping. The water drains relying on gravity, with the destination lower than the source, an upland aquifer. Allows water to be transported long distances in hot dry climates without losing a large proportion of the source water to seepage and evaporation. Throughout Petra, the Nabataean engineers took advantage of every natural spring and every winter downpour to channel water where it was needed, they constructed aqueducts and piping systems that allowed water to flow across mountains, through gorges and into the temples and gardens of Petra's citizens. Walking through the Siq, one can spot the remains of channels that directed water to the city center, as well as durable retention dams that kept powerful flood waters at bay. On the island of Samos, the Tunnel of Eupalinos was built during the reign of Polycrates, it is considered an underground aqueduct and brought fresh water to Pythagoreion for a thousand years.
Roman aqueducts were built in all parts of the Roman Empire, from Germany to Africa, in the city of Rome, where they totaled over 415 kilometres. The aqueducts supplied fresh water to public baths and for drinking water, in large cities across the empire, set a standard of engineering, not surpassed for more than a thousand years. Bridges, built in stone with multiple arches, were a distinctive feature of Roman aqueducts and hence the term aqueduct is applied to a bridge for carrying water. Near the Peruvian town of Nazca, an ancient pre-Columbian system of aqueducts called Puquios were built and are still in use today, they were made of intricately placed stones, a construction material used by the Nazca culture. The time period in which they were constructed is still debated, but some evidence supports circa A. D. 540–552, in response to drought periods in the region. The Guayabo National Monument of Costa Rica, a park covering the largest archaeological site in the country, contains a system of aqueducts.
The complex network of uncovered and covered aqueducts still functions well. The aqueducts are constructed from rounded river stones, which are made of volcanic rock; the civilization that constructed the aqueduct system remains a mystery to archaeologists. When Europeans saw the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, early in the 16th century, the city was watered by two aqueducts. One of these, Chapultepec Aqueduct, built circa 1420, was rebuilt by the Spanish three hundred years later. Tracing part of its path over now-gone Lake Texcoco, only a fragment remains in Mexico City today. Extensive usage of elaborate aqueducts have been found to have been used in ancient Sri Lanka; the best example is the Yoda Ela or Jaya Ganga, an 87 kilometres long water canal carrying excess water between two artificial reservoirs with a gradient of 10 to 20 cm per kilometer during the fifth century AD. However, the ancient engineering methods in calculating the exact elevation between the two reservoirs and the exact gradient of the canal to such fine precision had been lost with the fall of the civilization in 13th Century.
In modern times, the largest aqueducts of all have been built in the United States to supply the country's biggest cities. The Catskill Aqueduct carries
Ringfort
Ringforts, ring forts or ring fortresses are circular fortified settlements that were built during the Bronze age up to about the year 1000. They are found in Northern Europe in Ireland. There are many in South Wales and in Cornwall, where they are called rounds. Ringforts may be made of stone or earth. Earthen ringforts would have been marked by a circular rampart with a stakewall. Both stone and earthen ringforts would have had at least one building inside. In Irish language sources they are known by a number of names: ráth, caiseal, cathair and dún; the ráth and lios was an earthen ringfort. The caiseal and cathair was a stone ringfort; the term dún was used for any stronghold of importance, which may or may not be ring-shaped. In Ireland, over 40,000 sites have been identified as ringforts and it is thought that at least 50,000 ringforts existed on the island, they are common throughout the country, with a mean density of just over one ringfort within any area of 2 km2. It is that many have been destroyed by farming and urbanisation.
However, many hitherto unknown ringforts have been found thanks to early Ordnance Survey maps, aerial photography, the archaeological work that has accompanied road-building. In Cornwall and south Wales, enclosed settlements share many characteristics with their Irish counterparts, including the circular shape and souterrains, their continuing occupation into the early medieval period. Few Cornish examples have been archaeologically excavated, with the exception of Trethurgy Rounds. Hillforts are known from Scandinavia, of which nineteen can be found on the Swedish island of Öland alone; these hillforts are not to be confused with Viking ring fortresses, of which seven are known from Denmark and southern Sweden, all from around 980 in the Viking Age. The Viking forts all share a strikingly similar design and are collectively referred to as Trelleborgs, after the first excavated fortress of that type in 1936. All the Viking ring fortresses are believed to have been built within a short timeframe, during the reign of Harold Bluetooth, but for yet unknown military purposes.
They might have served as boot camps for Sweyn Forkbeard's men before his invasion of England in 1013. The debate on chronology is a result of the huge number of ringforts and the failure of any other form of settlement site to survive to modern times in any great quantity from the period before the Early Christian period or from Gaelic Ireland after the Anglo-Norman arrival. Three general theories mark the debate on the chronology of Irish ringforts. According to the authoritative New History of Ireland, "archaeologists are agreed that the vast bulk of them are the farm enclosures of the well-to-do of early medieval Ireland"; the theories that the ringfort either pre- or post-dates the Early Middle Ages in Ireland, are both based on the same premise, as is highlighted here by Tadhg O'Keefe in relation to the latter argument. The a priori case for attributing some ringforts to the Later Middle Ages... is based on the absence of any other settlement form of appropriate date in those landscapes.
In other words, if the Gaelic-Irish did not live in ringforts, where did they live? The conjecture that ringforts can be seen to have evolved from and be part of an Iron Age tradition has been expanded by Darren Limbert; this hypothesis is based on a number of re-interpretations of the available evidence, as well as concern over the available evidence. As only a small portion of ringforts have undergone total excavation, the fact that these excavations have not taken place on anything like a national level, the evidence is insufficient to place all ringforts and the origins of them within the Early Christian period. Limbert argues instead, that the ringfort should be seen in the context of a variety of similar developments in Britain and the European Continent in Iberia and Gaul. While conceding that most ringforts were built in the Early Christian period, he suggests a link between the arrival of Eóganachta dynasty in Munster c. 400 AD, the introduction of ringforts. In support of this he notes that: "The other major Eoganachta ringforts of Ballycatten and Garryduff, despite limited stratigraphic discernment, have produced artefacts of ambiguously early origins.
Their defensive nature... supports an intrusion of a Celtic warrior caste..." The similarity with South Welsh'raths' and Cornish'rounds' suggests a degree of cultural interaction between Western British and Irish populations, however differences in dates of occupation mean this cannot be confirmed. On the island of Öland, nineteen ringforts have been identified, including Eketorp, a site, excavated and that one may visit. Excavations are ongoing at Sandby borg, the site of a massacre in the 5th century A. D, it is possible that the Hill
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with'the encouragement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, London, is a registered charity. Members of the society are known as fellows and are entitled to use the post-nominal letters FSA after their names. Fellows are elected by existing members of the society, to be elected persons shall be "excelling in the knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other nations" and be "desirous to promote the honour and emoluments of the Society." The society retains a selective election procedure, in comparison with many other learned societies. Nominations for fellowship can come only from existing fellows of the society, must be signed by at least five and up to twelve existing fellows, certifying that, from their personal knowledge, the candidate would make a worthy fellow. Elections occur by anonymous ballot, a candidate must achieve a ratio of two'yes' votes for every'no' vote cast by fellows participating in the ballot to be elected as a fellow.
Fellowship is thus regarded as recognition of significant achievement in the fields of archaeology, antiquities and heritage. The first secretary for the society was William Stukeley; as of 2017, the society has a membership of 3,055 fellows. A precursor organisation, the College of Antiquaries, was founded c. 1586 and functioned as a debating society until it was forbidden to do so by King James I in 1614. The first informal meeting of the modern Society of Antiquaries occurred at the Bear Tavern on The Strand on 5 December 1707; this early group, conceived by John Talman, John Bagford, Humfrey Wanley, sought a charter from Queen Anne for the study of British antiquities. The proposal for the society was to be advanced by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, but his dismissal from government caused it to become idle; the formalisation of proceedings occurred in 1717, the first minutes at the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street, are dated 1 January 1718. Those attending these meetings examined objects, gave talks, discussed theories of historical sites.
Reports on the dilapidation of significant buildings were produced. The society was concerned with the topics of heraldry and historical documents. In 1751, a successful application for a charter of incorporation was sought by its long-serving vice president Joseph Ayloffe, which allowed the society to own property; the society began to gather large collections of manuscripts and artefacts, housing such gifts and bequests while a proper institution for them did not exist. The acquisition of a large group of important paintings in 1828 preceded the establishment of the National Portrait Gallery by some 30 years. A gift of Thomas Kenwich, which included portraits of Edward IV, Mary Tudor, two of Richard III, reveal anti-Tudor bias in their portrayal. Following the London Blitz, the society organized many of the excavations of Roman and medieval ruins exposed by the bombing of the City, with annual surveys performed every year between 1946 and 1962. Among other finds, they discovered the unknown London citadel in the northwest corner of the London Wall.
The findings were summarized in 1968 by W. F. Grimes. In 2007, the society celebrated its tercentennial year with an exhibition at the Royal Academy entitled Making History: Antiquaries in Britain 1707-2007; the tercentenary was marked by two substantial publications: a collection of seventeen scholarly essays on the parallel themes of the history of the society itself and changing interpretations of the material relics of the past over the three centuries of its existence. The society's library is the major archaeological research library in the UK. Having acquired material since the early 18th century, the Library's present holdings number more than 100,000 books and around 800 received periodical titles; the catalogue include rare drawings and manuscripts, such as the inventory of all Henry VIII's possessions at the time of his death. As the oldest archaeological library in the country, the Library holds an outstanding collection of British county histories, a fine collection of 18th- and 19th-century books on the antiquities of Britain and other countries and an exceptionally wide-ranging collection of periodical titles with runs dating back to the early to mid-19th century.
In 1718, the society began to publish a series of illustrated papers on ancient buildings and artefacts those of Britain and written by members of the society, under the title Vetusta Monumenta. The series continued to appear on an irregular basis until 1906; the papers were published in a folio format, were notable for the inclusion of finely engraved views and reproductions of artefacts. An engraver was employed by the society from its inception – the earliest were George Vertue, James Basire and successors – labouring to produce the copperplate used in the printing of the folio editions; the prints were large and appealing, were intended to satisfy popular demand for archæological subject matter. A fellow of the society, Richard Gough, sought to expand and improve publication of the society's research, motivated by the steady dilapidation of examples
Jewry Wall Museum
The Jewry Wall Museum is a museum in Leicester. It was built in the 1960s, it housed artefacts from Iron Age and medieval Leicester. With the ending of Vaughan College's use of the building in 2013, the whole site was acquired by the city council, expansion and improvement plans were put in place; the area west of the Jewry Wall was excavated by Kathleen Kenyon between 1936 and 1939, resulting in a set of bath house foundations a considerable depth below street level. When post-war reconstruction got underway, what became Vaughan Way required the destruction of the old Vaughan Working Men's College, the outcome was that the area alongside the Roman foundations was used for a new building which combined both the Adult learning college and a new museum to house Leicester's growing collection of Roman and medieval archaeological finds; the building, completed in 1962, is Grade II listed and until 2013 the museum was located below Vaughan College, part of Leicester University's Institute for Lifelong-Learning.
Construction finished two years later. The museum is free to enter. In 2004, as part of a scheme of cost-cutting on the part of Leicester City Council, it was proposed that the opening hours at the Jewry Wall Museum would be reduced. An interest group was created in response, the Friends of Jewry Wall Museum have been promoting the museum since. Regardless of this, Leicester City Council reduced the museum's opening times to save money, the museum is closed for several months over the winter. Councillor John Mugglestone rationalised the decision at the time, saying: "At Jewry Wall, we have more curators than visitors"; the museum was threatened again in 2011, when Leicester City Council announced plans to close the museum to save money. This decision was overturned following a motion by the City Council's backbench Labour Councillors, led by former Labour Council leader Ross Willmott; the University of Leicester had been the owner of the building, with the museum holding a secure long-term tenancy of the ground floor, In 2013 the University announced that it was no longer to use the building for its lifelong learning activities an put it up for sale.
In March 2016 Leicester City Council was able to buy the building, began a process of improvements and expansion of the Museum, which could be spread over both floors and improve access and visibility of both the museum and Roman ruins. The quantity of Roman material has expanded in recent years as developers have been required to carry out full archaeological works while redeveloping sites across the city. "Jewry Wall Museum". Leicester City Council. Retrieved 20 April 2015
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Roman roads
Roman roads were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. They provided efficient means for the overland movement of armies and civilians, the inland carriage of official communications and trade goods. Roman roads were of several kinds, ranging from small local roads to broad, long-distance highways built to connect cities, major towns and military bases; these major roads were stone-paved and metaled, cambered for drainage, were flanked by footpaths and drainage ditches. They were laid along surveyed courses, some were cut through hills, or conducted over rivers and ravines on bridgework. Sections could be supported over marshy ground on piled foundations. At the peak of Rome's development, no fewer than 29 great military highways radiated from the capital, the late Empire's 113 provinces were interconnected by 372 great roads; the whole comprised more than 400,000 kilometres of roads, of which over 80,500 kilometres were stone-paved.
In Gaul alone, no less than 21,000 kilometres of roadways are said to have been improved, in Britain at least 4,000 kilometres. The courses of many Roman roads survived for millennia. Livy mentions some of the most familiar roads near Rome, the milestones on them, at times long before the first paved road—the Appian Way. Unless these allusions are just simple anachronisms, the roads referred to were at the time little more than levelled earthen tracks. Thus, the Via Gabina is mentioned in about 500 BC. In the Itinerary of Antoninus, the description of the road system, after the death of Julius Caesar and during the tenure of Augustus, is as follows: "With the exception of some outlying portions, such as Britain north of the Wall and certain provinces east of the Euphrates, the whole Empire was penetrated by these itinera. There is hardly a district to which we might expect a Roman official to be sent, on service either civil or military, where we do not find roads, they reach the Wall in Britain.
A road map of the empire reveals that it was laced with a dense network of prepared viae. Beyond its borders there were no paved roads. There were, for instance, some pre-Roman ancient trackways in Britain, such as the Ridgeway and the Icknield Way. For specific roads, see Roman road locations below; the Laws of the Twelve Tables, dated to about 450 BC, required that any public road be 8 Roman feet wide where straight and twice that width where curved. These were the minimum widths for a via. Actual practices varied from this standard; the Tables command Romans to build public roads and give wayfarers the right to pass over private land where the road is in disrepair. Building roads that would not need frequent repair therefore became an ideological objective, as well as building them as straight as possible in order to build the narrowest roads possible, thus save on material. Roman law defined the right to use a road as liability; the ius eundi established a claim to use an footpath, across private land.
A via combined both types of servitutes, provided it was of the proper width, determined by an arbiter. The default width was the latitudo legitima of 8 feet. Roman law and tradition forbade the use of vehicles except in certain cases. Married women and government officials on business could ride; the Lex Iulia Municipalis restricted commercial carts to night-time access in the city within the walls and within a mile outside the walls. Roman roads varied from simple corduroy roads to paved roads using deep roadbeds of tamped rubble as an underlying layer to ensure that they kept dry, as the water would flow out from between the stones and fragments of rubble, instead of becoming mud in clay soils. According to Ulpian, there were three types of roads: Viae publicae, praetoriae or militares Viae privatae, glareae or agrariae Viae vicinales The first type of road included public high or main roads and maintained at the public expense, with their soil vested in the state; such roads led either to a town, or to a public river, or to another public road.
Siculus Flaccus, who lived under Trajan, calls them viae publicae regalesque, describes their characteristics as follows: They are placed under curatores, repaired by redemptores at the public expense. These roads bear the names of their constructors. Roman roads were named after the censor who had ordered their reconstruction; the same person served afterwards as c
Exeter
Exeter is a cathedral city in Devon, with a population of 129,800. The city is located on the River Exe 36 miles northeast of Plymouth and 65 miles southwest of Bristol, it is the county town of Devon, the base of Devon County Council. Situated in Exeter, are two campuses of the University of Exeter, Streatham Campus and St Luke's Campus. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal command of Vespasian. Exeter became a religious centre during the Middle Ages and into the Tudor times: Exeter Cathedral, founded in the mid 11th century, became Anglican during the 16th-century English Reformation. During the late 19th century, Exeter became an affluent centre for the wool trade, although by the First World War the city was in decline. After the Second World War, much of the city centre was rebuilt and is now considered to be a centre for modern business and tourism in Devon and Cornwall; the administrative area of Exeter has the status of a non-metropolitan district under the administration of the County Council.
The modern name of Exeter is a development of the Old English Escanceaster, from the anglicised form of the river now known as the Exe and the Old English suffix -ceaster, used to mark important fortresses or fortified towns. The name "Exe" is a separate development of the Brittonic name—meaning "water" or, more "full of fish" —that appears in the English Axe and Esk and the Welsh Usk. Exeter began as settlements on a dry ridge ending in a spur overlooking a navigable river teeming with fish, with fertile land nearby. Although there have been no major prehistoric finds, these advantages suggest the site was occupied early. Coins have been discovered from the Hellenistic kingdoms, suggesting the existence of a settlement trading with the Mediterranean as early as 250 BC; such early towns had been a feature of pre-Roman Gaul as described by Julius Caesar in his Commentaries and it is possible that they existed in Britannia as well. The Romans established a 42-acre'playing-card' shaped fort named Isca around AD 55.
The fort was the southwest terminus of the Fosse Way and served as the base of the 5 000-man Second Augustan Legion led by Vespasian Roman Emperor, for the next 20 years before they moved to Caerleon in Wales, known as Isca. To distinguish the two, the Romans referred to Exeter as Isca Dumnoniorum, "Watertown of the Dumnonii", Caerleon as Isca Augusta. A small fort was maintained at Topsham; the presence of the fort built up an unplanned civilian community of natives and the soldiers' families to the northeast of the fort. This settlement served as the tribal capital of the Dumnonii and was listed as one of their four cities by Ptolemy in his Geography; when the fortress was abandoned around the year 75, its grounds were converted to civilian purposes: its large bathhouse was demolished to make way for a forum and a basilica, a smaller-scale bath was erected to the southeast. This area was excavated in the 1970s, but could not be maintained for public view owing to its proximity to the present-day cathedral.
In January 2015, it was announced that Exeter Cathedral had launched a bid to restore the baths and open an underground centre for visitors. In the late 2nd century, the ditch and rampart defences around the old fortress were replaced by a bank and wall enclosing a much larger area, some 92 acres. Although most of the visible structure is older, the course of the Roman wall was used for Exeter's subsequent city walls, thus about 70% of the Roman wall remains, most of its route can be traced on foot. The Devonian Isca seems to have been most prosperous in the first half of the 4th century: more than a thousand Roman coins have been found around the city and there is evidence for copper and bronze working, a stock-yard, markets for the livestock and pottery produced in the surrounding countryside; the dating of the coins so far discovered, suggests a rapid decline: none have been discovered dated after the year 380. Bishop Ussher identified the Cair Pensa vel Coyt listed among the 28 cities of Britain by the History of the Britons as Isca, although David Nash Ford read it as a reference to Penselwood and thought it more to be Lindinis.
Nothing is known of Exeter from the time of the Roman withdrawal from Britain around the year 410 until the seventh century. By that time, the city was held by the Saxons, who had arrived in Exeter after defeating the British Dumnonians at Peonnum in Somerset in 658, it seems that the Saxons maintained a quarter of the city for the Britons under their own laws around present-day Bartholomew Street, known as "Britayne" Street until 1637 in memory of its former occupants. Exeter was known to the Saxons as Escanceaster. In 876, it was attacked and captured by Danish Vikings. Alfred the Great drove them out the next summer. Over the next few years, he elevated Exeter to one of the four burhs in Devon, rebuilding its walls on the Roman lines; these permitted the city to fend off another attack and siege by the Danes in 893. Ki
Media related to Ratae Corieltauvorum at Wikimedia Commons