By the mid 2nd century the hillside below the Upper City, and between it and the river shows evidence of formal planning and settlement over an extensive area.
For instance, at The Park (P 70), on the line of the later western defences, there were timber buildings at right angles to Ermine Street in the early 2nd century, presumed to relate to a street-grid. With the exception of burials, it is thought likely that any military-period structures on the hillside had lined the road leading from the south gate of the fortress to the river crossing but, in the colonia period, development spread laterally across the hillside. It eventually spread so far east and west of Ermine Street that buildings, including those at The Park, had to be demolished to make way for the construction of fortifications. These fortifi-cations involved extension of the uphill circuit almost to the line of the then riverfront and provided a rigid boundary for the whole colonia in the 3rd and 4th centuries (p. 86–8 below).
A substantial amount of evidence from antiquarian discoveries has now been gathered and placed along-side discoveries from more recent excavations (Fig.
7.31), and we can now say that the Ermine Street frontage, at least on the lower, gentler slope, was probably occupied by a range of public monuments, while the land to east and west was largely devoted to residential developments. By the 3rd century, public monuments were in place in the Lower City and the private houses were growing in scale. By the 4th century there were several large and well-appointed examples of such houses. Strengthening of the fortifi-cations during the same period provided a considerable barrier, but must have required substantial resources.
Hints from a number of Lincoln sites indicate the survival of urban life here into the early 5th century, but by this date there was probably a much reduced Fig. 7.30. The mosaic found within Lincoln Castle in 1845
in a coloured chromolithograph (from a drawing by G J Wigley) (Plate 2.3) (photo and copyright, Lincolnshire County Council, Lincolnshire Archives).
Fig. 7.31. Reconstruction of layout of the Lower City in the Colonia Era, showing the principal features for which evidence has been recovered (drawn by Dave Watt, copyright English Heritage).
population and little economic activity. By the second quarter of the 5th century, occupation had apparently ceased.
The combination of the very steep slope in the up-per part of the hillside (in places about 1 in 6), plus the line of springs and the consequent risks of sub-sidence, meant that development here was fraught with practical difficulties. Evidence from excavations indicates the presence of culverts and drains; some of these ran parallel to the north–south streets, as on Silver Street (LIN 73b), where there was also a wood-en water-pipe on the opposite side of the street. In spite of these measures, the amount of silt on the various road-surfaces suggests that the streets would have been awash during periods of heavy rain. The substantial stone drain at the house recovered from excavations in Hungate (H 83), also provided with wooden water pipes, had become blocked. Elsewhere, there may have been pools and flowing streams; the low-lying deposits at Saltergate (LIN 73f) might be best interpreted as a spring and a pool east of Ermine Street, between Silver Street and Free School Lane, feeding into the channel found in excavations in 1988 at Waterside North (WNW 88). Other streams or inlets may have existed outside the line of the defences.
The sandy terrace lower down the hillside was, of course, much less of a problem to Roman builders, being flatter, drier and better drained. Here we find often deeply buried deposits, with the Roman ma-terial regularly occurring at depths below the modern surface of between 3m and 5m. The bottom of the lowest feature at the Hungate site (H 83) was over 7m down, and preliminary investigations at the former St. Cuthbert’s School to the north-east suggest even greater depths. By contrast, terracing operations on the steeper slope – some of them medieval and later in date – have resulted in Roman deposits occurring at the modern ground level in some places and several metres deep in others a few yards away. Towards the bottom of the slope, closer to the river, the Roman deposits again lie 3m to 4m down. Although nowhere near as well-preserved as the Upper City, the Lower City contains several listed buildings and Conser-vation Areas, which have restricted the size and depth of redevelopment. Consequently, our picture of the northern third of the Lower City is very partial, although further south, along Ermine Street, our understanding is much fuller. But even here no major discoveries on Ermine Street itself have been made under modern conditions. Our information is derived either from antiquarian investigations or from small-scale observations in more recent times. Even though some of the excavations in the Lower City in the 1970s and 1980s were on a large scale, they still covered only small parts of the total occupied area, and consequently we lack complete plans of the urban buildings, and thus the ability to analyse structures in the way that can be achieved elsewhere (e.g.
Wallace-Hadrill 1994; Laurence 1996).
Origins and Early Growth
As reported in chapter 6, several sites in the Lower City have produced 1st-century artefacts belonging to the military episode, although not all of the clusters are close to Ermine Street. In some cases, it is possible that legionary finds may have been contained within rubbish imported as make-up for 2nd-century develop-ment, for example at excavations at Spring Hill/
Michaelgate (SPM 83), where a 1st-century Rhodian amphora was discovered. It is presumed that in the military period the hillside was under the army’s control and zoned for extra-mural settlement, and it is also likely that this area was subsequently included within the original boundary (pomerium) of the colonia.
This may mean that the area of the Lower City was defined physically in some way prior to the erection of the walls in the 3rd century. While Richmond regarded it as a suburb subsequently rationalised by the con-struction of defences (1946, 40), Esmonde Cleary (1987, 109–10) considers that the imposition of a street grid implies that the Lower City was treated as part of the city proper, comparing it in this way with Colchester’s expansion beyond the walls of the fortress. Wacher (1995, 143) has suggested that the immigrants and local traders formerly in the legionary canabae may have constituted the majority of the settlers on the hillside, with the status of a vicus, whose enfranchisement may have been effected only later – perhaps as late as Caracalla’s general act in the early 3rd century, by which time fortifications were at least under con-struction.
It is generally accepted that the area of the Lower City was part of the new colonia from the start, in spite of ambiguous references to 19th-century finds of cremation vessels east of the Strait (Richmond 1946, 45) and on Free School Lane (ON 105). Since there are reasons to doubt the details of both, more definite evidence is required before we can accept that any of this area was ever used for adult burial. It seems more likely that the area was zoned for future expansion. It is also difficult to know what to make of Drury’s record of ‘cavern-like apertures’ on St. Martin’s Lane (1888). It remains possible that they were loculi for cremated remains, as was also suggested by Richmond for structures found off Newport (1946, 52), but in the context of more recent finds this seems increasingly unlikely.
Surprisingly, some of the earliest civilian occupation has emerged at, and beyond, the subsequent east and west limits of the walled city at Silver Street (LIN 73c) and The Park (P 70) respectively. This may have been merely because early deposits here had both survived and have been excavated, but these early clusters may point towards inlets of the river to the west and east of the later walls. Such an inlet might also help to explain the early ditch fill at Broadgate (BE 73). Other early structures are known at Spring Hill (SPM 83), Steep Hill (SH 74), and Swan Street (SW 82). What is notable,
in most of these cases, is that the earliest structures appear to be aligned on a street grid, which lay at right angles to Ermine Street and which may have extended beyond the lines of the subsequent defences. In all, we now have evidence from eight different excavations suggesting a planned and partially occupied layout in the Lower City by the middle of the 2nd century, and in some cases the evidence points to the layout’s establishment several decades earlier. This date fits well with the proposal that there was an early plan for the hillside, with street frontages being built up first and remoter areas being filled in only later. Most of the earliest structures were houses of timber, on a modest scale, but others might have been for commercial use.
Some were well-appointed.
Topographical development and street plan
Richmond (1946, 42–3) considered the parallel walls near to the top of Steep Hill noted by Drury (1888), the lower of which was c.4.5m thick, to represent a major terrace which ran across much of the hillside at that point, citing that at Tarragona as a good parallel. He subsequently suggested that it had created an artificial platform c.45m wide. Wacher (1995, 144) proposed as an alternative possibility that the terrace could have represented part of the theatre structure, with the cavea facing southwards – a good use of the slope. After all, one might expect a theatre to be found within the walls of the colonia, and if this structure were part of such a building, it would be good evidence that the hillside was part of the colonia proper from its beginning.
Excavations elsewhere, however, have since estab-lished that there was frequent small-scale terracing within and possibly between properties – notably at Michaelgate (SPM 83), Flaxengate (F 72), Hungate (H 83), Danes Terrace (DT 74), and Spring Hill (SH 74).
The fact that no major terrace structure, like that proposed at the top of Steep Hill, has yet appeared may be the result of the lack of excavations on the steepest part of the slope. Observations by the author in Steep Hill in 1985, near to where Drury noted the terrace walls, found the natural rock at a depth of only about 1m. Perhaps at this point the hill was so steep the bed-rock itself had to be excavated to create platforms for construction. By contrast, Roman deposits on the line of the main street lower down Steep Hill were at least 3m deep (MCH 84), whilst, to the east, adjacent to the line of the medieval and modern Steep Hill, they were again almost at the same level as the modern surface (SH 74). Drury also saw Lias clay ‘at a depth of only 5 feet’ opposite the Jews House, and suggested that remains of earlier periods had ended up ‘at the hill base’ further down.
We now have to abandon some earlier ideas about the street pattern (Wacher 1975, fig. 29; Coppack 1973, 97, fig.1), based on the idea that the Roman grid was largely re-used in the medieval period. It became clear in the 1970s that the Roman secondary street system
had largely disappeared, and that part of the town was re-planned in the 10th century (Jones 1985; Fig 9.34).
Yet there has been substantial progress in locating streets of the Roman Lower City. First, Ermine Street, the major thoroughfare, deserves reconsideration. The line of Ermine Street itself appears to continue in a straight line up the hill from the bridge-head. Its approximate position, roughly on the present course of High Street (but a little to its west), is known from finds of public structures adjacent, and from an account made during drainage operations outside what is now Binns Store, 50m north of the lower south gate, in 1839 (Richmond 1946, 42). The question of whether it took a direct route up the steeper part was largely settled in 1984 when its course was discovered in between the lines of the modern streets Michaelgate and Steep Hill (MCH 84) (Fig. 7.32). Here Ermine Street was formed of monumental steps, interspersed with ramps, an impressive feat of engineering and a most unusual phenomenon for Roman Britain, although not without parallel in the more hilly towns of the Mediterranean (for example at Pergamon in Turkey – Bean 1979, 45–
51). Such a grand topographical feature as these steps imply would have been entirely appropriate to Lin-dum’s colonia status and will have formed a grand ceremonial approach to the Upper City. Unfortunately the dating of the staircase is problematical – we presume it was constructed in the 2nd century, but we have no proof of this.
Fig. 7.32. Flight of stone steps in the course of Ermine Street as it climbed the steepest part of the hill in the Lower City – found in excavations at Chestnut House, Michaelgate in 1984 (MCH 84). The scale is 1m long (photo and copyright, City of Lincoln Archaeology Unit).
A second north–south street was located running at least some of the way up the steep slope at Spring Hill (SPM 83), and it probably continues the line northwards of that indicated at the western edge of the Hungate site (H 83) – suggesting that Hungate also may follow a Roman street. However, this putative second north–
south street would be at an obtuse angle to the line of Ermine Street, unless it lay a little to the west of Hungate. A third north–south street is known to the south of Silver Street, where a pavement (or a portico) lined its eastern side (LIN 73 a/b). This street was in existence from the early 2nd to the 4th century. A fourth north–south street is known to run northwards from the small gate found on Saltergate (LIN 73d), im-mediately west of Bank Street. Its northerly con-tinuation was noted near Silver Street in 1976 (ON 1a).
Yet another north–south street, roughly midway between the two known east of Ermine Street and within the walls, may be indicated by a gap between structures found by Mr D F Petch during foundation works in 1956 beneath the Co-op in Silver Street (sketch in the City and County Museum archives). If extended north it would run to the east of Flaxengate.
Some uncertainty remains about the principal east–
west route across the hillside. Indeed, we may have to accept that any grids either side of Ermine Street were laid out without reference to each other separately, or at least offset, as they were, for example, at Cirencester (Holbrook 1994, 58–60, fig.18). It has proved difficult to project a line for the expected route across the hillside between the east and west gates, and consequently we may have to question the postulated positions of the gates themselves. There was certainly a gate where Clasketgate passes through the east wall by the 10th century (p. 183–4 below), but if the kink at the western end of Monks Road is post-Roman in date, the Roman gate may have lain even further north. If the putative east–west main street ran at right angles to the defences and to Ermine Street, it must have been several metres to the south of the line of Grantham Street (Fig. 9.34), as it was not found in excavations here (F 72, SW 82).
Alternatively, the alignment of a stone foundation at Flaxengate (F 72) may actually have respected a street running on the same alignment, obliquely to the grid, and perhaps linking the east gate with Ermine Street further north. The existence of diagonal routes was established in 1987 when a street with several surfaces, some of them showing evidence of wheel-ruts, was noted immediately to the north of the Steep Hill site (SH 74), near to the point where the gradient becomes very steep. It was presumed that this represented a diversion for wheeled vehicles, and the possible extension of the Roman route to the east of Steep Hill is followed by the modern street called Well Lane.
Discovery of the road helped to clarify why the house at this site lay at such an angle – it followed the alignment of the diagonal street. It is still uncertain whether the route of Ermine Street itself (as indicated by the steps at Michaelgate – MCH 84) and the diagonal
route east of Steep Hill were contemporary but, since they served different functions, they could have been in use contemporaneously. The discovery at Steep Hill suggested that wheeled traffic could avoid the stepped, direct route up to the Upper City by taking a zig-zag course, presumably bending back north-westwards towards the upper south gate. A good parallel for this type of switch-back road for wheeled traffic can be found at Cassino in Italy. There may have been several other streets taking easier gradients, but if so we have yet to explain how the major terrace observed by Drury at the top of Steep Hill was negotiated.
A further east–west street is possible on the line of a surface found outside the (later) eastern walls at Broadgate East (BE 73), close to where a postern gate in the defences was noted in Broadgate in 1994 (GLB 94).
This may, however, have been a street confined to the outside of the city ditch. More certainly located than that at Broadgate was an east–west street on the line of the inserted gateway at The Park, in the western walls (P 70). The gate here lies some 100m to the south of the modern street called West Parade, which probably crosses the line of the wall on the site of a Roman gateway predating that at The Park. Burials are known from the extra-mural area nearby (Thompson and Whitwell 1973, 130). Roman buildings found here-abouts related to a nearby frontage of a north–south street which cannot be far from the line of the modern Beaumont Fee at this point. A final east–west street existed, outside the walls next to the riverside, on the north side of what later became Saltergate (LIN 73d), but, if Roman at all, this street must be dated no earlier than the 3rd century, following the construction of the southern defences.
It is worth noting that none of the roads in the Lower City system are in exact alignment with those in the former fortress above hill. They are mostly offset slightly north-west to south-east and this presumably came about because the line from the fortress south gate to the bridge-head does not continue, precisely, the north–south line of the cardo. This divergence indi-cates the priority of the Upper City, in terms of layout (which is easily demonstrated from other evidence) but it might also imply that the south wall line of the former fortress continued in use as a boundary throughout the Roman period. Where examined, all of the streets continued in use to the late Roman period, and some to the end of Roman occupation.
Fortifications
As with the Upper City’s defences, those of the lower
As with the Upper City’s defences, those of the lower