Listed 7 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "CAMBRIDGE Town ENGLAND" .
CAMBRIDGE (Town) ENGLAND
Cambridge (Durolipons) Cambridgeshire, England.
The Roman town of Cambridge lay on the S end of a broad ridge NW of the Cam, in
the area now occupied by the mediaeval castle and the churches of St. Giles and
St. Peter. The Roman name of the place is not certain. Camboritum in the Antonine
Itinerary was earlier favored, on the grounds of its general similarity to Cambridge,
but this identification is no more than specious. Durolipons, also listed in the
Antonine Itinerary, is the most probable Roman name for the town.
The system of Roman roads around Cambridge is of some interest: two
major routes cross at the site of the town itself. Akeman Street branches from
Ermine Street and runs NE towards Cambridge, leading thence into the Isle of Ely.
The road from Colchester (Camulodunum) can be traced over the Gog Magog hills
SE of the town, and from their foot a branch road led to a crossing of the Cam
at Cambridge itself and thence towards Godmanchester.
The early period of Roman Cambridge is still little known. A length
of pre-Flavian ditch found beneath Shire Hall in the W part of the town has been
claimed as part of the defenses of an early Roman fort, but proof is lacking.
On general grounds, the siting of a fort at the crossing of the Cam is very likely.
A settlement of the pre-Roman Iron Age may also be proposed, since a number of
late Iron Age pottery vessels have been found in various parts of the town, but
this hypothesis also has yet to be confirmed by the discovery of structural remains.
The Roman settlement was at some stage walled, and the polygonal defenses
enclosed an area of 10-11.2 ha. The longer axis of the enclosure ran NW-SE; it
was crossed by the Roman road leading NW towards Godmanchester (now represented
by the Huntington Road and Castle Street), and SE towards Colchester, presumably
crossing the Cam by a bridge a short distance below the present Magdalene Bridge.
Excavated evidence for the structure and dating of the defenses is not extensive,
but it suggests that there was an earth rampart of the late 2d c., in front of
which a stone wall was built in the 3d c. Outside these lay a ditch some 10-12
m wide and 2.4-3.6 m deep. Neither rampart nor ditch now survives, but the outline
of the defensive works can be traced with some confidence on the N, S, and W sides.
A bank in the grounds of Magdalene College, formerly identified as the rampart
of the Roman town, is now known to be post-Roman. The W gate, which had at least
one flanking tower, has recently been excavated.
Several cemeteries have been located on the fringes of the settlement,
at Girton, Coldham Common, Trumpington, and on the Huntingdon Road. Sculptured
fragments found at Girton may have come from a monumental tomb. The Arbury Road
cemetery, which lay along Akeman Street NE of the town, dated in the main from
the 3d and 4th c., and included a large walled tomb containing two inhumation
burials, one in a lead-lined stone sarcophagus.
The Roman town was the focus for a considerable agricultural population;
farmsteads are attested at the War Ditch, Cherry Hinton, Manor Farm, and at several
other sites close to the town. Like Cambridge itself, many of these sites appear
to have been occupied in the later Iron Age. After the collapse of Roman administration,
the town remained a nucleus of settlement; pagan Anglo-Saxon objects have been
recovered from within the walls and from burials outside them. Finds are in the
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography.
M. Todd, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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