Sheffield Gennels

[History dude]

It should be pointed out the the Romans didn't name any of the roads they built in Britain. Even though they have names now. These are old English names. "Street" being the old English for a Roman road.  If you look at these old Roman Roads too, you will find that Villages or Towns are never built by the side of them. They (Saxons) always considered them too easy for attackers, so settlements are always placed at a distance to the old road.

[Lysanderix]

The Romans on the continent named their major roads after the person who had ordered their construction…Via Aemelia for example …so it is entirely possible the same was the case in Britannia…..the names being lost to history… In Britannia municipality’s (vicus)were responsible for their own roads which were termed “ via vicinales”….:many were numbered in the style later adopted in the USA.

Some roads connected pre existing British settlements which became Romanised…Colchester for  instance.

A far cry from gennels and gitties…..or did the Roman towns have shortcuts as well?😋

 

[MartinR]

(OT, a bit) @History Dude: the main road in Maidstone, Kent is "Weeks Street", the "Weeks" part comes from the old Roman “vicus”.  It's part of the road from the major Roman centre at Rochester down to the iron workings in the Weald of Kent.

[History dude]

On 18/02/2022 at 10:43, MartinR said:

(OT, a bit) @History Dude: the main road in Maidstone, Kent is "Weeks Street", the "Weeks" part comes from the old Roman “”.  It's part of the road from the major Roman centre at Rochester down to the iron workings in the Weald of Kent.

Not really it's an Old English name, they named it after a settlement that was there on the road already.  The vicus being a village within a rural area or the neighbourhood of a larger settlement there in Roman times, that survived the departure of them, rather like London did. They didn't create the settlement on the road. The translation of the Old English being "Roman village of the Roman Road". 

The none placing of Saxon settlements on former Roman Road sites is well known amongst landscape historians. Even in today's none built up areas you can see a huge difference in settlement patterns. The straight roads have no hamlets of villages on them, the curvy roads have loads. 

[MartinR]

Sorry, I wasn't clear: Weeks St is part of the Rochester-Weald road, the settlement ("vicus") is on the aforesaid road.