Map Position This map shows the position of locations of type 'Town, Village, Roman Major Fort, Roman Watch Tower' containing 'borough, burgh, bury, caister, caistor, caster, castle, castor, chester' centered on Wymondham in Norfolk.
Map Logic This map shows the occurrance of locations in Norfolk of implied Roman fortified centres based on the names shown above
.
As you can see, there appears to be a ring of forts surrounding Wymondham, along the coastline and the Iceni southern border
(shown as yellow coloured lines). This is how an occupying army would prevent further rebellion by surrounding the capital and then
surrounding the tribal borders.
These forts were most likely built after the Iceni rebellion in AD61 when Boudicca destroyed much of
the Roman infrastructure of Britain, and appear to be designed to prevent the Iceni ever rebelling again.
Icon Key:
Town
Village
Roman Major Fort
Roman Watch Tower
Map showing the Roman fortified centres in Norfolk implying the Iceni capital Venta Icenorum was located
at present day Wymondham
The yellow lines show a border which is an approximation of the tribal boundaries, this is based on Roman fortifications implied
by the town/village names.
In Ivan Margary's book the Roman Road from Denver to Smallburgh has comments on the fact that no further roads were located to the
East of Smallburgh, as you can see from the map this would be correct as the sea would have reached Smallburgh, this data wouldn't
have been available to Margary in the 1960's.
One or two of the plotted Roman road routes shown in black may have slight alignment issues as places and names have changed over the last
60 years since the books by Ivan Margary were published, making it very difficult to match locations exactly.
The high tide changes in the coastline shown in pale blue, and the 5 metre high tide mark on the rivers shown in dark blue.
For the rivers, the 5 metre mark is shown however the tidal reach could be further inland due to the back
pressure from the rivers upstream.
The coastline of Norfolk is very different from today, with the area around Happisburgh, Sea Palling and Hemsby being salt marsh
with small islands. 'The Wash' would have been similar with the tides reaching far inland to Newmarket.
Purple lines show proposed changes/potential new Roman Roads based on the landscape/satellite features.
