Saxon Seaxe Anglo Saxon History
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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.



External References in no particular order :-
Anglo Saxon Chronicles
Online Anglo Saxon dictionary
Online Etymology dictionary
Open Domesday Book - The first free online copy of the Domesday Book
The Ermine Street Guard Roman re-enactment and research Society
The "Kent A" cadastre - page 5 - Peterson 2002
Archaeologia Cantiana Online
Romney Marsh Research Trust
Romney Marsh the Fifth Continent
VillageNet the reference guide to villages in Kent & Sussex
Global warming Flood Maps
The Anglo Saxon Chronicles
Google Maps - the core of the system
GeoPlaner - Useful site for plotting map data
Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars 55BC(Books 4 & 5)
Wikipedia - Caesar's invasions of Britain
Wikipedia - Portus Istus
The Geography of Claudius Ptolemy (Bill Thayers)
Roman Britain.org
Runetree Beowulf
Bayeux Tapestry Online
The Secrets of the Norman Invasion
Chronicles of John of Worcester
Battle Historic Society
Binsted village website(Mearcredesburnan Steðe)
The Spears of Andred
Find British Archaelogical Sites
Wealden Iron Research Group
Topographic Map of the UK

 

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Author: Simon M - Last Updated: 13/03/2024 13:12
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Data is derived from a number or sources including the Ordnance Survey Gazetter data overlayed onto Google Maps