Did Roman surveyors build dead straight?
As elsewhere in the empire, Roman roads in Britain were indeed built as straight as possible. The Roman surveyors – agrimensores – were not only extremely accurate in their work; they also had no need to worry about who owned or used the land along the way. As conquerors, they could simply choose the most direct route from A to B, building their roads across anyone’s property or farmland that happened to stand in their way. This didn’t mean, however, that all Roman roads were built in a dead straight line. The Romans were sensible enough to by-pass hills, mountains, marshes and forest, where they posed particular obstacles; and they would seek out suitable crossing points at any rivers along their route. Here, where they could not use fords or ferries, their engineers would construct bridges as essential links in the communication chain. Roman roads were the communication arteries of their day. Although their primary purpose in the early days after conquest was to speed the movement of
