Fall of Roman London

Why was London transformed from a bustling Roman metropolis into a ghost town by the fifth century? Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Dominic Perring to explore the rich archaeological findings that reveal the city's final chapters, including the building of defensive walls, the influence of key figures like Magnus Maximus, and the economic shifts impacting the Roman Empire. They discuss the cosmopolitan makeup of Roman London and the significant rise and fall cycles it experienced before its eventual disappearance beneath the rubble. MORE The Roman Invasion of Britain https://open.spotify.com/episode/1lTa6DyKYntcPdkRrvwCnc The Fall of Roman Britain https://open.spotify.com/episode/6vMwL1dueziXVNOwloY9xn Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan and the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. LIVE SHOW: Buy tickets for The Ancients at the London Podcast Festival here: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/the-ancients-2/ Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:34Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 1:02Tristan Hughes?

  Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. I'm currently in East London at Spitalfields Market. And this might feel a bit of a random place for me to do this little introduction, but it's not because it was here that archaeologists discovered an extraordinary late Roman cemetery, burial dating, let's say, to the 4th century AD in the latter stages of Roman London's story. And that is what we're exploring today. We're exploring the fall of Roman London. What has archaeology revealed about the end of Londinium? Well, we're delving into all of that today in detail with Dr Dominic Perring, emeritus professor from University College London and one of the leading experts on the topic. Let's go.

• 2:00Tristan Hughes?

  London was originally a Roman city. For more than 300 years, it was the administrative and economic centre of Roman Britain, of Britannia. At its height, Roman London had an estimated population of around 30,000. And you can still see the remains of some of these Roman buildings beneath the city of London today. But by the beginning of the 5th century, London had become little more than a ghost town. So what caused this city's decline? How did London transform during the later decades and centuries of Roman Britain? What is the archaeology revealing? This is the story of the fall of Roman London with our guest, Dr Dominic Perry.

• 2:52Tristan Hughes?

  Dom, you've been on the podcast twice before, also about different parts of Roman London's story. It's wonderful to have you back.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  And it's lovely to be here, always my pleasure.

• 3:00Tristan Hughes?

  I guess we do this in the past, but it's always important, I feel, with Roman London, which is the first of all, is to highlight the great wealth of archaeology that survives right beneath our feet in London for its Roman story.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  People have been looking into the past of Roman London, digging holes into it for centuries. And we've been studying it for almost longer than it was lived in. And the city nowadays, all its big skyscrapers, generates hundreds of detailed excavations. The volume of information is incredible, the wealth of data.

• 3:26Tristan Hughes?

  And what is it about the soil of London that allows so much extraordinary archaeology to survive?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Well, in part, it's simply, having been occupied for 2,000 years, ground levels rise, rather like a tell in the Middle East. It's got 11 metres or so of stratigraphy, and stratigraphy is great for archaeology. But also the River Thames creates these rather splendid anaerobic waterlogged conditions. So when you get close to the waterfront, you've got excellent timber survival. And that lets us look into all sorts of things that don't necessarily survive elsewhere.

• 3:58Tristan Hughes?

  Beautiful things like tablets as well, with records of business transactions from thousands of years.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  London's writing tablets from the Bloomberg HQ are a stunning resource, very much to the earlier period, but the waterfronts themselves, just the timbers that get brought in. And the great thing about London's archaeology is each of those timbers has a felling date. And dendrochronology gives us precise dates for when bits of London were built, when it was changed. And also gives us gaps, and the gaps are sometimes just as interesting as the bits we have.

• 4:27Tristan Hughes?

  So with the story of later Roman London, can we also at times also pinpoint certain events and certain building changes?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  We can, up until the fourth century, when we start to see less coming in in terms of timber supply. And that in itself is an interesting question, why is less timber coming in? But up until the fourth century, there's pretty good dendrochronology for most major phases of urban change.

• 4:49Tristan Hughes?

  And a bit of background to London's story. So it's founded very close to or in line with the actual Roman conquest of southern Britain with Emperor Claudius?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yes, there's debate about that amongst professional circles. I'm very much an AD forty-three chap, and I think that there is a military presence here contemporary with the conquest. But the evidence for that is not conclusive, it's indicative. And others would see it perhaps as being a few years later, but it's in those forties AD, somewhere between forty-three and fifty for sure.

• 5:17Tristan Hughes?

  And it experiences quite a rapid rise, if I'm not mistaken.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  It does, and it's very early on, it's a major hub for introducing the supplies that the advancing troops need. It gains administrative roles relatively early. We know the procurator in charge of the emperor's property and supplying the troops. Financial interests, we know the procurator is based here by the Neronian period. And of course, when Boudicca and her rebels sweep through the southeast, it's one of the targets of that rebellion. And at that time, London is already a pretty substantial site.

• 5:51Tristan Hughes?

  But also it revives pretty quickly after that. There seems to be something really resilient about Roman London too.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, that resilience is from the top down, I think. It's to do with the agents of Rome needing to quell the rebellion, needing to re-establish control of the province. And London is the obvious focal point for them to both bring in the support mechanisms, to bring in the supplies. So they enhance and rebuild the waterfront. And there's a lot of construction activity, not immediately after the revolt, but a year or two afterwards. And it gets busy again pretty quickly.

• 6:27Tristan Hughes?

  Grows and grows and grows. And we were discussing where to kind of begin our chat on the fall of Roman London before recording. And we decided on the mid third century AD. So can you give us a sense of what Roman London looks like at this time and how prominent, how big and prosperous this city has become?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  London has become a walled city in probably early third century, probably Caracalla, a member of the Severan dynasty who took control of the Roman Empire when his father died in York. And so I think probably the town was early third century. And there is a busy period of building in London at around that date. So London is quite prosperous. Things like the Temple of Mithras is coming in a few decades later on. So we have a wealthy centre and probably by then a formal capital. Caracalla or Severus before him have divided Britain up into two halves, as two provinces. One is made capital at York and the other, Britannia Superior, is almost certainly has its capital at London. So we think this is

• 7:27Speaker 02

  a major period of investment in the architecture of public munificence and power.

• 7:33Tristan Hughes?

  Do we know much about the population itself at that time in the beginning of the third century?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  London has shrunk since its height. The the peak period for London's population is probably the late first, early second century.

• 7:43Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, okay, right.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Which is when it is most involved in the supply, the making and mending that's needed by the people based here. London may have gone through a plague event in the second century. I think the odds of that having happened to pretty strong Antonine plague. But what we do know is that whether it was the plague that caused it or not, the city is significantly contracting population. Not in size, people still occupy a larger area, but instead of lots of closely packed timber built and clay built structures, we've got rather larger townhouses, some built in stone, some still in timber. So there's a prosperous but genteel site rather than a busy throbbing heart of the province.

• 8:24Tristan Hughes?

  But with the prosperity of London at that time, should that be centred around the harbour area, around the maritime routes? Because if I'm thinking of the early third century with the Severans, you know, this is an empire stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia, to modern day Iraq.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  We have lots of evidence for early third century waterfront rebuilding in London, and not quite as grand as the earliest waterfronts, but still busy. And a lot of that waterfront rebuilding can be dated quite closely, and it does look as if, some of it may just have been actually associated with Codus Albinus, a usurper before the Severan dynasty. But when the Severans regained control of Britain, they start rebuilding the waterfront, and then the Severans are campaigning in York, in Caledonia through York. And that also seems to be a period of waterfront renewal. So yes, London's waterfront is busy and important into the middle of that century, the middle third century.

• 9:15Tristan Hughes?

  Can you also give us a bit more sense of the layout of Roman London at that time? So should we just be thinking north of the river? I mean, how big an area are we thinking?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  The, the square mile, the city of London is still the main part of the Roman settlement. This is where the forum is, where the public baths are, other major buildings. But south of the river, there is an enormously important suburban settlement which has urban characteristics in Southwark. It's just as complicated archaeology, based on the islands that are now beneath Borough High Street, Borough Market, that sort of area.

• 9:47Tristan Hughes?

  And there's a bridge, there's a main, the London Bridge of today, there was a London Bridge of Roman times.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  And London Bridge is key. It is London Bridge that makes London the site it is. The combination of having a tidal river so the ships can come up river, and a bridge that crosses this river, which is a major barrier, is what brings all the road network, you know, Rome's famous for its Roman roads. And whilst they all go to Rome, most of those going to Rome go through London, sorry, from Britain, most of those from Britain go through London on their way to Rome.

• 10:17Tristan Hughes?

  Got Watling Street and Stain Street, all of those ones kind of end up in that area. And probably you just mentioned amphitheatre, we know where that was beneath Guildhall.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Guildhall Yard, and that's, you can visit that in the Guildhall Art Gallery in the basement. Lovely bit of presentation there.

• 10:32Tristan Hughes?

  Theatre.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  I think there must have been one, just chatting about that earlier on. I think there must have been one. We don't quite know where it is, although I've got to guess, but.

• 10:40Tristan Hughes?

  And big bathhouses on the riverfront?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Several bathhouses. We've got a major bathhouse, I think. People used to think it was the governor's palace. But I think some of the more recent work there continues to build up evidence it's more likely to be a bathhouse. Not proven, but we've got other bathhouses. There's some quite recent work going on that shows that there are four, five bathhouses in Roman London.

• 11:01Tristan Hughes?

  And being a port town, and I know we'll probably revisit this later as we explore this later in London's story as well, but I also want to ask it here. Do we know much about the population makeup at that time? Or should we be thinking largely Romans or largely immigrants or largely local Britons?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  From all over. I think that the native British component of the population was not substantial. We've got ancient DNA, isotopic analysis, we've got epigraphy through the tombstones. We've got the the letters you talked about from the Bloomberg with documented names and identities. And most of that suggests that we've just got a very cosmopolitan place. Probably dominated by both the administrative infrastructure, partly military, but also administrative. And even more so by the support mechanisms that sit beneath it, in particular the merchants, the traders, the importers, the exporters, the shippers and their guilds we know are present here in London as well. So that brings in people from all over and just as with Hadrian's Wall, where we know of people from all over the Roman world.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  London is the same. North Africa, Eastern Mediterranean. Lots from Gaul, quite a few from the Germanies. And as you get into later Roman London, we've even got ADNA, which suggests the presence of Asians. We've got some possible Chinese people in London in the Roman period.

• 12:17Tristan Hughes?

  Wow. That certainly whets the appetite for when we get to that point in the chat today, Dom. But I feel we've now nicely kind of created an image of what Roman London looks like in the beginning of the third century. When we get to the mid third century, I mean elsewhere, it's called the third century crisis. But it also feels like this is a big turning point in London's story as well. What happens in the mid third century?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Very much so. I've talked about that there might be a second century contraction, perhaps associated with plague events. There is also a third century contraction, less well defined. The reasons for it partly tied up with the economic changes of of what's called the crisis, and not everyone agrees with the term. There's also another plague event that hits their own world of that time, the plague of Cyprian. And we've then got changes going on in the urban landscape, of which the really significant one is the change to the waterfront. And just as we've been talking about how important the waterfront was in the earlier city, there's an exercise in crudely hacking back the timber revetments that formed the keys, and making what looks more like a bank, perhaps even a bank and

• 13:20Speaker 02

  ditch, but certainly destroying the key sides as useful key sides and perhaps defensive in nature. Dating imprecise because we're talking about damage to something rather than something we can date from its own internal evidence, but that does look broadly co-terminus. We're talking about 250s, that sort of period.

• 13:38Tristan Hughes?

  So their main, well, the main source of maritime ships coming to London, you know, the main area that they would go to and congregate and bring trade into Roman London, they get rid of that. I mean, why?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  They get rid of most of it, not necessarily all of it, because we've not dug every little bit of that waterfront. And I suspect that probably a few locations for beach landings were kept. But the bulk of it has gone. That is in part because of how unusual the port was in the earlier periods. You've got major campaign activities requiring very significant levels of shipment of goods. You've got a large urban population. As you get into that later period, there is less need for that, as it were. But also, the carving back of the waterfront is a positive act. Somebody's done it. It's not simply letting it go to decay and being abandoned. It's not neglect. It is positively changing its use. And the

• 14:31Speaker 02

  idea of a defensive feature there obviously begins to make us worry about the security on the seas at this time. We've got the rise of piracy as an issue in the third century. It's much debated amongst historians and archaeologists how much this is a lament of the written sources or something that's really happening. But we know about the Saxon shore being developed with its forts in late antiquity. So there is a sense that something major is changing, and it might have been involving some level of threat or anticipated threat.

• 15:02Tristan Hughes?

  Because also you get that almost division of the Roman Empire at that time, don't you? Where little bits are kind of taken away Zenobia in the east, the Gallic Empire as well. Could that be reason?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  The Gallic Empire is very material. And of course, the Gallic Empire both changes the political structures that apply to London, because London falls within its remit, but also it's interrupting access to the Mediterranean world as a whole. So the North West provinces have been separated from the Roman Empire. And some of that may well indeed be in response to the problems of security, particularly on the Rhine, but throughout the North Sea and that part of the world. So there's a sort of sense in which that the breakup of Rome at that time is as local arrangements are coming to the fore in trying to deal with the political and security situation. And also as Rome central is worrying about other things, as it were.

• 15:54Tristan Hughes?

  Does it almost feel that, as you say, it's an evident deliberate decision that that archaeology is happening there with the harbors and more focus on defences? But do you think then, if there was perhaps a bit of a, there was less trade coming from the Mediterranean to London at that time, do you think it was still a big sacrifice to do to kind of change it from commercial harbour front activities to having more defensive stuff?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  The shift from harbour to defended site is key. And of course, it's going in two directions. One of them is simply, do you need to marshal supplies through a big hub? Do you need everything to come into London's port? Or can you start to arrange for more local supplies? So we've got troops stationed in the northern parts of the province. Perhaps they are better supplied through South Shields, through arrangements along the coast. So London is perhaps no longer as essential as a supply hub. And the same goes the other way. What you're extracting from the province can be taken out in different ways. But also just, yeah, centralising as opposed to localising. And I think London becomes less vital as a place for the marshalling of goods.

• 17:02Tristan Hughes?

  But as this third century goes on, you've had that division of the Roman Empire with the Gallic Empire in the North West, Zenobia in the East, then Aurelian comes along, defeats them and reunites the Roman Empire under one figure again. As this is all going on, how does London fare as the decades pass in the third century?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  It actually does quite well in the late third century. And one of the features of this is exactly that, when the Gallic Empire is reabsorbed by Rome Central, as it were, by Rome itself, and Aurelian is the emperor largely responsible for that. It's a fairly peaceful exercise, actually. Aurelian, who we know of course from Rome as Aurelian Walls, is perhaps, or perhaps Probus later on, but at that rough time, London's waterfront, which had previously been a rather crude bank and ditch arrangement, I say ditch, it's the River Thames really, but a fairly crude arrangement, is then enhanced by the creation of a riverfront wall.

• 17:55Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  The walls around London that were put there in the early third century, probably by Caracalla, fairly certainly Severn, those walls don't enclose the waterfront because the waterfront's important and you want access to it and you want a long set of keys. But in the late third century, the waterfront, having diminished in importance, you can then wall along that facade, as it were, the riverfront side of it too. And at that date, then the port of London is clearly not functioning in quite the way it used to.

• 18:23Tristan Hughes?

  But physically, getting a big wall, a riverside wall there, doesn't that sever Roman London from the River Thames?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  It does. I think, as I said, we probably have a select number of water gates left. There are clues from the later distribution of seals that people have put on on goods that were exempt from port taxes, which get knocked off and end up on the foreshore. And they do suggest that some of the places that became the first ports of medieval London were also used as water gates and places where beaches could be used for shipping. But we're talking much smaller scale, much more focused and high status prestige goods rather than large scale supplies.

• 19:04Tristan Hughes?

  So how significant would you say that these moments are, you know, the building of more defences and then ultimately the building of a riverside wall?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  In almost

• 19:14Tristan Hughes?

  Like, setting the foundations, laying the base for an ultimate decline of Roman London.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I think, I think we have to go a little bit later in, in the cycle of what's going in London to, to call, to, to see that. I think that what's going on in the late third century is in a sense of revival. The building of the riverfront wall is attended by new arrivals of new kinds of supplies of ceramics, which suggest new networks of provisioning, things like Alice Holt pottery from the Alice Holt forests in Hampshire are being imported in, perhaps associated also with timber supplies at that date because there, there are forests in, in, in those areas and other supplies. So there's a, there's a rebalancing of the regional economy associated with London's, I would call it a revival in the late third century. And the cemeteries are getting busy as well at this date as well.

• 20:00Tristan Hughes?

  But more locally acquired goods coming into London, a more locally produced network.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  A more regional framework of supply, a more regional basis of the economy.

• 20:17Tristan Hughes?

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• 20:55Speaker 01

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• 21:02Speaker 04

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• 21:35Tristan Hughes?

  We must also talk about those later decades of the 3rd century, where you have, Simon Elliott's called him the Pirate King, but you have these breakaway Roman leaders in Britain. Can you tell us about London at that time and who these people are?

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Well, we've mentioned the fact that Frankish piracy and other forms of piracy may have been an issue in the mid 3rd century. And this is certainly seen to be an issue as you go into the later 3rd century. And we know that the Manapian Corusius, from North Gaul, Corusius is given command of the attempts to suppress pirates in the area. And there's various panegyrics and other documents which go into quite length. And he is accused of having taken for himself some of the booty he was recapturing from pirates, probably a device simply to push him down a bit because he was getting a bit too powerful. So he sets up a breakaway empire, as it were, sometimes referred to as the British Empire,

• 22:34Speaker 02

  or I think that probably is a modern construct as a term. But Corusius is succeeded by a chap called Electus. They're involved in additional building works along the Saxon shore, because we've got dendrochronology, timber dating, showing that there's building works at that time. And the craftsmen involved, the engineers involved in that exercise, were brought into London in the, and here I'm going to forget my exact date, let's say the 280s, 28 something, to build something, something quite big and chunky by what's now the Millennium Bridge in the foothills of St Paul's Cathedral. But there we go. But the dendrochronology of that is excellent. I suspect that what they're building is a palace complex.

• 23:15Tristan Hughes?

  Ah.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  And possibly that the foundations found there underneath the City of London Boys' School are probably the foundations of a temple structure that was never finished. So there's a building programme as the British Empire, the Corrusian and Electus episodes going on and using the same crafts because the building techniques are identical and the dates are the year after to the things that have been going along on the Saxon shore.

• 23:39Tristan Hughes?

  But that's interesting, like the two eighties, of course, you get the emergence of Diocletian and then the forming of the tetrarchy elsewhere in the Roman Empire. And they're defined by having their own great palaces at places throughout. Do you think Electus saw that and thought, oh, hang on, I'd like something similar in London?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  As we know from the coinage of the period, there's a very strong sense that people based in Britain saw themselves as partners in a Roman Empire where Augustus, the emperors in charge of different parts of the empire. And they wanted to see themselves as equals in that exercise. And so, yes, it would make enormous sense for them to have seen a palace complex in London to match the palace complex in Trier, to match what's going on in Milan, in Thessalonica. These are the big sites of late antiquity of the tetrarchy. And I'm sure that those ideas would have been inspirational in Britain at the time.

• 24:29Tristan Hughes?

  It doesn't end well for Electus, though, does it? He doesn't rule for very long.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  It doesn't. And we get Constantius, who is one of the official emperors, although calling them official is always a bit, you know, it's the ones who win are the ones who are official. But reconquered Britain. There's a detailed account of the reconquest and we have the splendid Arras medallion, which is the first visual representation of London.

• 24:54Tristan Hughes?

  No way.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:56Tristan Hughes?

  Can you tell us a bit about this coin? What is the Arras medallion?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  There's a series of special, they're not everyday use coins. These are bullion in beautiful medallion, big coin shape. And a whole horde of these containing various other quite important objects were found in Arras in northern Gaul, probably accumulated by someone who'd been part of the campaigns of reconquest of Britain. And this particular medallion shows Constantius arriving London and you see London on its knees.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  L O N is written at the base of the medallion, marking the city as the city. And you can see its turreted facade. It's all a stock image. I'm sure it's not an attempt to actually portray what was really here in London. But it is representing London as submitting to the light of Rome being restored.

• 25:52Tristan Hughes?

  That is the first ever depiction, image of London in history.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  That we're aware of, yeah.

• 25:58Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, and so London is brought back into the Roman fold. And it's certainly not on its last knees. It's certainly not on its knees by the end of the third century. So how should we be imagining it as we get into the beginning of the fourth?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  What we have, of course, is Constantine being declared emperor in York.

• 26:16Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  And returning to reunite the Roman Empire. The Tetrarch who we've been discussing, that Corrusus wished to be part of, was the idea of an empire which essentially had regional commands. There were emperors of east and west, there were junior emperors of east and west, and there was Corrusus and Electus over in Britain. But Constantine is a little bit impatient with the risks of such fragmentation of power and is quick to try and pull all the threads back together under his control. So Britain initially is probably going to be rather benefiting from the fact you've got an emperor based in York. But his interest is moving quickly across to consolidate power and control. He moves across to Trier and then he moves further east.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  And essentially he withdraws the need for more regional, local government structures back into a Rome centric and a Constantine centric system. And that probably contributes to a bit of a declining interest in London. So once we get into the fourth century, following Constantine's elevation, we get less in the way of agricultural activity going on in London.

• 27:25Tristan Hughes?

  Because the early fourth century and the fourth century is general. Outside of the walls of London, it's a bit of a booming time though, isn't it, for villages? But that's not showing in London.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  The countryside is doing well and there are different phases of that activity. And quite how much that's Constantine is another matter, I think. Quite a lot of that is later, some of it's earlier. But London itself doesn't seem to be a particularly strong beneficiary of Constantinian influence. We've got, I think the last dendrochronology dating from London comes from some refurbishments done to quite a handsome rear extension with mosaics in a house underneath the site now, one poultry next to a bank station. And again, I don't offhand remember the exact date of that, but I think I'm fairly sure that's Constantinian, but that that dendro is the last imported significant timber we see being used in London.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  I'm not saying there aren't later imports, but archaeologists haven't found them.

• 28:20Tristan Hughes?

  Did we hear anything, if it is a bit of a time of change for London at this time, do we have any names of any administrative figures or any people who were big in London at that time?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  There's a shortage of the level of documentation that we have in the earlier imperial period. We do not, I mean, we don't have a tacitus writing about what's going on. Our sources are more concerned with activities elsewhere in the empire. So we don't have a full list of chronology of who was in charge of Britannia inferior, Britannia superior. And more of the information we have comes from the war where we've got quite a lot of people being commemorated, but that's now part of a different province. So the division of Britain into smaller provinces, a process which had started as early as Caracalla, is continuing to shrink the political base of each site. But Britain is then brought back into a single command structure under a vicar. So you get a vicarius.

• 29:11Tristan Hughes?

  A vicar.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Vicarius. The term vicar, I mean, they are borrowing from the same source. So, and at that date, we do have some names and I'm going to struggle to remember them offhand. Where we're better off is we do know of some of the first church councils are drawing on people from the different bishops established in Britain. And we know of, I think it's Restitutus is the one who attends the Council of Ireland 314 AD. So that is Constantinian and fits with what's going on.

• 29:39Tristan Hughes?

  And Restitutus, is he based in London or is he based in a Christian community?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yes, London is, again, I've forgotten the Latin definition, but it's, we've got two references to what could be London. In the bishops who attended that council, but one of them is thought to be a misspelling for Lincoln. Although I'm not entirely sure. It's unlikely that London could have generated the need for two bishops, but you maybe Southwark is seen as a separate diocese, who knows? Unlikely, but we've definitely got these church figures beginning to appear on the scene because of course after Constantine Christianity is the on its way to becoming a religion of state.

• 30:15Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I hope you don't mind then if we look at religion now in Roman London, it feels appropriate then that we do start with Christianity. So do we know much about Christianity in Roman London at this time?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Yes and no. Archaeologically, Christianity is not particularly well attested in Britain. And that's partly when we get to what happens at the end of the fourth century. That it that the sites of of Christian worship are not perpetuated into later periods and therefore we don't have the the grander architecture that emerges. Early Christianity, the main practices of the early church can take place in the house. I mean, you you you have your Eucharist, your your meal in the dining room. You have your baptisms in the bathhouses and all of the nice houses have dining rooms and bathhouses. You don't need to consolidate those activities more centrally. But as Christianity becomes a religion of state, the control of of those practices becomes more important.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  So second and third century Christianity is probably present in Britain, but as a virtually invisible private practice. Fourth century Christianity, yes, we've now got a bishop. Do we also have Episcopal basilicas? The things that become cathedrals being built at this time? Possibly, I think is the answer to that. There is a a building of the mid fourth century dated by pottery to probably after AD three fifty that sneakily does look as if it could be a a basilical church. And that would be the Episcopal Church where the bishop would have been able to practise. And that would be more useful for the higher state level political acts of Christianity.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  The building itself, it was excavations not that far from the Tower of London, just up and across a bit, um, Holstor House. And there, it's a basilica. Various foundations have been found. It's associated with quite high status decorative work. We've got bits of marble, bits of window glass. Some of the finds from the site, a particular kind of tazza cup vessel, are often associated with ritual sites. It has an unusual coin profile. And there's lots of little hints that there's something slightly ritual about the building. But the main reason for believing it to be, I'm going to call it a cathedral, the term is not necessarily the best, the main reason

• 32:33Speaker 02

  for believing that is simply it's a large basilica built to time when other public buildings are being quarried for stone, they're not being used. If we go across to the forum, that falls out of use early in the fourth century.

• 32:47Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  And the forum basilica has roof collapse, it has some robbing of floors. We know it's still there in the late third century, but somewhere in the first half of the fourth century, probably the earlier decades of the fourth century, the forum basilica is largely demolished and abandoned.

• 33:03Tristan Hughes?

  So, and do you think that is a reflection of the change in administrative habits that's occurring in the Roman Empire at that time?

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yes, it's both, it's a changer in need of how the public life is performed. You don't need quite the same large public buildings, more power is being exercised through individual officers who are using their private properties, their villas, their mansions. So that's part of it. It's also that the forum itself was built as an engine for the storage and redistribution of goods. It relates in a sense back to what's going on at the port. If the port is no longer needed in quite the same way, the forum is certainly over-provided with storage facilities. And that over-provision can take a while to feed through into people saying, well, actually, let's borrow some stone from this and rebuild. So there is a question mark as to why a basilica

• 33:51Speaker 02

  is being built in the mid to late fourth century, when these sorts of buildings have been going out of use earlier in the fourth century. And you're trying to think, well, what's the special use that's coming in at this particular date and that would merit high status decoration? So, could it be a granary? Nice golden ears and window glass. So the feeling is it could be, but it but it's entirely speculative in the sense we've got no epigraphy, we've got no finds for sight which pin it down exactly.

• 34:15Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, and of course, given that Christianity is bigger in the East at that time anyway, and much less in the West, I mean, is is there, were you frowning a little bit there?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Yes, I am frowning. I mean, we see the evidence of it more clearly, as I've said, where it carries on. And when you've got fifth century and the Eastern Mediterranean, some of its best architecture dates, the fifth and sixth centuries, these complexes become decorated with lovely mosaics and we see them. But that's because they're later, just not by a lot, but a bit. Yes, we've got more documentary evidence for what's going on in Christianity in the East. But that's because we've got more documentary evidence for what's going in the East, full stop. You know, we don't have the source material from Roman Britain. So, yes, it may well be that there is a residual paganism. Yes, it may well be that there is a lot more going on in Britain that we don't know about.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  But I think it's premature to say that Christianity isn't a significant issue, particularly in towns like London. Because London still, despite shrinking, despite changing in character and shrinking population rather than area. Despite those changes in character, it's still an important, important, important place for important people. And the vicar of Britain we get in the fourth century is here alongside other departments of state. They're described in the Notitia of the Guitatum. Admittedly a later source, but it just doesn't bother to cross out the British bits of it. So it still describes the treasury here. It describes various commands and secretaries and administrators and and others.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  And London is almost certainly continuing to be home to high status administrators. Many of whom have forging careers which are not just based in Britain, and many of whom we know are Christian. They have lives in the Christian world as Christian is on its way to becoming the religion of state. I'm going to jump around a bit chronologically here, because I know you're going to want to talk to me about Magnus Maximus later on, I'm sure. But Magnus Maximus is a general in Britain who becomes a usurper and takes control of his forces to become an emperor. Trying to repeat the Corrus's exercise, as it were. And in three eight three, he heads off to the continent to force his claim for power.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  But he writes, I think to a pope, well, I haven't actually checked the primary source in detail. But he writes that he has taken baptism just before he goes off to do these things. And this is the sort of person who goes straight from baptism to the imperial throne. And he was in Britain at that time and likely to be using sites such as London as the main seats of power. We've got other sorts of references to other people we know passing through Britain, who are, again, shifting a little bit later in time. We've got a bishop in Constantinople in the early fifth century, who'd previously been a vicar of Britain. So he's a bishop, so one suspects his Christianity is quite a strong part of his makeup. And we've got direct evidence, we've now got several Cairo, these little

• 37:12Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  The Greek, I and Ro from the first letters of Christ's name.

• 37:16Tristan Hughes?

  Famous symbol, yes, yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  And we've got pottery was found in Brentford in the nineteen seventies and was put in a box with other finds. And only about five years ago were a group of volunteers going back to these boxes and cleaning them up and tidying them up as part of the London Archaeological Archive system, and spotted that there was one of these original early scratched Cairo's on this shard of pottery from Brentford. Recent excavations in Suback produced another, and for a long time we've known of one from Coptole Avenue on a pewter vessel. So there's a variety of bits and pieces that tell us there are Christians here, which is what we expect. So I think, I mean, I'll go on a limb here. Britain may not have adopted Christianity in quite as vigorous a fashion as other parts of the Roman world.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  But I do think London would have been essentially, administratively at any rate, a Christian city.

• 38:04Tristan Hughes?

  Wow. I guess slightly related to that then is shall we quickly talk about the cemeteries? Because outside the walls, you have lots of cemeteries, don't you, like from Spitalfields and elsewhere? And I'm presuming that quite a few of the skeletons, the bodies, do they date to this time, to this later period in Roman London's story?

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Yes, most of our cemetery evidence comes from the later period, simply because there's a broad shift towards inhumation from cremation.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Early burials, I mean, there's always cremation and there's always infamation. It's not all one and all the other. But the favoured method of dealing with with rich people's burial was to cremate them in the early Roman period. And in the late Roman period, it is to bury them. And that's not just about Christianity, that a whole series of different belief systems also begin to see bodily resurrection as part of the of the suite of things that you might expect. So rather than having your soul liberated by the cleansing fire, your body can physically carry you into the next world by being buried in an appropriate fashion. So our cemeteries, we think about Roman London is that when you dig it as an archaeologist, the houses are all early and the dead people are all late. And that's because the city has shrunk, so therefore more early houses.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  But the burial grounds have grown because burying dead people for resurrection, you've got to lay them out in rows, you've got to worry about not too much intercutting, although there is intercutting. So there's a much greater survival of that evidence in the late period.

• 39:26Tristan Hughes?

  And what are we learning from these burials about the people? I've got the the Lady of Spitalfield is a name that comes up straight away, isn't it?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  And and there's wealth displayed in the cemeteries. And there's a lot of excellent work being done by Rebecca Redfern and other colleagues on the dead of that period. They're doing so much research and publishing so well that I'm bound to be a little bit behind the curve on some of the things that they're up to. But again, this is revering back to things like the isotope analysis to look at where people grew up and through the enamel in their teeth. And also the ancient DNA analysis that we can now get some information from. And this reverts back to what I was saying about having such a cosmopolitan population. Of course, one of the things that I know Rebecca Redfern is working on right now is the incredible bias towards male burials in some of the earlier parts of these cemeteries. This is more a feature of the third century than the fourth century.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  But those burial grounds are something like four men to every woman are found in these cemeteries.

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• 41:46Speaker 05

  Well, let's move on towards the latter half of the 4th century then. So London is still an important place at this time. You've got the key important officials.

• 41:54Tristan Hughes?

  As you say there, a Christian city as well. So extraordinary story of London in the 4th century. But if we get to that figure of Magnus, Maximus, and London in the later 4th century, do you start to see a transformation once again in its architecture at that time?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Yes, we do. There are cycles, and this is why I hate the term decline. London does decline, but then it revives, then it declines, then it revives.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Yes, it's not a straight line, is it?

• 42:16Speaker 02

  It's not linear, and that's very important to get across. So for instance, we've got in the middle of the 4th century, a period of renewal of sorts. Not majorly, not massive new population, but this is when, for instance, they put the bastions on the city wall. Now, those bastions are not, I mean, they have a defensive purpose, but as with the earlier city walls, it's as much about status and it's as much about the state saying, we still love you, we still care, we're still investing. Simon Esmond Cleary has studied the sorts of defences in Roman Gaul very closely and comes up with the close relationship between places that are important to the administration and the provision of defences.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  So the addition of bastions to London's Wall fits with what I've just been saying about the Noticia Dignitatem and the administrators being based here. And those bastions are dated to the, I'm going to guess, three sixties, it could be a little bit earlier, it could be a little bit later. There's coin dating beneath one of them showing it certainly isn't there before the three fifties.

• 43:16Tristan Hughes?

  They're semi-circular, right?

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yes. And they add them to select locations on the city wall, primarily those that are facing on to hard ground, so they don't tend to bother so much with the soggy stuff around Mortgate or the riverfront or the fleet. But in particular, that stretch on the east side of the wall where the Tower of London is now and up from there.

• 43:35Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, because you can see an example in the Barbican Gardens today, can't you, near there?

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Those are later.

• 43:39Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, okay.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  There are medieval additions to the line of bastions. There are Roman bastions, which are the solid ones, I'm oversimplifying here, but most of the solid ones are shown to be Roman in date, and most of the hollow ones have been shown to be medieval in date.

• 43:53Tristan Hughes?

  There you go. Thank you for correcting me.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  So not all, but the solid bastions, little platforms perhaps for artillery, but as I say, more about defining this as a restored site. And that neatly ties in with both what I've been saying about the administrators and officials in the Noticia Dignitatem and what's happening in Gaul. But it also ties in with, for instance, our burial evidence, you've been talking about cemeteries. We've got a fascinating burial in the eastern cemetery from Mansell Street, where someone of, a male of importance, has been buried with one of these chingulum, these belt and buckle sets, which were part of the official insignia of being important, be it in the military or in the administration. And these

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Crossbow brooches and belts with their chipped carving are rare and important finds, usually thought to be much later, but from this one, I believe that the a a yet to be published carbon fourteen dating on it, which actually I do refer to my books, so it's not, it has been published, but but badly by me rather than by the people who are doing the real work. But that that that date places it again in that three sixties sort of period. Bastions, perhaps that three sixties sort of period. So we've got rich and important people in the cemeteries. We've got bastions. We've got a noticia. We also have a known historical interlude. I always get into trouble for making things a bit too closely related to history. But the so called barbarian conspiracy.

• 45:18Tristan Hughes?

  I was about to ask you about the barbarian conspiracy. Three, six, three, about that time.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yep, three, six, three. Now, rather than say it's because we're afraid of barbarians. But if we do say that imperial interest in Britain is raised by the fact that they've had to send over a smallish but significant detachment of forces under Count Theodosius, who arrives, immediately starts settling some of the problems in the southeast. And he over winters in London before then going on and and sorting things out in the in the rest of the province. And the documentation of his activities in Britain refer to the restoration of cities and and defences. So not so much because the barbarians are at the gate anymore, but because empire is making it clear to the people i- in London and elsewhere that it's back in business, that it's regained control.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  And this is what a a proper city should have is is those bastions make it a a better marked, better defended, better, more prestigious site. So the three sixties carry that kind of of of going on. There may be a different historical cause for those bastions. I'm not going to pin all of my money to the barbarian conspiracy. I was taught by a first class archaeologist called Richard Reese. And Richard has written very important papers explaining how explaining everything as having been caused by the barbarian conspiracy is an archaeological fallacy and should be avoided.

• 46:36Tristan Hughes?

  Got this fantasized idea of Franks and Saxons and Frizzy in their boats coming up the Thames. And at the same time, you've got Scots and Picts outside the walls in a concerted attack trying to level London to the ground. That leave that to historical fiction.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Nasty things went on quite often in the Roman world, and I think one should expect them to. Rome was not in the business just to be nice to people. Rome was in the business to tax and control, to govern. So it it made enemies along the way and and. Both people outside the borders but within the borders could could be quite ready to rebel and revolt and whatever. And we we underestimate, you know, we go back to Boudicca earlier on. But those things don't stop. It's not as if Britain has been made. I mean, it has high points. There are peaceful periods when Britain's doing quite well and but it's not the happy place that people sometimes think it might have been. So rebellion, yes, not necessarily that particular one. Well, relating to this, we've got some quite nice bits of architecture domestically.

• 47:33Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, let's explore that. Let's explore that architecture.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Not in detail, but just for instance, there's a very handsome mosaic found in Broad Street, I think, with Bacchus on his leopard in the in the middle, Polycro, and that is stylistically part of what's called the Corinian Salty School, which we think is a late fourth century school. There's some comparable mosaics, probably by the same mosaics, which are coined dated after eighty three fifty.

• 47:57Tristan Hughes?

  Corinian, did you say? And is that elsewhere in Britain?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Yes, eh, eh, eh, west country. And but London being London, it's it's perhaps got the palatial establishments of important people from other parts of Britain. This is the sort of person who might have brought in a mosaics mosaicsist, I can say it, with him. So but but but one of our better, more bigger, more handsome mosaics is is is late fourth century. We've got some of these townhouses have little towers added to them. I say little, quite chunky towers, which were probably several stories. So the architect is looking different. So there's an elite architecture in in the fourth century. And that is, again, perhaps of this three fifty's, three sixty's, and potentially into the three seventy's sort of period.

• 48:40Tristan Hughes?

  Getting really close to the end of Roman Britain and still, like, it's really interesting with the archaeology and also showing that there is an official Roman investment in Britain, even at this time, and and places like London. So what happens over the next few centuries when you have figures like Magnus Maximus emerging?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  The key changes I would suggest occurring in the three eighties. And this is not just going off to historical sources and going, oh, we've got this big event with Magnus Maximus, which everyone talks about, and the Welsh talk about too. Considerable detail, but they but not just that that we have this important historical event that people have written about and bead talks about and so on, but actually the archaeology of London is pointing to the three eighties as being significant. And it's significant because of of what's going on at excavation sites and in particular the excavations at One Poultry, that's the site next to Bank Station, Tube Station. Also, though, in Southwark during the works on the Thames Link. And in these two areas, we have the main roads that are going towards the town centre.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  And those main roads, both the one in One Poultry is now essentially the that of Cheap Side, but it becomes Oxford Street. It's our Great West Road. It's what ties London to places west, be it Sultister, be it Roxeter, be it St Albans, it's Watling Street and all the rest. That's a very major roadway. And people are digging holes into the road to extract gravel. Now, they're extracting gravel for a purpose, so it's not as if nobody's around, but the dating for that is is that that sort of this coin dating up until the three sixties, three seventies, we don't have the later issues. Now, although coins be getting short of supply in later Roman London, there are still coins

• 50:25Speaker 02

  around until the end of fourth century, they're not present. The later types of of issues are not there, but are found in in later deposits in in those broader areas. So that gravel quarrying is going on probably in the three eighties, going on in that sort of period. At the same time, the houses next to the street, on the north side of that street, look to be abandoned. Now, abandonment horizons are very difficult, but you end up with slightly different finds assemblages from occupation horizons. When you live in a house, you sweep the floor, you keep it clean, you build a new floor. Some finds get introduced with that, but they are the very eroded bits of rubbish that might get introduced in a new floor.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Whereas the very latest surfaces in those houses, underneath demolition debris, include far more in the terms of bits of jewellery, bits of coin, there's a stale tabletop. There's a variety of things that you would not expect to end up normally in archaeological assemblages. And Hilary Call and others have done some very good work at identifying these as being somewhat different assemblages. So we've got changes on the north side of the street. We've got the street itself having holes dug into it. And those holes aren't just, you've taken a bit of gravel. All right, next week, the street's back in use. Once you've created an enormous soft filled pothole in that street, you are really damaging the ability to move ox-drawn carts and goods across it.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  And as I say, we've got similar sorts of evidence, not quite so well dated, but similar sorts of evidence coming out from Thameslink work along Barrow High Street in Southwark. The road to London Bridge, I mean, they don't get more important in terms of route accesses than those two roads. On the south side of that same street, an early fourth century building had been given a large conduit. And that large brick lined conduit was part of managing some water that came down from springs in the Gresham Street area near Guildhall. And those springs had been arid through in underground conduits all the way through from AD forty eight all the way down into the fourth century. That conduit ends up with rubbish in it and a decapitated skeleton

• 52:34Speaker 02

  of, again, that broad dating into the three eighties around there. Not precise, but certainly not three nineties, four hundreds, and certainly later than the three fifties sort of thing. So focusing in on things going on in and around the three eighties. I think those are very important changes to London at that time.

• 52:52Tristan Hughes?

  Very mysterious as well, but yes, if you're not looking after the roads, then that that does hint at something quite big.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  And this is where one says, the changes we've seen going on in London in earlier periods have been this progressive diminution of the importance of London as a place for the shipping of goods. Port, gone. Forum, gone. Different dates, but progressive. Roads, you're gone. And at that stage, we're also beginning to see local coin supply into three eighties and three nineties diminishing. That we're not seeing the import of fresh coinage into Britain. It's enormous problems for the dating of what's going on. But the very fact of it is important, that the coinage is in not such ready supply. In earlier Roman London, in periods when there had been shortage of small change,

• 53:42Speaker 02

  we find local manufacture. People start forging, they're called forgeries, but they're making very low value coinage, so it's more about just lubricating small scale exchanges. The cash economy needs it, so people, officials probably, but not from an official mint, generate sufficient coinage to keep things going. So if you have to pay your taxes, you come into and out of town, you can. Payment can be made in cash. And that reduction in coin supply is not accompanied by an increase in alternative mechanisms enabling those cash transactions. So that again would suggest that something significant is changing. And this is all, I say all to do, I would argue that these

• 54:22Speaker 02

  are all features of this cyclical move towards an economy that doesn't need these things. But that is in turn is because of potentially a shrinking in the role of London for serving the rest of Britain, and then its horizons draw closer. And that's why a date in the three eighties gets quite exciting, because of course Magnus Maximus was heavily criticised in later times for being responsible for having withdrawn the flower of Britain's youth, for having withdrawn the troops, because he, as usurpers have done before him, heads off to the continent to make his claim for power stick.

• 55:06Tristan Hughes?

  So does it almost feel that this is almost a point of no return after this? There's no revival after the three eighties. I mean, how do we get from here to ultimately London disappearing the decline when the Romans leave Britain?

• 55:18Speaker 02

  It's not as if everything is drawn to an immediate full stop. A diminution isn't an end, and we still see activity going on in properties in London to circa four hundred. Once we get into the fifth century, we are running out of material culture to play with. We do not have the coinage, we do not have the ceramics. And it is disputed amongst archaeologists how early in the first half of the fifth century it ceases to be a place of importance, a place at all. I find, yes, we've got a coin hoard at Billingsgate Bath House. Yes, we've got some coins of Arcadius and Honorius from the Tower of London. So into the very first years, the fifth century possibly. But as you get into the later fifth century, we do find things

• 56:03Speaker 02

  of that date, but not in the city of London. We find them in the areas around London. We've got Clipsilica in Southwark. We've got a coin hoard in the old cemetery at Spitalfields to the north of the town. We've got some individual finds along the fleet near Cripplegate. But within the city, virtually nothing. All that we can positively pin down in the city is a fairly significantly later, four fifty plus brooch at Billingsgate. So I see little evidence that the houses in fifth century London are still being occupied. And I would go back to the events of the three eighties and then the significant diminution of presence,

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Roman presence in Britain, as the empire was too busy with matters elsewhere.

• 56:49Tristan Hughes?

  When Rome goes, London goes as well. It doesn't have to live in.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  And the process of that isn't just about London. It's about the places that London is sort of in the orbit of. Friehe ceases to be a major capital city from circa three nine five. Mints are shifted to Aal. So Roman emperors are no longer seeing the northwest provinces as critical to their hold on power. They are no longer basing themselves in those locations. They're no longer winning prestige by campaigns in those areas. Stilicho may have sent over some support into Britain in the last decade, but everything then, our full stop from a historical point of view, is of course, events of three, of four oh six to four oh nine. And those events are historically argued over in detail, but are

• 57:34Speaker 02

  pretty clear in their broad outline. And their broad outline is we have another series of usurpings in the four oh six, almost Marcus, Gracian and Constantine the third. That's right. And they are British based. They are, again, in this business of saying, we're not being looked after by Rome Central. We've got problems on the Rhine. We know that there are. Barbarian incursions occurring elsewhere at this date and they are dealing with a dissatisfied army. The failure of coin supply is attached to a disinterest of Rome with what's going on in its remote province. They're too busy. And so people get upset and the troops in

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Britain find it appropriate to back a local commander in a bid for power. And Constantine the Third is another of these leaders who ends up withdrawing troops from Britain in order to fight campaigns in Gaul. And it's question mark how many troops are actually left in Britain. There's a difference, of course, between those who are mobile, the troops that can actually go around and fight campaigns, and those who are manning forts and manning frontiers and who are the limitarania, who are permanently based, have local families, and they're probably not going anywhere. But the troops that you can actually put on a horse and actually wreck havoc with in contesting for power, they are being withdrawn from Britain.

• 58:57Tristan Hughes?

  And Dominic, just to finish this off, I will read almost like the last bit of your book where you kind of summarize it up, but I think it's a great way to end it. And you say, London ceased to exist because Rome failed to maintain authority in Britain, and the city had no other evident reason for being. Its disappearance is unlikely to have been a matter of widespread regret. The rewards of economic growth gained from the Roman investment in productivity were unevenly distributed, offering few material benefits to the wider population. The Roman administration was otherwise harsh, and the demands of tax and rent unwelcome. Whilst the achievements of Roman London were many, they failed to carry far and advantaged only the privileged few.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  I stand by that very much. So as a P S, the failure of the city doesn't mean to say the landscape around fails in quite the same way. And perhaps somebody else can come along and talk to you all about the very exciting archaeology going on, just by Trafalgar Square, at St Martin in the Fields, where we've got things that do move into the fifth century and suggest continuity. And of course, that is near to where London Whitch is later established. So. The countryside is changing at a different pace to the city because London is different.

• 1:00:06Tristan Hughes?

  That is another story indeed. He said another chapter in the post-Roman London story. Dominic, this has been absolutely fascinating. Last but certainly not least, your book which covers it, it is called?

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Oh, London in the Roman World.

• 1:00:18Tristan Hughes?

  There you go. I could have read that myself.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Oxford University Press. I'm still quite pleased with it. I mean, there's things always that you go, oh, I could have added something there, but no, it says what I have to say.

• 1:00:27Tristan Hughes?

  It's a wonderful book which covers the whole Roman story of London, very up-to-date book as well. Dominic, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  My pleasure.

• 1:00:40Tristan Hughes?

  So here's a little bit of extra information that I found out from Dominic after we finished recording. Now, in the interview, Dominic mentioned the archaeology of the 380s and how the roads were in bad shape by that point. Well, he then told me, after we had to finish recording, how that probably implies that the bridges were also potentially crumbling at around this time. So you may well have had an ancient case of London bridges falling down in the last decades of the fourth century, when Roman London was breathing its final breath. Just a cool little extra fact to finish this episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get to your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour.

• 1:01:23Tristan Hughes?

  If you leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. And don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  And I'm Carter Roy and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.