Rodney Castleden - The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts

There were the South Downs Way and the Pilgrims Way in Sussex and Kent, the Ridgeway in Wiltshire, the Jurassic Way in Northamptonshire and the Icknield Way in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk.

In wetlands, wooden walkways were constructed. In the Somerset Levels, around 40 wooden tracks dating from 3000 BC onward were built so that peopleand livestock could cross from Wedmore to the islands of Byrtle, Westhay, and Meare, and from there to the Polden Hills. These tracks were up to 2 miles (3km) long.

Some roads that we think of as Roman roads were in fact Roman surfaces added on top of pre-existing Iron Age roads. These were roads that had been built by the indigenous people. A rescue dig next to a quarry 2 miles (3km) south of Shrewsbury gave an opportunity to test a long stretch of known Roman road. The road surface was first built in 200 BC after the land was cleared by burning. The route was used for driving cattle, and their hooves churned it into mud (the Irish Gaelic word for road is bothar , which means “cow-path.”)

To improve the road, a layer of elder brushwood 15 feet (4.5m) wide was laid down, with earth on top, followed by a layer of gravel and sand, then rivercobbles, which were compacted into this foundation. The result made an all-weather roadway about 16.5 feet (5m) wide. It was subsequently remade a little wider, and then remade again. The road’s surface was grooved by parallel ruts, showing that carts with a 6.5-foot (2m) wide wheelbase were being used. And all this happened before the Roman occupation, when a Roman road surface was added on top of the Iron Age road layers.

So, there were decent, dry, all-weather engineered roads in Britain—and Gaul—before the Romans arrived. Julius Caesardoes not describe these roads, but he does say that the Gallic charioteers preferred to fight off-road, which means that there must have been roads.

Even in Italy, there were roads before the Romans. The Via Gabina was mentioned as early as 500 BC and the Via Latina in 490 BC, when the Etruscan king had only just been overthrown and the Roman republic was scarcely underway, yet it seems the “Roman” road system already existed.

The son of Birra of the Eoganachta (in Munster, Ireland). Ruadan was a huge man, said to be 12 feet (3.6m) tall. He revived the son of a British king who was drowned when one of Brendan’s ships sank in the Shannon estuary.

His monks lived an easy life, thanks to the manufacture of a “lime juice” that was evidently a distilled liqor. The easy living and the lime juice attracted many monks from other houses. Under pressure from indignant abbots, Finnian told Ruadan to stop production and practice conventional subsistence farming.

Ruadan is said to have written several books, including Against King Diarmait, The Miraculous Tree , and The Wonderful Springs of Ireland . He died at Lothra; his headwas preserved in a silver reliquary until the sixteenth century. A bell that was found in a well at Lorrha was venerated as the bell he rang at Taraagainst King Diarmait.

Unfortunately the recipe for lime juice has not survived.

St. Samson was a sixth-century contemporary of Arthur. His father was a Demetian landowner and also an altrix , a companion of the king, who was at that time probably Agricola ( See Aircol ).

The idea that Samson should attend Illtud’s monastic school at Llantwit Major in Glamorgan, next to a ruined Roman villa, came from “a learned master in the far north,” probably Maucennus, Abbot of Whithorn, who is known to have visited Demetia at the right time. Samson was duly sent to St. Illtud’s. Illtud was responsible for educating many boys from aristocratic families, from the age of five until they were 16 or 17. He had great influence, in that he turned out men of the caliber and importance of St. Samson, Paul Aurelian, Gildas, Leonorus, St. David, and Maelgwn, King of Gwynedd.

By the age of 15 Samson was already very learned and at an unusually young age was ordained priestand deacon by Bishop Dubricius. This aroused the jealousy of Illtud’s nephews, who feared that he might succeed as the school’s head when Illtud retired and so deprive them of their inheritance. Perhaps because of this ill-feeling, Samson gained a transfer to another of Illtud’s monasteries, newly set up by Piro on Caldey Island, where his great scholarship and austerity astonished the Caldey monks.

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