Chapter III: Norwich in the Roman Period

WHEN Julius Cæsar invaded the island, B.C. 55, he found seventeen tribes of the ancient Britons or Celts, and the Iceni, inhabiting this eastern district. They belonged to a very old family of mankind, of whose beginning there is no record, and their end is still more remote in the future. They first planted this island and gave to the seas, rivers, lakes, and mountains names which are poems, imitating the pure voices of nature. Julius Cæsar only made an inroad into the country through a part of Kent, and gained no permanent hold of the island. The Rev. Scott F. Surtees, in a recent work, maintains (and some persons think successfully) that Julius Cæsar effected his first landing on the coast of Norfolk.

The Romans, under Claudius, landed on the eastern coast; and established his power in this part of the country. He built strongholds at Gorleston and camps at Caister, near the present site of Yarmouth, and on the opposite shore at Burgh Castle, where extensive ruins yet remain. Advancing up the arm of the sea, the Romans built a camp at Reedham; and sailing yet higher up they built camps on the southern side of Norwich, at Caistor and Tasburgh. Historians for a long time believed that Caistor was the _Venta Icenorum_ of the Romans, and preserved a very ancient tradition, that Norwich was built of Caistor stone out of the ruins of the Roman camp.

THE VENTA ICENORUM.

The late Hudson Gurney, Esq., collected ample materials for a full history of Norwich, but the only result of his researches seems to have been a letter to the late Dawson Turner, Esq., on the question of the _Venta Icenorum_ mentioned by the Roman writers, whether it was Elmham, as Blomefield supposed, or Caistor, as later historians believed, or Norwich, as most antiquarians now think. The question is of some importance as regards the antiquity of the city; for supposing it to have been the _Venta Icenorum_ of the Romans, with all the Roman roads radiating from it, the _Venta_ must have been a large place. Main roads were of course made for traffic and for means of communication, which imply the existence of many people living in settled habitations.

Main roads prove a certain advance in civilization; but the question is, whether the Romans really made all the roads attributed to them, in Norfolk and Suffolk, during the four hundred years of their occupation. Main roads might have radiated from Caistor originally, and afterwards might have been diverted to Norwich.

Mr. Hudson Gurney adduced some proofs that Norwich and not Caistor was the Venta Icenorum. He says—

“The first question to examine, on the view of Norwich, Norwich
Castle, and the Roman Camp at Caistor, may be, whether Norwich or
Caistor be the ‘Venta Icenorum’ of the Romans; Norwich standing on
the Wensum, and Caistor on the Taes, on the opposite side of what was
the great estuary.”

“To begin, then, with Camden. In his accounts of Norwich and of
Caistor he falls into the most extraordinary errors, confounding the
courses of the three rivers, the Wensum, the Taes, and the Yare. He
places Norwich upon the Yare instead of the Wensum, and gives the
Wensum the course of the Taes as ‘flowing from the south;’ and still
more strangely, as a king-at-arms, he attributes the erection of the
present Castle of Norwich to Hugh Bygod, ‘from the lions salient
carved in stone on it, which were the old arms of the Bygods on their
seals, though one of them bore a cross for his seal.’”

Mr. Hudson Gurney remarks on this error—

“Now the lions were two lions passant regardant, very rudely carved,
one on each side of the arch of the great entrance, and the Bygods,
whose original arms were or, a cross gules, never bore the lion till
assumed by Roger Bygod in the reign of Henry III., who took the arms
of his mother, the heiress of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, in
whose light he became Earl Marshal of England.”

Thus Camden is disposed of, and other authorities are quoted in the letter in favour of Norwich being the Venta Icenorum.

“Horsley, in his _Britannia Romani_, states that Venta was the
capital of the _Iceni_, situated on the Wentfar, and thence deriving
its name; and misled by and quoting Camden, he places Venta at
Caistor.”

“King, who, born in Norwich, might have been supposed to have been
better informed, in his _Munimenta Antiqua_ follows Camden, and turns
the Taes into the Wensum; and in his paper in the fourth volume of
the _Archæologia_, he pronounces the existing Castle of Norwich to be
‘the very tower which was erected about the time of King Canute.’”

Mr. Hudson Gurney, after setting aside Wilkins as an authority, proceeds—

“In 1834, I went over the Camp at Caistor and the country adjacent,
with Colonel Leake, who may be considered the greatest living
authority for the sites of ancient cities and fortified camps, and he
at once said that he was convinced that Norwich was the _Venta
Icenorum_, and capital of the Iceni, and Caistor the fortified camp
planted by the Romans over against it, on the other side of the
estuary, to bridle, as was their custom, a hostile population.”

After quoting a letter to the same effect, Mr. Hudson Gurney continues—

“In the Roman Itineraries you have three Ventas; Venta Bulgarum,
Winchester; Venta Silurum, Caer Went, in Monmouthshire; and Venta
Icenorum; and of these Ventas, the confusion between Winchester and
the Venta Icenorum seems to have been begun very early, both with the
chroniclers and romancers, probably from the one having retained the
rudiments of the name, and the other becoming known as Northwic.”

“Sir Francis Palgrave, in the researches which he has made for his
forthcoming history of ‘England under the Normans,’ being led to the
examination of all contemporary authors, in order to clear up points
which he found otherwise inexplicable, has referred me to the two
following passages, which would seem to prove that Norwich was the
Venta Icenorum almost beyond dispute.”

Here follow Latin quotations from the life of William the Conqueror by William of Poictiers and from Ordericus Vitalis under the year 1067.

William of Poictiers says:—

“Gwenta urbs est nobilis atque valens, cives ac finitimos habet
divites, infidos, et audaces: Danos in auxilium ceteris recipere
potest: a mari quod Anglos a Danis separat millia passuum
quatuor-decim distat. Hujus quoque urbis intra mœnia, munitionem
construxit, ibidem Gulielmum reliquit Osberni filium præcipuum in
exercito suo, et in vice sua interim toti regno Aquilonem versus
præesset.”

And Ordericus Vitalis states:—

“Intra mænia Gwentæ, opibus et munimine nobilis urbis, et mari
contiguæ, validem arcem construxit, ibique Gulielmum Osberni filium
in exercitu suo præcipuum reliquit, eumque vice sua toti Regno versus
Aquilonem præesse constituit.”

And Mr. Gurney proceeds:—

“Taking, then, Norwich for the Venta Icenorum of the Romans—called
Caer Guntum by the British, and Northwic by the Saxons and Danes—you
find the Capital of the Iceni, founded on the shoulder of the
promontory overlooking the Wensum, towards the great estuary, which
formed a natural stronghold for successive races of inhabitants.
Whilst the Romans, fixing their permanent camp at Caistor, on the
Taes, where that river joined the estuary, into which the Wensum, the
Taes, and the Yare, all discharged themselves, would command the
passage into the interior of the country; and taking Caistor for the
‘Ad Taum,’ you will find the distances sufficiently to agree with the
Roman Itineraries.”

“The Camp at Caistor contains an area of about thirty-five acres, and
the Roman station at Taesborough, on another promontory higher up
upon the stream, has an area of about twenty-four acres.”

Another strong point in favour of Norwich having been the Venta Icenorum is, that all the roads radiated from the city to all parts of East Anglia.

In tracing the rise and progress of the city we must remember that it was in the centre of a vast common, and that it was the nucleus of an agricultural community, at first without any trade or any kind of manufactures. It was merely a collection of huts or a fishing station, near the banks of a river or arm of the sea. The social state of the place should be considered with reference to the progress of agriculture at different periods in the surrounding district. Norwich was for ages only a small market town, with a very small number of inhabitants.