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A rare section of Roman road has been uncovered in south London.
Old Kent Road really is old. Its route was laid down by the Romans almost 2,000 years ago, to connect the burgeoning town of Londinium up to Dover. You can guess as much from a look at the map. OKR is long and reasonably straight, just as a good Roman road ought to be. It would come to be known as Watling Street in Anglo-Saxon times — a name still in use over some sections farther north.
Historians (and the well-informed populace at large) have known all this forever. But now we have the first evidence of the ancient highway directly below the modern Old Kent Road.
Workers chanced across the long-buried road surface while excavating for a low-carbon heat network, planned by Southwark Council and Veolia. The find came at the junction with Ilderton Road, towards the New Cross end of Old Kent Road. Experts from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) carefully examined the site, which yielded a section of road 5.8 metres wide by 1.4 metres high (its full length is unknown at this stage).
Roman road surfaces have been discovered around here before, notably at the Cantium Retail Park a little to the north-west. That discovery was slightly south of the course of the modern Old Kent Road, however. Parts of the thoroughfare have clearly shifted around over the centuries.
"We assume the Roman road survives in length under the modern road in Southwark, from the Lewisham border up to the Cantium Retail Park where the course of the road runs south of the modern road," Dr Chris Constable, Southwark council’s in-house archaeology officer, told Londonist. "At some point north of the Cantium, the Roman road returns to under the modern road."
What was the Roman road made from? Archaeologists found a solid foundation of compacted gravel sealed by two layers of chalk. This was topped by more sand and gravel. The original surface of the road would likely have been made from the same material and sat at a similar level to the modern road, but has been lost. The base of the modern road rests directly on the Roman fabric.
Dave Taylor, MOLA project manager, said: "It's amazing this section of road has survived for almost 2,000 years. There has been so much activity here over the past few hundred years, from sewers to power cables, tramlines and of course the building of the modern road, so we’re really excited to find such a substantial chunk of Roman material remaining."
Much more activity is planned. Old Kent Road is one of London's key redevelopment areas, with 20,000 new homes and a possible extension to the Bakerloo line on the cards. How much of it will still be here 2,000 years from now is anyone's guess.
Images courtesy of Southwark Council and MOLA.
