The Roman Bridges Time Forgot

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00][music] >> Hello, I am in the northeast this week and I'm in an area that was so badly devastated by coal mining back in the 1950s a royal commission set about to record stretches of Roman Road then surviving particularly Roman Dere Street to record them for posterity with the anticipation that they were about to get destroyed. This was all in 1959 and they ended up discovering four previously unrecorded Roman bridges bridge abutments and the likes. So I thought it would be a good idea here some 65 plus years later to see if we could find them and to see what they look like >> [music] >> today.

[00:00:43]Uh that's enough of that. As you can see Andy is with us once again. He's done loads of research for us. Is it going to be exciting Andy? It is.

[00:00:52]It's going to be canny. Now you will all know that Dere Street was a very important Roman road north from York to the wall and beyond. So we were intrigued to see Diamond's conclusions that three of the four discovered bridges were timber. This was an early project in his career and it seems to have largely been forgotten. So we took it upon ourselves to search for them in the lidar and in the field. Had any of them survived all that mining activity?

[00:01:18]There were going to be many obstacles and many dangers >> [music] >> and no base Andy, no base.

[00:01:30]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Uh this is different to some of the um crossings on the route because this is at the bottom of the valley.

[00:02:01]So when we see the abutments, the abutments are kind of built up from a small foundation up to a certain height and Diamond suggests that the absence of stonework anywhere means that it must have been a timber bridge crossing the the abutments on either side. And no requirement for terracing. No, not at all, no. Like I say, with it being at the bottom of the valley, you travel down the hill and then up the other side. Open cast again, I've said it before but absolutely ruthless. Um this area here is right on the edge of the open cast.

[00:02:31]So lucky to survive.

[00:02:46]Ah, that was difficult. So we've now made it to the Stockley Gill abutment and that involved getting through this awful sort of felled forest but we are now stood here looking at the most incredible hollow way running down to the beck. In the next field beyond that, the road is gone. It's been destroyed by farming or mining or whatever but you've got a incredible swell preserved in the fence line up there and then it sweeps down to this incredible hollow way running down to the beck and then what have we got down there Andy? So at the bottom of the hollow way we have the abutment starting from ground level slowly being built up and built up getting wider and wider until it reaches the point where Diamond says the timber bridge would have crossed.

[00:03:29]Um we can obviously we can see that it's it's part of the design part of the hollow way the way that this abutment is built up and what it reminds me of sad as what it is is like a modern motorway bridge. If you look at how a bridge goes across a modern motorway, it's very much the same design. An abutment built up to the point where it will cross the motorway and then obviously you've got the platform across. Here we have the abutment built up to the edge of the gills the Stockley Gill and then the platform would have got across. That's great Andy. I think now is the time for you to make your way down and have a look at that.

[00:04:02]>> I do you not fancy coming down and finding one of your Roman coins again?

[00:04:06]>> [music] [music] >> Here I am coming down the southern abutment which is smaller than the northern abutment.

[00:04:37]Uh but it's really fascinating to see how the the difference basically between this lush flood plain bit and this obvious man-made mound where you've got your cobbles uh earthen mound that we've made here.

[00:05:00]Uh so the northern mound's over there.

[00:05:03]Ah, I'm going to have to have a go and look at that. That looks good.

[00:05:13]What a shame eh magic grandad can't come down find one of his Roman coins again down here.

[00:05:19]Um >> [snorts] >> being here down beside it, it really is a small stream um and it highlights how sort of important it was for the Romans economically to kind of invest in infrastructure to cross such a small stream to kind of manage traffic keep the traffic flowing.

[00:05:35]Uh big engineering work for such a small body of water. So in front of me now is the northern abutment and stood in front of it climbing up it you can see this is a lot more substantial.

[00:05:47]Uh there's no chance magic grandad will be able to make it up here.

[00:05:51]>> [laughter] >> Um but yeah, same story as the southern one. We've got some cobbles here big earthen mound and as you can see it's has like a long runway and tails off to follow Dere Street up to or across the fields up to Lanchester.

[00:06:07]What is it he says? Moss and subscribe?

[00:06:09]No, like and subscribe.

[00:06:17]>> [music] >> Whilst the action mod is down there in the prickly and spiky forest doing his John Noakes, I've come up to the end of the forest area where the hollow way uh breaks out into the field and I think it's a great illustration of how quickly farming or mining activity can destroy these features. It's really marked here.

[00:06:49]Just over the other side of the fence really deep hollow way here in this pretty much gone. And even the roadside ditch which is so prominent over there in the forestry area you know peters out immediately. That is the effect of farming and industrial processes.

[00:07:20]Oh this reminds me of the likely lads.

[00:07:22]Way I would. You know I find uh Andy that you can't beat a little bit of regional stereotyping on YouTube. Now at the end of this road we've got to this allotment. You got something to tell us about that I think. Yeah, so these allotments were built directly over the branch road that heads to Durham.

[00:07:37]Uh they were built in there well for World War II. So you you grow your own.

[00:07:41]It was that kind of thing. Um but there's a funny story that these allotments the fellow who got the allotment right on top of the branch road was gutted because he's next door neighbors were growing loads of lovely veg. Mr. Unlucky who got the allotment on the Roman road had about three foot worth of stone to go through. So he was gutted. I wouldn't have seen myself as unlucky personally but I understand the problem. Yeah. There it is. The road is there in that allotment. So here to my left is the branch road that runs where we've just been stood on.

[00:08:10]Uh I am now stood on Dere Street and this hedge line here marks how Dere Street runs north and I'm stood on the agger. It's uh it's quite substantial.

[00:08:19]You can definitely feel it.

[00:08:23]All right.

[00:08:25]>> [snorts] >> Now they're quite adamant that this one is timber. We've got some questions about that, haven't we? But could you explain where are we? We're on Dere Street, are we? We're on the the the the actual branch of Dere Street and the branch path to Durham branch road if you like. We've got a high abutment on this side, haven't we? On the other side it's you know you can't really see it, can you? Didn't they say that was buried in a litter tip or something?

[00:08:54]>> Diamond said it was obscured by a modern tipping modern day tipping. What do you think about these stones that we've found? Well like you say, it he insists that it was a timber bridge but looking at these stones here, there's some massive ones. There's one particular stone there that tickles my fancy like.

[00:09:09]Uh so here we have a a prominent bulge here with Dere Street running north and Diamond had this specific river crossing as he classes it as uh type C Roman bridge.

[00:09:22]Uh CT. So C being a site where there are visible remains of a bridge and with it being on the route of a Roman road, it is likely to be Roman with T for timber.

[00:09:34]Well thank you to the very nice chap at the farm who hopefully is also now a subscriber. I'm on the other side looking across to Andy. Give you some sense of the scale of it.

[00:09:51]Andy, start waving.

[00:10:05]>> This really is intriguing, Andy, isn't it? These stones here. They're adamant that it's a a timber bridge. And that effectively the level meant they didn't need to build this up to the, you know, stones or the standards. But this looks, you know, as you say, this one in particular. I love this one. I love the shape of this one. Look at the bottom of there.

[00:10:23]Um I bet your first one was exposed. That would be something significant that. So we could just have some stone anchors.

[00:10:30]Yeah.

[00:10:30]>> At each side, you know, a timber structure. So it'll be on that, sort of springing off of that, but that's not a that's not a coincidence that that is there, is it?

[00:10:40]>> Not a chance. Not a chance. It's class.

[00:10:42]It's brilliant. So if this is stone bridge, it would change Diamond's classification to type C Roman bridge, but with an S after. S for stone.

[00:10:54]Hey Andy, you're the expert at getting in the water and telling us if we have vermiculated Roman stone or not. Come and have a look at this.

[00:11:03]Can you tell I mean, look at that big boy there. What a what what about that one? Ah, it's probably it's squared, isn't it? Look at that. It's probably squared.

[00:11:10]It's downstream from where the the abutments are as well.

[00:11:15]Uh if it wasn't a stone bridge, it definitely had stone It could have had stone abutments or stone piers or something like that, couldn't it? Look at that.

[00:11:24]Is it rusticated?

[00:11:27]No, I wouldn't say that. I mean, what does even rusticated mean?

[00:11:30]>> Yeah, we need to cover that off, don't we? Rusticated, vermiculated.

[00:11:36]>> [music] >> No. I'm now stood on the branch road that heads up towards Durham. And you can see behind us we've got a really, really impressive, massive agger with a good ditch running beside us.

[00:11:52]Um so like I said, this isn't Dere Street.

[00:11:54]This is the branch road.

[00:11:56]Uh but it's mighty impressive for a branch road.

[00:12:03]>> [music] >> Looking down here, there there must have been another river crossing down here, a stream crossing, because like I said, this this road is wide and big.

[00:12:23]Um can't really get down, but another river crossing that Diamond doesn't mention in his paper. So it was on the banks of this river that the milestone of Gordian was found.

[00:12:33]Um It was originally found back in the 1700s, lost, and then refound again in the 1930s.

[00:12:40]And I think it's currently in the Durham University Museum, next to Durham Cathedral. We have the Gordian milestone here.

[00:12:47]Further up the road, we had in the 1700s a Gordian milestone found at Lanchester.

[00:12:52]And then we also had two inscription slabs found of Gordian at Lanchester as well. I think commemorating the bathhouse and a basilica, maybe.

[00:12:59]But so I mean, Gordian only reigned for 6 years, I think, between 238 and 244.

[00:13:06]So it's obvious with all these inscriptions in this local area that Gordian came here or his team came here and did some improvements on these roadways.

[00:13:15]I always like to think that if you lived in the area of Gordian, at the time of Gordian, you might be called Gordies.

[00:13:21]Yeah, that makes sense to me. And uh what's another name for a northeast person? What what you call today? Yeah.

[00:13:28]Geordies.

[00:13:29]Geordies, Gordies.

[00:13:31]>> There you go. You're onto something there, I reckon.

[00:13:40]So we're stood on the line of Dere Street, just next to where Hunwick Gill is. We've come across these.

[00:13:45]What do they look like?

[00:13:47]Roman curbstones?

[00:13:49]Certainly on the side of the road, on the side of Dere Street. This line's packed with loads of stone all the way here, so I think that's a good little find there. So Andy, these curbstones are all along there, and I'm just coming up onto this stretch of Dere Street, where I think you can see the agger and the sort of platform of the road quite clearly for this stretch. It is hanging on here.

[00:14:18]>> [music] >> Right, so we are now at Hunwick. Now up there, where you could see that sort of churned up ground, that is the end of Dere Street being visible. We come down here, and this is what we have got, this mound with some stones in it. That is the abutment. What side are we on? The northern side here?

[00:14:43]>> Yeah, this is northern side. So this is the northern abutment. Now, fascinatingly, if you look at the report from 1959, this landscape was completely different. It was totally open. So the high abutments were much more visible than they are today. You know, looking in there, it's not going to be possible to get that across on camera, I'm sure.

[00:15:02]But it's another deep gill with an abutment raised to give that level crossing again on timber. And within the report, there's sort of an artistic representation of what they think that would have originally looked like. Uh one interesting thing that Diamond does say in his report is how narrow the approach way and how narrow the platform of the abutments are on top.

[00:15:25]Um dramatically shorter and narrower than the Roman road, the agger of the Roman road. He even shows it in some nice illustrations.

[00:15:33]But the the interesting thing, like I say, about it is to me it demonstrates traffic control or like congestion control across a river point. They wanted to control who and what was going across there. So brilliant way of doing it was narrow the road. You've got one person going across at a time, so they know exactly who's going over that road. So what he's saying is single file traffic. A timber bridge, single file traffic on a major road like Dere Street. I find that quite interesting. Now he forgets that I can actually check the footage from his bits, and I see that I'm being referred to as magic grandpops. So leave this one to me, right? I'm going to sort this one out.

[00:16:12]Magic grandpops. He's only 15 years younger than me. That's nothing, is it?

[00:16:17]Right, let's go and have a look at this thing.

[00:16:20]It's a shame. I don't think we're going to be able to see this very well, cuz it's so overgrown, but we'll give it a go.

[00:16:27]If I was a grand magic grandpops, I wouldn't be able to do this, would I?

[00:16:37]I'm the [snorts] Peter Duncan of WC21UK Productions Limited.

[00:16:44]Deserve my Blue Peter badge for this. So I've definitely [snorts] done the hardest one. So I'm stood here on the northern abutment, looking up, you know, I can see the remnants of it. Clearly see it up there.

[00:16:58]Uh I can't really make it out over there, but a Roman bridge was here, another timber bridge. Really interesting to compare this overgrown gill with what it was like at the time of the Royal Commission.

[00:17:14]>> [music] >> Right, I better get back. You'll be getting fritzed without me.

[00:17:18]>> [snorts] >> Hang on a minute, what's that?

[00:17:20]Andy, no.

[00:17:39]>> [music] >> So Andy, we are approaching bridge number four, the last one of the day.

[00:17:48]And what is special about this one? So this one is the only confirmed one has been stone.

[00:17:54]Uh so hopefully we'll get to see some nice stonework. Rusticated stone. Well, Andy, I can't help but notice, and I know that many of our viewers will have not failed to notice, that we're walking into bridge number four on a very obvious disused railway line. So you're the local lad. What is this railway line all about? Uh I've no idea. You are not going to graduate up to the Paul Whitwick level if you don't know about your disused railway lines, let me tell you that. But more significantly for our Roman bridge abutment investigation, this track, which is crossing the now disused railway line, is, I think I'm right in saying this, Andy, this is the fossilized remnants of Dere Street.

[00:18:32]>> Exactly. So we've got to head off down that way there to get to the river. Yep.

[00:18:43]Good.

[00:18:54]Uh so the River Wear is just on the other side of that fence.

[00:18:58]Um theoretically stood on top of Dere Street, but looking around in this field, there's there's absolutely no chance we can see any any remnants of it at all.

[00:19:06]Yeah, so Train and I can spot it, but I'm stood on the very, very faint remains of what would be the abutment this side. Um we can see in the line of the fence that it has a gentle curve to it. But more importantly, when I look down here, I'm looking right across the line of the stones in the river, straight through the other side, and yeah, this this is the faint remains of what we've got here.

[00:20:02]>> Jesus.

[00:20:12]This is hard going, Andy, but very rewarding because what I can now see is that we are walking through a sort of like a boulder field of squared-off blocks and rougher blocks. Looking up, we must be pretty much, I think, directly under the abutment. Is this the place? This is the place. It's exactly on the line. And I can see square-looking stones in the water, as well.

[00:20:42]I think we know what this means.

[00:20:46]Look here. So, we don't want to disturb too much, obviously, but what I want to do is get in and get this stone out here because this stone has all of the features that Diamond described. So, let's put your foot in here.

[00:21:03]Freezing.

[00:21:04]Freezing.

[00:21:05]Jesus.

[00:21:06]>> [laughter] >> Oh, so this is ginormous. Look at the size of this. Right. So, this this example here, um, covers all of the features that Diamond mentions in his paper. So, this side, you can obviously see this is all worked down here. Lovely tool marks down there.

[00:21:24]Uh, far too heavy to lift, but I can kind of maneuver it.

[00:21:28]See this lump here? Uh, this gash, if you like. That is a from what he describes a clamp, a clamp hole.

[00:21:37]So, there's something would have gone there that would have joined to the next stone.

[00:21:41]And let's see if I can turn this round.

[00:21:46]There. See this channel here?

[00:21:50]He He mentions this in his paper, as well. He says this is how, like, either a feature or a connecting thing, but there's a definitely a man-made line, a man-made channel down there.

[00:22:00]And if you were going to ask me when he says about rusticated, >> [groaning] >> this is the rusticated part here.

[00:22:10]That's the bit that's got design on it that makes it look old.

[00:22:14]It's covered in moss, but there, look.

[00:22:18]And God, ginormous.

[00:22:23]There. Can you see the design of it there now?

[00:22:26]Long, straight edge, corner, corner, and then this bit is like diagonal up here.

[00:22:33]So, I This would have been like a facing stone for a breakwater, that type of thing.

[00:22:39]And you're probably sogging.

[00:22:48]>> [laughter] [snorts] >> You can see that channel really well on camera there.

[00:23:01]Uh, and the rusticated part of it. It's like designed, isn't it? You can tell it's designed.

[00:23:09]I really love that channel there, though. I've never heard this term rusticated before, or indeed vermiculated, which is the other term that Diamond uses in the paper to describe these stones, but I think we can take it that what they're just trying to say is that these stones are stones that have been manufactured. They have been shaped. They've been carved.

[00:23:28]They've had these sort of patterns put on them.

[00:23:47]Well, it has been absolutely great down here finding that rusticated stone, but we have had some bad news, haven't we, Andy? Well, you fell in the water.

[00:23:55]>> [laughter] >> Uh, well, wasn't actually going to mention that. No, I've tried to get the drone up, but, uh, the water is disorientating it, and there's too many trees. It's really risky. So, you're going to have to rely on some shots from the bank to show you that what we've got Well, Andy, you tell what what can we see when we look across the river here that points to there having been a Roman bridge here?

[00:24:14]Right. So, we've got a clear line of massive, ginormous stones, uh, following the line of what would have been the Roman bridge. Over the other side, we can see clear stones, as well. Um, all demolished, of course, but loads and loads of stonework.

[00:24:30]Um, We can see where We can see clearly on the other side, on the footage, if you look for the sort of sandy-colored area beneath the tree, that is where the bridge was on the other side. And it also, Andy, we should point out that that squared-off stone, rusticated stone that we showed, there's loads of those.

[00:24:46]We can see loads of those in the water.

[00:24:48]Yeah, it I've got them in me flip-flops, honestly. There's an absolutely zero chance of moving them. Uh, it just shows they weren't messing about with it, like, it's hard work, that. No, you definitely can't move them, and I confirm that I've gone in with all my clothes on.

[00:25:02]Which was great. [laughter] Two old magic grandpas.

[00:25:18]So, Diamond classified these Roman bridges into four classes, A, B, C, and D. And they are as follows. So, a class A bridge is something where we're pretty certain of the Roman road either side, but there's no physical remains of the bridge.

[00:25:33]Class B is there's evidence of a bridge, however, it's questionable whether it's Roman.

[00:25:40]Class C is pretty much certain that it's a Roman bridge or bridge abutments.

[00:25:47]And class D is an actual written source of the bridge, or the name of the place mentions the fact there's a bridge there. So, like, Pons Aelius for Newcastle. What a result, then, despite all that mighty devastation, all four sites survived pretty much as Diamond described them in 1959. We really weren't expecting that when we set off on this mission. I went in upstream of that sewage outflow, by the way.

[00:26:25]I hope you enjoyed that. We promised to bring you the rare antiquities that nobody else puts on camera, and I think we've done that four times over this week. We'll be back with another investigation next Sunday, and we look forward to seeing you [music] then.

[00:26:53]>> [music]