Roman roads in Bedfordshire
Watling Street runs the length of Bedfordshire on its way north-west from Verulamium, passing Durocobrivis at Dunstable where it crosses the Icknield Way. That crossroads is the clearest place in Britain to see the two systems meet: a prehistoric ridge track that had been in use for millennia, and a Roman road driven straight across it by an army in a hurry.
- Mapped segments
- 50
- Surveyed length
- 300 km
- Named roads
- 2
Measured from the Itiner-e survey within the modern county boundary, which for Yorkshire, Cheshire and the other counties broken up in 1974 means the traditional area reassembled from its present-day parts. The survey maps far more road than it attributes to a named route, so the segment count counts everything, and the named roads below are only those with a history recorded here.
Where to see it
Dunstable sits on the crossroads of Watling Street and the Icknield Way, and the line of both is legible in the modern street plan. Totternhoe, just west, was quarried for the chalk-stone the Romans used in local building.
Named roads through Bedfordshire
Watling Street
Rutupiae to Viroconium
Icknield Way