ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Perring: London in the 1st and early 2nd centuries
Fig 65 London: the GPO site at Newgate Street. Flavian strip buildings. Both have shops or workshops (i) fronting the main
street, a main room (ii), and a ‘service area’ behind. At the rear of Building J three rooms (iv - vi) effectively form a
separate block and were perhaps used as bedrooms (Scale 1:200; drawn by David Bentley)
interrelationship between provincial administration and
arrangements for the commercial exploitation of a province.
The historical context is of some relevance to the
topographical development of the city itself. London grew
up around its major lines of communication; these were
represented by a ‘T’ road junction, the base of which was
formed by the bridge, its approaches, and the adjacent
quays to the south, the bar by an east-west street part of
which is roughly on the line of modern Cheapside (Fig 64).
The three roads leading out of the city linked London with
the other important centres of early Roman Britain:
95
Richborough to the south, Verulamium to the west, and
Colchester to the east. Kinks in the east-west road
probably marked the point at which it crossed the original
east and west boundaries of the city, beyond which early
cemeteries have been found. At the junction of the ‘T’, on
the highest point of the eastern hill, a gravelled area, later
the site of the forum, may mark the location of a market.
Excavations immediately to the west of the gravelled area
produced evidence of rectangular buildings divided into a
number of smaller shops. Their stone-based dried brick
(‘adobe’) walls were of a Roman form now well attested
elsewhere. The central part of the early city, between the