Noviomagus Cantiacorum ("new market/field of the Cantiaci") was a Romano-British small town in north Kent, identified with Crayford (or possibly West Wickham/Keston in older scholarship), situated on Watling Street between Londinium and Durovernum (Canterbury). It was active from the later 1st century through the 4th century AD and appears in the Antonine Itinerary (Iter II) as a road station roughly 10 Roman miles from London, functioning as a posting station and local market for the Cantiaci.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its principal role was as a wayside settlement and minor administrative or economic node on the main London–Canterbury–Dover artery, serving the cursus publicus and the agricultural hinterland of north-west Kent. The identification itself remains debated, which is significant: Noviomagus is one of the few named Cantiacan settlements, but its precise location has long puzzled scholars since the Itinerary distances do not fit any one site cleanly.
At Crayford, the favoured candidate, finds include Roman burials, pottery, coins, and traces of roadside occupation along Watling Street, but no substantial public buildings or defended core have been identified, and the settlement appears modest and dispersed rather than nucleated. The absence of a clearly excavated town plan means the character of Noviomagus is inferred largely from its road-station context and scattered ribbon-development finds rather than from a defined archaeological footprint.
Noviomagus Cantiacorum ("new market/field of the Cantiaci") was a Romano-British small town in north Kent, identified with Crayford (or possibly West Wickham/Keston in older scholarship), situated on Watling Street between Londinium and Durovernum (Canterbury). It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Noviomagus is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including A major Roman villa, an Anglo-Saxon settlement and prehistoric remains 600m SSE of Darenth Court Farm (6.3 km), Darenth (6.5 km), Roman granary 250yds (230m) W of St Mary's Church (7.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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