These two sections of Roman road lie on the route running south from the legionary fortress at Deva (Chester) towards Wilderspool and ultimately Manchester (Mamucium), passing through the parishes of Appleton and Stretton in Cheshire. The road was active from the later 1st century AD through the Roman period, serving as a major military and commercial artery linking Chester with the industrial settlement at Wilderspool on the Mersey. Its name "Stretton" itself preserves the Old English "stræt-tun" (settlement on the Roman road), attesting to its long-recognised course.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The road formed a key north-south communication link in the Cheshire plain, connecting the legionary base at Chester with the substantial industrial and trading settlement at Wilderspool, and onward to Manchester and the Pennine forts. It facilitated movement of troops, goods (especially metalwork, pottery and salt from Cheshire's brine resources) and civilian traffic across the lowland zone of the north-west.
The two surviving sections preserve the characteristic agger (raised embankment) with traces of side ditches, and the alignment has been confirmed through fieldwalking, aerial photography and antiquarian observation rather than extensive modern excavation. Detailed structural data on construction layers and metalling at these specific stretches remains limited, though comparable excavated sections of the Chester–Wilderspool road show sandstone and gravel metalling typical of major Roman
These two sections of Roman road lie on the route running south from the legionary fortress at Deva (Chester) towards Wilderspool and ultimately Manchester (Mamucium), passing through the parishes of Appleton and Stretton in Cheshire. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Two sections of Roman road between Appleton and Stretton is classified as a Roman site — 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 Roman settlement at Wilderspool (3.8 km), Wilderspool (4.6 km), Anderton Boat Lift, aqueduct, basins, meter building, toll houses and buried remains of salt chutes, inclined planes, the east basin and dockside features (8.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Two sections of Roman road between Appleton and Stretton