A little more on local Ancient Roman roads in North Staffordshire, following my previous posts on the topic. Below is an extract from the final part of: Rev. T.W. Daltry, “Chesterton” [Roman Camp], Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 1896.
One [final] word as to certain place-names in the neighbourhood of Chesterton. We have, one and a half miles to the north, a small village called Red Street, which is distinctly visible from the [Chesterton] Camp. This Red Street is evidently the Roman Road that went northwards by Windy Harbour and the village of Talk [Talke], and probably on to Condate and Mancunium [Manchester].
To the south-west, about two and a half miles from Chesterton, there is a short length of Roman road called Pepper Street, which now terminates at its junction with the Newcastle and Nantwich road, close to what was Keele Toll Gate. Originally it must have gone straight on. About half a mile further there are two farmhouses, called respectively ‘Honey wall’ and the ‘Highway’, and these names seem to indicate the proximity of a Roman road; and a little further on we have two farmhouses close together, which are called ‘Stonylow’, and this may perhaps be another indication of the same road. Then, still in a straight line, the pavement of an ancient road has been found beneath the soil in a field on Nethersethay Farm, not far from the London and North-Western Railway, about one and a quarter miles south of Madeley Station.
According to Mr. Watkin, in his ‘Roman Cheshire’, another road came from Condate or Kinderton to a little south of Betley, and this must have continued by or near to another Windy Harbour, half a mile to the north of Madeley Village, and to have joined the above-mentioned road from Chesterton somewhere about the spot where the ancient pavement was disturbed by the plough. The united roads must have led to Bury Walls near Hawkstone, which is said to have been the Rutunium of the Second Iter, and thence to Uriconium.
About midway between these two lines, about three miles from Chesterton, and one and a half miles north of Madeley, in a field near to the colliery at Leycett, two earthen jars filled with Roman copper coins were ploughed up in the year 1817. The jars were broken, and I have seen one or two fragments. The coins were about two thousand in number, and were chiefly of the reigns of Constantine the Great, and his son Crispus. Mr. Ward [the local Stoke historian] says there were also “many coins of Licinius and of the associate Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, and some of the usurpers Posthumus, Tetricus and Victorinus.”