An Auxiliary of the Roman Army - a long way from his native land - puts down his shovel and straightens his aching back. Since dawn his detachment has been digging two perfectly straight ditches ten metres apart. These have been marked out by the surveying officer to show the route to be followed by the legionary road to run from the fort at Metchley to Letocetum (Wall).

Roman Road Builders

All around him stretches barren heathland, where soon the military engineers will impose the alien line of a metalled road. The soldier has already marked several good deposits of gravel along the line of his ditch, so the engineers will have no problem finding plenty of material to make the road, a good thickness of compacted gravel, eight metres wide with a slight camber to throw off the rainwater. That should last at least twenty years, and keep Britannia pacified, he thinks...

Cross Section of a Roman Road

Nearly 2000 years later, at the same spot, we can see the dead straight line of the road, which we now call Icknield Street, with its carriageway or agger, the guide ditches dug to the surveyor's instructions, and the pits which supplied the gravel to make the agger.