High Street Roman Road - Lake District National Park

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Home Protect Landscape and heritage Archaeology and historic landscape Archaeology and heritage projects High Street Roman Road

I’ll take the High Road: our project to investigate the Lake District’s most famous Roman Road.

In the summer of 2022 we undertook a hands-on project to investigate High Street, a Roman road that goes for about 20 km over the high fells between Ambleside and Brougham fort near Penrith. The highest point of the road is 828m and is named High Street after the road it sits on.

two people surveying grassy fell top

Community archaeology

This community archaeology project aimed to uncover new information about the Roman archaeology and landscape development of the area through a programme of surveys, research and excavation. We focused on a small area on Bampton Common, south of Loadpot Hill.

high street roman road

Scheduled Monuments

The High Street Roman Road suffers from erosion but efforts to conserve it are hampered by a lack of precise information about its location, which was originally derived from an Ordnance Survey map annotated in the 1970s to mark the scheduled monument. Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites which are closely managed.

Archaeology volunteers kneeled on floor digging into area

Survey and excavation

We used some recent surveys by Historic England to see if we could locate and identify the route of the Roman road. We undertook surveying, geophysical survey and excavating. It also provided an opportunity for the local community to investigate and find out about the Roman archaeology on the common.

The results will help us to manage and protect the site in the future. Find a downloadable copy of the full report below.

You can learn more about the project in two presentations given by our Lead Strategy Advisor on Historic Environment, Eleanor Kingston, and the lead archaeologist for the project, Martin Railton of Eden Heritage, provided in the resources below.

pdf

High Street Roman Road Full Report

pdf

High Street Open Day presentation by Eleanor Kingston

pdf

High Street Open Day presentation by Martin Railton

This project was funded by:

Foundation for Common Land

I’ll Take the High Road is just one part of a larger project run by the Foundation for Common Land.

Heritage Fund

I’ll Take the High Road and the wider project run by Foundation for Common Land are supported by the Heritage Fund.