A1-The Great North Road
North of Bourne, the Roman road divides, Mareham Lane heading north for Sleaford with King Street branching north-westwards towards Ancaster. The road looks clear enough as a straight line on the OS map though the real thing is a little harder to discern on the ground. Let's take Margary as our first guide:
The exact route out of Bourne is not known, but the alignment has been traced from Cawthorpe Hall, 1 mile north of the town, almost due north-west. A short piece of Lane past the Hall marks it, and then another lane past Hanthorpe where the agger is visible, 30 feet wide and 1-2 feet high. Hedgerows mark it near Stainfield, and then the western edge of Thorny Wood and Callan's Lane Wood just beyond, the agger lying inside the edge of the wood, 27 feet wide and 1 foot high. Farther on again at Temple Wood, near Hawthorpe, the western edge of the wood is again close to the line, but the ridge appears faintly in the fields outside it. Just beyond Lenton a road takes up the line and the agger appears clearly in places, 30 feet wide and 2 feet high. At a point 1 mile beyond Lenton a very slight turn to the north is made, an lanes follow the line almost continuously to Ancaster. The route lies 1/2 mile to the west of Sapperton and Braceby, and, as it happens, this involves the road following the course of shallow valleys, which it does on a slightly twisting route to suit the ground, but the general alignment is maintained pretty closely. The road tends to be terraced and is about 20 feet wide, though the present lane is only a metalled track.
At Ropsley Heath it crosses a Romanized trackway leading from Grantham to Donnington, and the line of the road seems to have been altered here, for the two portions now meet the trackway 1/4 mile apart, although probably continuous when first laid out. After running straight on the alignment for 1 mile to Heydour Warren the present road diverges to the east of some quarries, to rejoin the line just beyond, but a trace of the ridge remains in the field beyond the farm buildings, showing that the alignment was followed continuously, and then the last mile is dead straight and raised 1-2 and later 2-3 feet, until at Copper Hill, 1/2 mile south of Ancaster, it falls into Ermine Street
Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2004