We should be saving our Roman heritage (From Droitwich Advertiser)

We should be saving our Roman heritage

9:00am Wednesday 5th August 2009 in Your View

IS Wychavon District Council’s planning department completely obsessed with destroying all the Roman heritage of Droitwich Spa?

Previously their planners built a sprawling housing estate over the remains of a Roman governor’s palace in Bays Meadow. Officers allowed the flattening and levelling of major Roman garrison ruins without any archaeological work at Dodder Hill.

They then tried to sink foundations of their supermarket into the only known Romano-British salt workings behind High Street.

Now councillors want to build hundreds of new houses over remains of a Roman signal tower at Primsland and the fort at Hill End.

Salinae, as it was then named, had three forts, originally one at Witton, where the Castle Pub now stands, and another at Hill End, by the former Chateau Impney gatehouse.

When Salinae became the supplier of salt to all Rome’s western legions (half their pay was in the tradable commodity of salt – hence our word salary), another much larger fortress was built on Dodder Hill.

The Hill End fort became a transport depot for wagons or pack animals taking salt down Saltway to Alcester, where it was loaded onto barges and shipped down river to be exported all over Europe.

Major administrative centre Salinae was a hub in the Roman system of signal beacon towers, such as that at Primsland (from Primus Stimulus for fire begins), built outside towns to prevent conflagrations.

Apart from the Roman lighthouse at Dover and Picts Primus watchtower near Hadrian’s Wall, those remains discovered at Primsland in 1926 are the only other ones known of a Roman signalling tower.

Wychavon’s planners are very keen to preserve a few minor Saxon and Medieval remains in Evesham or Pershore, but rather remiss about those national treasures of Roman history that remain within the Droitwich Spa area.

Anthony Stangerley, Droitwich Road, Hanbury