Paul Whitewick having some fun looking for Roman fords (not forts as I first thought).£10,000 Says YOU Can't Prove This Roman Expert Wrong... | 15:01
Paul Whitewick | 188K subscribers | 80,472 views | June 29, 2025Chapters:
00:00 - The Rewards
01:56 - The Ford
03:16 - The Drawing Board
05:44 - Gargrave
07:22 - Iden Green
10:33 - Barnard Castle
13:39 - £10,000 Please
--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <-- · The Rewards 0:00 · so I was watching a lecture on Roman roads just the other day 0:03 · when the chairman of that lecture said this you did mention forwards one of the things 0:08 · I'm particularly known for as far as Britain is concerned because we simply don't have them 0:16 · "it would be great if someone could prove an engineered ford in Britain and prove me wrong 0:20 · uh I did offer £10,000 to the person who could do it and no one has and that was 12 years ago 0:25 · £10,000" "the offer's still there guys" i mean I could do with £10,000 so all 0:31 · I need to do is find evidence of a Roman Ford in the UK that I'm laughing all the 0:36 · way to the bank this is going to be a breeze okay so I live in North Hampshire let's be a 0:43 · bit lazy about this let's look at the Roman roads local to me i'll look at where those 0:47 · Roman roads crossed any major rivers and I'll get me wellies on okay so not only am 0:53 · I going to have a video out of this assuming you're actually watching this now then also 1:02 · I'd be laughing all the way to the bank £10,000 just to find a Roman Ford couldn't be easier 1:10 · okay so you join me on a Roman road today that connected Winchester back in the south of England 1:16 · there on up to Cirencester very important Roman road we've got lots of evidence that it does exist 1:21 · and we also have perpendicular to that right now here as you'll hear the river test the river test 1:28 · crosses here but it does so in a very curious way because we have a very long flat bottomed 1:34 · valley now that valley stretches probably half a mile and you can see ahead of us sort of marshy 1:38 · land for ages so the Romans would have had to do one of two things build an exceptionally 1:44 · long bridge which I can't envision or they would have had to build a road across it and that would 1:49 · have meant at least in one place a Roman ford so where is it should be fairly easy to find · The Ford 1:58 · okay so whilst I search for a ford because there must be one there what exactly is a ford and why 2:04 · am I even bothered about this so essentially a river crossing point shallow enough to be able 2:09 · to cross on foot horse or by will a ford can be completely natural however they are often 2:14 · engineered to ensure safe passage so a quick flick to Historic England who suggests that 2:19 · Roman paved fords were a significant component feature of a Roman road so it seems we're looking 2:26 · for a paved surface now the common misconception about Roman roads in general outside of towns and 2:32 · cities is that they were all paved in fact the vast majority of Roman roads whilst very well 2:38 · engineered unfortunately were not paved at all but the fact that historic England are already 2:44 · suggesting that we're looking for a paved surface we see in towns well that's going 2:49 · to help us today and make it a lot easier okay so perhaps isn't going to be quite as easy as 2:54 · I first thought i thought I could just turn up here kick a few stones around and I'd find 2:58 · my paved surface clearly we've got millennia of silt buildup i probably need to dig down 3:03 · maybe a meter or two in hindsight but I do feel this area really works so why does Mike think 3:09 · that they weren't in use certainly outside of military campaigns back to the drawing board · The Drawing Board 3:18 · okay so we're going to get the £10,000 well we need to start taking this a bit 3:22 · seriously let's do some research on the ones that we already have an idea of ones I could 3:27 · go and visit okay I kind of feel this should be fairly straightforward just 3:30 · establish exactly where these Roman fords are that we already know of make a list of 3:34 · them and find out if I can go and visit them let's start off with a spreadsheet 3:42 · okay spreadsheet complete this is quite interesting so basically we've got just a small 3:46 · handful we've got two or three that are probably quite accessible but I've got a slight problem i 3:52 · don't really fancy traveling to all of those maybe I could do the Kent one for sure and there's a 3:57 · couple of others that I'd love to get to maybe we're gonna need some help for this got an idea 4:13 · darren how you doing hello Paul Whitewick adam how you doing 4:19 · you good you having a good day up to anything i'm imagining me speaking to you and Darren 4:22 · and I'm just I'm just smiling okay anyway so I've got a really 4:26 · good idea coming up guys but I need your help i want to make a video on Roman Fords 4:30 · i think I make some great content you know good Roman stuff any chance of you guys helping me 4:35 · yeah I suppose so right okay Paul so is this like homework 4:40 · um I mean sure why not any chance you Darren speaking 4:44 · of that could you go to Gargave yep I guess so adam any chance you could nip to Barnard Castle 4:51 · do the whole eye test thing apparently there's a really good well preserved Roman fort there 4:56 · oh yeah okay i mean that sounds doable is this got anything to do with that 5:00 · Roman Roads Research Association talk and you know the 10K challenge 5:05 · uh no this is purely to do with my own curiosity right 5:11 · because if I recall I'm sure there was a bet on i mean look maybe there was a video on that maybe 5:16 · there was a £10,000 offering nothing to do with this whatsoever this is purely a coincidence i 5:22 · just want to make a good video on some Roman Fords in the country just to clarify when have we got to 5:26 · get this in by when do you need this done by if you could get this done for me maybe by 5:30 · the end of the week that'd be magic okay Paul okay yeah understood fine 5:34 · brilliant thanks sense see you both very soon bye ciao ciao bye · Gargrave 5:46 · Paul Whitewick's given me some homework given how many subscribers he's got I thought I'd 5:53 · better do it and alongside the A65 the River Air ambles artfully ahead i've stopped doing 6:02 · the alliteration now i couldn't think of anymore up there is a grade two listed bridge crossing the 6:08 · river air the other side of that a discovery was made in 1967 and there it is described as 6:15 · a very rare example of a paved Roman ford when it was discovered in the late 1960s they found 6:21 · coins which dated it to the late 1st century he doesn't want much for his money does he i think 6:25 · there's a bet riding on this actually I better be in for a cut let's go this water is deceptively 6:33 · powerful i'm not going to go any further than this but I can get some shots of it it's really 6:38 · clear actually the things I do for Paul Whitewick i'd best be in for a cut of that bet if he wins 6:45 · there's a Roman road over that way which is Skippton to Settle and Engleton and then there's 6:51 · a Roman road over that way which is Ilkley to Ribchester i believe this has been found to 6:58 · align with a paved road found a long time ago up that way and a suspiciously straight road called 7:05 · Mark House Lane running off in that direction i guess we do need to countenance that it may be 7:12 · from a later period but one thing I'm sure of what I've just perilously stood on is pretty ancient · Iden Green 7:24 · a very warm late spring day i managed to cross a few county borders and end up in the land of 7:31 · Kent southeast England now specifically I was looking for Iden Green frustratingly there are 7:36 · two Iden Greens within 5 miles of each other and both have Fords near them however ours of 7:43 · course is supposedly Roman so we're going to go find it now now the whole the pathway I'm 7:48 · just walking down here well we used to be able to walk down what was the pathway through here 7:53 · down this absolutely beautiful hallway and uh for some reason now it's all sort of blocked 8:00 · off really deep hallway down there lots of evidence of iron workings all sort of 8:06 · um laid out deposited in the form of slag that could give us a bit of a clue to the ford that's 8:11 · just down into the valley now I'll be brutally honest i checked the OS maps before I came here 8:16 · ordinance survey and I had a look at the landscape on those maps i wasn't hugely convinced by the 8:22 · evidence on that basis alone it didn't look like the most significant obstacle in the landscape 8:28 · however in the last 100 years or so we have had two archeological excavations which have tried to 8:34 · prove or not prove that this was indeed a Roman ford so our hollowway comes in from the north 8:40 · and that was supposedly part of the Roman road according to Crawford and um Ivan Margary the 8:45 · afficionado of Roman roads and of course we now got a stream coming in from the northeast that 8:51 · stream at the moment is completely empty perhaps more of a a winterbrook um now when they came here 8:57 · in the 1980s and they did some more excavations they noted the modern access bridge just there 9:03 · and they said the ford was to the south of that immediately to the south and see what we can find 9:13 · okay so because of the excavations done in the 1980s they did some excellent diagrams or at 9:18 · least one very good diagram and I think I found a uh a bridge a very sketchy looking wooden bridge 9:24 · just through there and that gives us context of exactly where they were talking about now 9:28 · in the 1930s Crawford came here and Crawford was extremely confident that he'd found a 9:35 · very well-paved area on the bed of the river and subsequently he took a wonderful picture however 9:41 · that picture when he didn't write which direction he was facing when he took it the problem is 9:46 · when they came here in the 1980s and did that wonderful diagram I was talking about all the 9:51 · paved stones they said were gone by and large and they spoke to some locals and they said "Yep sorry 9:57 · the farmer next all those old blocks on the riverbed however we do have a few blocks left 10:01 · here whether they're Roman or not I do not know um but some significant well worked and shaped 10:09 · blocks all just down here at the bottom we're very much silted up on either side here well the only 10:14 · thing I'm thinking now is how faster flowing is this water here how much of a ford do you 10:19 · actually really need so do I believe there's a Roman ford there was there a need for a Roman 10:24 · ford there well for the purposes of this video yes yes I do believe there was a Ford there · Barnard Castle 10:34 · surprise it's me Adam Morgan Ibbotson and you meet me on a beautiful Victorian bridge overlooking the 10:42 · River Tease in Barnard Castle anybody up for getting their eyes tested the alleged 10:47 · Ford down there is known as Stratforth which for anyone who knows their Roman place names 10:52 · means a Ford over a Roman street apparently the fact that one of England's largest castles over 11:00 · there Bernard's Castle is situated here on the river Te's should be an obvious indication that 11:06 · something very important was happening here people have been crossing over this point for 11:10 · a long time and that's because it is a perfect position between Bose and Binchester i.e the 11:17 · Roman roads of Vinovia and Lavat Tree i think it's pronounced Lavatray it's like a posh person asking 11:23 · for the toilet either way they had to get over this river somehow we know that and what they 11:29 · found under there is pretty Roman looking and that's important because allegedly between that 11:35 · we and that castle there is a surviving Roman ford a proper masonry thing with big blocks uniformly 11:42 · built stakes all that good stuff so uh yeah let's go down there and see what we can find now it was 11:50 · meant to be a drought day and allegedly you can only see it when the river is really really low 11:56 · for God's sake right I'm now back at the Victorian Bridge mission failed basically there by that we 12:06 · is a ford allegedly according to the documents I've read it is made of big blocky stones about 12:13 · 30 cm each in length but I hear you asking how do we know that the ford under here is Roman 12:21 · of course there were fords all over the place from all over the time and uh this could be any 12:26 · of them we're in a medieval landscape here well there are a few clues for one the masonry is big 12:33 · and blocky it's between 15 cm and 30 cm if you can imagine that and it's joined by metal spurs 12:40 · uh which people think might be what are known as opus rainkum secondly the modern we there 12:49 · replaced a medieval we destroyed the blocks of it were found to have overlain the ford meaning that 12:56 · the medieval we there obviously postated the ford thirdly there are all the landscape cleanses over 13:03 · this side of the river we have the Roman road of Vinovia that comes from Bose and over there 13:09 · we have Binchester and it's Roman road Lavatray which sounds like a posh person needing the toilet 13:17 · put all these things together we've got a river crossing that needs to happen between 13:20 · two Roman roads we've got some Roman looking masonry and we have medieval things happening 13:27 · on top of it in terms of the palimpest as it's often described it's looking pretty promising · 10,000 Please 13:39 · so what have we got first of all a big thanks to Mike at the Roman Road Research Association he's 13:44 · played no part in making this video doesn't even know we're making it at this point but that's okay 13:48 · because we want to thank him anyway because of the the input that he gives to the Roman 13:52 · Road Research Association it's invaluable because we're asking these huge questions that have been 13:57 · longheld assumptions for years including this one were Roman Fords used outside of military 14:03 · campaigns and it gives us as YouTube amateurs the the opportunity to come out and have a look at the 14:07 · landscape and have a poke around and ask these questions as well it's been great fun so go and 14:11 · have a look at the Roman Road Research Association however Mike we are going to claim our £10,000 on 14:16 · the basis of we have Adam over at Barnar Castle and although he didn't get in the water on the 14:21 · day probably a little bit too deep and a bit too dangerous we do have the archeological 14:25 · um substance from previous studies and of course WC21 UK Productions Limited 14:30 · over at Garve there's another one Paul we're not completely convinced but we do 14:34 · think that stands a very good chance at being Roman and as for Iden Green down in Kent well 14:39 · the jury is definitely out on that one although Crawford was himself convinced i've been Paul 14:44 · please go and have a look at all of those three channels the Roman Road Research Association 14:48 · WC21 UK Productions Limited and of course Adam Morgan Ipsson we'll see you this time next week
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