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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, 2025 
£10,000 Says YOU Can't Prove This Roman Expert Wrong... | 15:01 | Paul Whitewick | 188K subscribers | 80,472 views | June 29, 2025
 Chapters: 
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

3 posted on 07/03/2025 9:08:33 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpers are Republicans the same way Liz Cheney is a Republican.)
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4 posted on 07/03/2025 11:31:54 AM PDT by Bigg Red ( Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.)
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