The obscure pre-history of human activity in the area of the later Merry Oak estate gave way in the first century AD (CE) when the Romans arrived and established a settlement on the bend in the river Itchen below the high land that now shields estate. Archaeological investigations show that Roman Clausentum was occupied from about 70 AD. From the early second century, native observers passing along the high land would have seen the successive phases of building taking place (Heritage Gateway: Historic England Research Records, Clausentum).
The Roman Road from Clausentum through Merry Oak
Probably constructed in 1st century AD
For more precise archaeological details see https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MSH550&resourceID=1016
Clausentum was connected to other Roman settlements in the south of England, such as Winchester, Portchester, and Chichester, and the line of the Roman Road has been excavated and shown to run across the corner of what is now Freemantle Common close to what we know as Spring Road (J.B Morgan and Philip Peberdy, Collected Essays on Southampton (Southampton City Council 1968). See also 1932 OS 25" Map. Thanks to Rod Andrews for this. It has then been traced out to the area lately known as the Elephant and Castle from the name of a pub that stood on Bursledon Road.
Although archaeologists cannot date the construction of the Roman Road from Clausentum across Freemantle Common, it is indisputable that Roman feet marched across the boundaries, and probably other parts, of what would become the Merry Oak Estate, although the exact line of the road they took is by no means entirely certain. David E Johnston and Roger Reed have traced the archaeological evidence for the Roman Road known as route 421 that ran from Roman Clausentum (later Bitterne Manor) to the Roman settlement at Chichester (https://www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshirestudies/digital/1960s/vol25/Johnston%26Reed.pdf)
In his Notes on Roman Roads in the South of Hants, Dr. J. P. Williams-Freeman, gave an early analysis of the evidence at the time when he wrote:
‘Most of us have noticed the exceeding straightness of the road across Netley Common from Bitterne to Bursledon Bridge, and some of us have sought in vain for any evidence of its Roman construction. Mr. Crawford was given access to the original MS. map on the scale of 2in. to the mile of the Ordnance Survey of 1806, which is preserved at Southampton, and on it he found a very distinct causeway, marked across Netley Common. But it did not coincide with the present road. It kept about a quarter of a mile south of it through Chessel and Bitterne, and crossing the modern road at the turning leading down to Weston, turned due east to Netley Hill, heading for the upper part of the Hamble River below Fairthorne, at which place it must be remembered there are, the remains of a Roman building.’
Garth Groombridge speculates that the road from Clausentum may have left what is now the Bitterne Road and headed toward Freemantle Common following a route roughly in the direction of Garfield Road (personal communication). The line implied by excavations on Freemantle Common certainly suggests an ascent closer to Chessel Avenue than Athelstan Road. Other routes have been conjectured by earlier investigators, but the road would surely have taken a line that avoided the steepest ascent onto the high land where Freemantle Common stands, even perhaps taking an oblique line across the slope.
Johnston and Reed’s map of the route taken by the road shows it dog-legging gently as it leaves Clausentum but then running in a straight line from Freemantle Common, on the western fringe of the Merry Oak Estate, towards the former site of the Elephant and Castle pub on Bursledon Road.
In the 1947 survey, the Roman Road was still apparent as a slightly raised gravel causeway. By the 1960s this had disappeared, although even now some surface gravel remains where the Common is bare of grass, to offer a tantalising suggestion of what has been lost.
The line of the Road is now indicated by the small marker at the corner of Freemantle Common, at the junction of Peartree Avenue and Spring Road, and this relies on the excavations proposed by Professor Barry Cunliffe in 1968 which established the line of the road.
The road was 13 feet 6 inches, had been sharply cambered, and sloped to the west. During excavation, some evidence was revealed of the original metalling, and four deep ruts suggested the wear of long use. The crown of the road had been worn flat, and the original road surface had been hollowed at each side, ‘presumably by centuries of traffic forced off the road by something coming the other way’. Given the proximity of the stream in the valley bottom, could the rolled, water-worn pebbles, that made up the eastern edge of the roadway have been sourced locally? The archaeologists did not speculate.
It has been suggested that the road continued on to cross the Veracity Recreation Ground before heading out through what became Sholing, then via Thornhill, to meet the Roman road from Winchester at Wickham and thence turning eastwards to Chichester. This route would take Roman troops and their supply trains through, or very close to Merry Oak, but the line of the excavation suggests this is an unlikely direction. Unless the road dog-legged again, it would head far south of the other fragments of Roman road discovered near the modern Burseldon Road.
Another line has been proposed on the evidence of gravel deposits behind the properties on the north side of Spring Road and to the rear of the houses on the north-west side of Edwina Close (https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/record?titleId=1899554). This road would run down into the little steep-sided valley of the small stream that ran along the line of Edwina Close and Blackthorn Road. It came to be known in later centuries as the Merry Oak stream, because it originally ran through the valley of the nineteenth-century Merry Oak estate. No sign of this stream is now discernible above ground and must have been culverted when the area was built over, but local oral history records a small bridge spanning the stream where Spring Road crossed it, and its presence is still recalled every time the lowest part of Spring Road, where it still crosses the valley, floods in heavy rain and the grassy areas on the south east side of the junction become waterlogged and boggy.
The line of the road is not certain, but if it did, as has been proposed, cross the land now given over to the Veracity Recreation Ground, then it will have passed through more of the area of the Merry Oak estate itself, it is inevitable that the Roman legionaries and merchants who struggled up the long slopes from Clausentum would have seen and probably commented on, the hilly landscape they were crossing - no less hilly than it is now for anyone attempting to walk up Chessel Avenue or Lance's Hill! From the remains of the Roman Road, we can see that its line took travellers up these hard slopes.
Did the merchants and carters perhaps pause to let the oxen pulling heavy carts breathe and drink from the little stream before heading out over the heath and scrubland beyond? Did the legionaries face the long upward slog with Roman stoicism, or come along grumbling like soldiers in all the ages since?
Regardless of the exact line of the road, at any time after the turn of the second century CE, the sound of marching legionaries would have been heard coming through the trees, trudging up from Clausentum by way of the long steep incline that marks the modern Chessel Avenue, then heading down to the little gravelly stream bed, perhaps making way for mounted messengers clattering past, while loaded carts were carrying Samian ware (https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/melted-roman-samian-ware-from-a-fire-fc2fa36d685348b5b050bcd20c9a7443) and amphorae from the warehouses in Clausentum to inland settlements and markets (Richard Henry and Andy Russel, ‘Roman coinage from Bitterne and a review of the history of the site during the Roman Period’, Hampshire Studies 2024, vol. 79, 59-75, p. 68).
Other heavy traffic carrying supplies for military outposts, would have been overtaken by faster chariots, all of which continually wore the ruts which have been discovered in the original road surface. Spring Road today may be just as busy as it was when it was a spur of the Antonine Way!
From this western end of the elevated part of the road from Clausentum, its line eastwards is indicated only where it emerges again in Sholing close to the old Elephant and Castle site (Thanks to Martin Brisland and Rod Andrews for information on this). During the construction of a new housing estate in 1968 excavations were carried out on a low embankment; approx. 40 feet long by 20 feet wide, and about 1 foot high, ‘running N.W. to S.E. roughly parallel to Bursledon Road’. The road itself was only 12 feet wide and 4 inches thick, and the archaeologists report that the road metalling of gravel was probably obtained on the spot, and remark that the structure was therefore a simple affair, comparable to that on Freemantle Common. Like the section of Road from Clausentum, this eastward section could not be dated but was well worn.
David E. Johnston and Roger Reed, the authors of this very detailed report, which is only summarised here, remark that the Freemantle Common section of the Roman Road had been repaired and patched after the Roman period of occupation and that old maps show it surviving as a ridge, causeway or track (By David E. Johnston and Roger Reed, ‘The Roman Road (Route 421) to Bitterne, Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, vol. 25 (2017), 19-26, p. 24. https://www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshirestudies/digital/1960s/vol25/Johnston%26Reed.pdf). It is likely, therefore, that it was used during the Middle Ages as part of the route of royal and episcopal itineraries of King John and Peter de Roches, founder of Netley Abbey and Bishop of Winchester in 1208, when they were travelling between Bitterne and Titchfield/Farham/Portchester (The Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester, 1208-1209, ed. Hubert Hall (London: P. B. King & Son 1903), p. xl).
Johnston and Reed do not explore the later history of the area, maintaining that they do not know when the land on which the road runs became private land, only remarking that ‘By 1900 it was Freemantle Common, as we know it today’.
This survey of Merry Oak will go on to fill in some of the gaps
between the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain and the establishment of the
Merry Oak Estate in 1930. But Romans certainly saw the shape of the landscape and undoubtedly made use of its resources, hunting wild animals among the trees; using the trees and the heath beyond as fuel for their smelting hearths, bath house, and cooking fires, and picking the nuts and wild fruits as they passed by in autumns before they were all recalled to Rome.