Ermine Street is the name for the remains of a Roman road which runs from London to Lincoln. Although much built-upon and plundered, the road follows essentially the same route as it always has. The name "Ermine Street", though, is of later origin than the road itself and grew from the Anglo-Saxon Earningstræt - "the road to Earn's people".
The impact of Roman engineering is still felt today; if we trace the origin of the US standard railroad gauge we can see this:- The US standard gauge is the same width (4ft 8.5 inches) as the original UK gauge because the initial US railroads were in part designed and built by British craftsmen and their imitators. The British engineers built their first tracks to that gauge because their rolling stock and engine beds were built by carriage makers, using the same rigs and templates as they used for standard horse-drawn carriages. Carriages used a standard gauge of 4ft 8.5 inches because the whole of Europe had, for hundered of years, been linked by heavily rutted roads and the ruts were all 4ft 8.5 inches apart - using a wider or narrower gauge would have been disastrous. The reason for spacing of the ruts is that, nearly 2000 years ago, the Roman chariots that carved up so much of the continent had a wheel gauge of 4ft 8.5 inches.
Ermine Street runs through Blunsdon, a part of Swindon.
appears in:
further reading: