The Road That Refused to Disappear: York, the Coast, and the persistence of an East Yorkshire Corridor
Abstract
This essay explores the persistence of an
east–west corridor linking York, Malton, and the coast of East Yorkshire,
particularly around Scarborough and Filey. Prompted by recent reassessments of
Roman place-names and routes, especially John Creighton’s work on the Antonine
Itinerary, it argues for understanding this landscape not as a collection of
isolated sites, but as a functional system shaped by movement, logistics, and
geography. Rather than proposing a location for the lost Roman 'city' of Praetorio, the essay examines how
roads, signal stations, beaches, and estates formed a working corridor that was
repeatedly reused during periods of Roman, Sub-Roman, medieval, and early
modern history. Attention is given to often-overlooked factors such as sand,
horses, and coastal landing practices, which leave little archaeological trace
but strongly influence patterns of use. The result is an invitation to
reconsider the East Yorkshire coast not as a historical margin, but as a
persistent axis of connection whose significance lies in continuity of function
rather than permanence of form.
Introduction
For a long time, my interest in
Scarborough was prompted by something modest: a song. Scarborough Fair is
not a historical document, but it is a vessel of memory: a puzzle-song that has been
elaborated, misremembered, repurposed, and carried forward by generations who
found something of their own experience inside it. As a constitutional lawyer, I came face to face with the Icelandic Lawspeaker, Snorre Sturlason (1179-1241) while restructuring the old Imperial law of Britain in far away Australia, and read his account of an attack on Scarborough in 1066. From there, I plunged into the sagas of the old Norse, and the unpleasant Icelandic poet-lawyer, Kormac, who claimed to establish Scarborough with his brother. And, then a couple of distant ancestors, who were keeper of the Castle at Scarborough in the late 14th century, joined the dance.
That modest starting point has led
me somewhere larger and more surprising than I expected: not toward a single answer of the mystery that is Scarborough, but toward a
recurring structure in the landscape of East Yorkshire: a structure that
seems to surface again and again at moments of crisis, transition, and retreat.
This post is an attempt to describe
that structure. It also might help explain the approach we are taking, in developing the animated
series detailed elsewhere in this blog starting in Scarborough in the year 1264.
This post is not an argument for a lost Roman city on the east coast of Yorkshire, nor a claim to have
“solved” any archaeological puzzle. It is an exploration of a corridor: geographical, historical,
and cultural: that appears to connect York to the coast at Scarborough and Filey,
and which has reasserted itself across two millennia of history.
Creighton and the
Necessary Unsettling of Certainty
Much of what follows is prompted by
John Creighton’s paper The Place Names of East Yorkshire in the Roman Period.
The importance of Creighton’s work lies not in proposing dramatic new
identifications, but in methodically
removing assumptions that had hardened into orthodoxy.
In particular, Creighton shows that:
- several long-accepted identifications in the Antonine
Itinerary do not withstand careful scrutiny of distances, routes, and
archaeological context;
- Malton has been burdened with roles it does not
convincingly fit, while being overlooked for roles it fits better;
- the Roman ‘place-name’ Praetorio has been too
readily forced to align with known urban centres rather than being
understood functionally.
What emerges from Creighton’s
analysis is not a new certainty, but a restored
ambiguity: and that ambiguity is productive - and it partly justifies Dr Francis Drake's (the antiquarian 1716-1771) mapping of roman roads in East Yorkshire. When the Antonine Itinerary is
allowed to speak in terms of movement, staging, and function, rather
than modern administrative expectations, coastal sites long treated as marginal
locations for Praetorio re-enter the discussion.
Scarborough and Filey are not
asserted as answers. They are re-admitted as plausible
questions.
The
York–Malton–Coast Axis
Once the itinerary constraints are
loosened, a simple geographical fact becomes harder to ignore:
There is a natural east–west
corridor running from York, through the Derwent basin and Malton, to the coast
between Scarborough and Filey.
This corridor is not hypothetical.
It is expressed in:
- Roman road alignments;
- later medieval routes;
- early modern military movements;
- and modern transport lines that still follow the same
broad logic.
What is striking is not just that the
corridor exists, but how often it
becomes visible at moments of stress.
Rome, But Not as We
Usually Mean It
The Roman presence along the East
Yorkshire coast is often described in negative terms: fragmentary, elusive,
disappointing. There are signal towers but no grand harbors; villas but no
cities; inscriptions without context.
But this expectation may itself be
the problem.
If we stop looking for a Roman town
and instead look for a Roman system,
a different picture emerges:
- inland cavalry at Malton (Delgovicia, in Creighton’s
reassessment) - the Ala Gallorum Picentiana, at least at one point in time;
- a road reaching the coast along a corridor permitting line of sight communication between the coast and Malton/Delgovicia;
- coastal signal stations (most communicating laterally rather
than inland);
- modest landing places and beach access rather than
monumental quays;
- estate complexes (such as the newly emerging Eastfield
site) that look administrative or logistical rather than urban.
Seen this way, the coast does not
need to be “urban” to be important. It needs to be useful.
This is consistent with Roman
military and logistical practice elsewhere, particularly in marginal or exposed
regions where flexibility mattered more than permanence.
After Rome: The
Corridor Persists
The conventional narrative tells us
that Roman Britain “ended” around 410. What actually ends is documentation.
The material and human landscape does not collapse; it thins, adapts, and
becomes locally managed.
What is striking is that the
York–coast corridor continues to matter after Rome:
- Sub-Roman elites operate in the same terrain, using
inherited roads and sites;
- early medieval Northumbria inherits a landscape already
structured by Roman movement;
- Norse activity in 1066 appears to exploit the same
east–west access toward York (perhaps offering a strategic rationale for the 1066 attack on Scarborough);
- medieval fairs, castles, and ports cluster along the
same axis;
- in the Civil War, defeated forces retreat once again
toward Scarborough along familiar ground.
None of this requires direct
institutional continuity. It requires only geographical memory.
Roads, once laid out well, are hard
to forget.
Signal Towers,
Sightlines, and the Coast as a System
Strategically, a watchtower is only as good as the messaging network behind it.
Recent analysis of sightlines
between known Roman signal stations clarifies something important:
- most of the coastal towers along the East Yorkshire
coast communicate along the coast,
but most have no inland communication capacity;
- This implies a deliberately layered system: coastal
observation operating semi-autonomously, but requiring service or
reinforcement via inland routes.
For such a system to effectively connect with cavalry stationed at Delgovicia, the coastal system must be able to communicate inland. In such a system, Scarborough’s headland, the Filey Brigg, and intermediate ridges (eg, Eastfield–Osgodby ridge) are not anomalies. They are necessary nodes.
Scarborough is not line of sight with Malton/Delgovicia or Whitby. But Scarborough is in line of sight with Ravenscar and Filey (Carr Naze). Near to Scarborough are two peaks (Eastfield–Osgodby ridge) that complete a Scarborough, Malton/Delgovicia, Filey, Ravenscar line-of-sight communication system. The Eastfield–Osgodby ridge rises just beyond the Eastfield site ruins (could this be the location of the 'missing' 'Roman' tower in the Henry VIII plat?) .
Taken together the coastal tower
system functions as part of a wider network,
one that could be serviced by inland forces without being directly overseen by
them. A coastal defense system that alerts inland cavalry resources at the speed of sight.
Why This Matters
for History
Once you see the corridor, it
becomes difficult not to notice how often it reappears when history tightens:
- Brigantian politics:
the tension between Rome, Cartimandua, and Venutius plays out across this
same landscape, where access to the hillforts and, eventual, Roman
fortresses in central Yorkshire and control of movement mattered.
- Roman coastal defense strategy: The Coastal Towers were not passive. They had a purpose. Likewise, the Roman cavalry at Malton/Delgovicia was not there "to ride into the void".
- Sub-Roman resistance:
later British traditions associated with northern resistance (including
Arthurian echoes, perhaps Badon Hill) emerge from regions where Roman infrastructure
still structured power.
- 1066:
Norse forces move inland toward York along routes whose logic long
predates them.
- Civil War: Scarborough becomes, once again, a place of last resort: a coastal terminus at the end of a long retreat.
Sometimes the stories dance on the edge of archeological credulity:
- Derventio Brigantum (Stamford Bridge): it is sometimes said (17th-18th century writings and a cryptic reference in Camden's circle) that Derventio was the last defensive position the Romans held in Britain. (While a coastal corridor serves strategic possibilities later exploited in the Civil War, there is no evidence of a dramatic 'final Roman stand'.)
- Sir Francis Drake: (not the antiquarian) there is a half-forgotten tradition that when Drake was sheltering along the east Yorkshire coast (he sheltered multiple times between Whitby and Flamborough), he was told of Roman fortresses and lost towers with stones with Latin writing. (Do we know the full extent of the Roman Yorkshire coastal tower system?)
The corridor is not always visible,
but it is never irrelevant.
Sand, Horses, and
the Coast as a Working Surface
Up to this point, the argument has treated roads, signals, and sites as abstract components of a system. But systems are operated by bodies, human and animal, and their needs shape landscapes as decisively as engineering. Particularly when we start bringing cavalry into the frame.
One element deserves more explicit
attention: horses, sand, and the
practical use of beaches.
Roman and pre-Roman cavalry logistics are often imagined through the lens of stone: forts, roads, walls. But cavalry culture, especially in Gaul and Britain, was equally shaped by earth, turf, and sand. It is a consideration I cannot ignore - I own a Cleveland Bay / thoroughbred (Berinia, England’s oldest horse breed, a rare heavy Yorkshire carriage/farm horse) and I come from a family strongly connected to horses (my Grandfather, a vet with the Australian Light Horse, owned Black Onyx, 3rd place winner in the 1970 Melbourne Cup).
From a horseman’s perspective, the advantages of sand are obvious:
- it cushions impact and reduces joint stress;
- it builds stamina and strength through resistance;
- it allows long, straight runs impossible inland;
- it is self-maintaining and requires no engineering;
- and it offers a forgiving surface for loading and
unloading animals.
Anyone who has handled horses will
recognise a basic truth: no one
willingly lands a valuable horse from a hard pier if a beach is available.
Shallow-draft vessels, run gently
aground on a shelving beach at low tide, allow animals to disembark forward and
under control. This method was used across the ancient world and continued well
into the medieval period. It leaves little archaeological trace: which may
explain why coastal cavalry logistics are so often invisible to us.
Between Scarborough and Filey lie
long stretches of gently sloping sand: South Sands, Cayton Bay, Lebberston,
Hunmanby, and Filey itself. These beaches are not merely scenic; they are natural cavalry landing infrastructure.
As Malton/Delgovicia housed a cavalry ala, as
archaeology suggests, then access to sand would have been an asset, not an
afterthought:
- for seasonal conditioning;
- for recuperation after exertion;
- for acclimatisation of horses expected to operate on
poor ground;
- and, potentially, for receiving animals or personnel
arriving by sea.
This is not uniquely Roman. Gaulish
and British cavalry traditions long predate the Empire, and Roman forces were
pragmatic borrowers of local practice. Sand as a training surface, and beaches
as temporary corridors, fit comfortably within both Roman and indigenous
equestrian cultures.
Seen this way, the coast is not
simply a defensive edge. It is a working
surface: a place of movement, exercise, exchange, and care.
This perspective also reframes
nearby high-status sites (such as the Eastfield complex): estates with access
to water, space, and labour are precisely what one would expect in support of
mobile forces operating between inland routes and the sea.
Praetorio
Revisited: Function, Not City
With this in mind, it becomes easier
to let go of an unhelpful question: “Where was the lost Roman city of
Praetorio?”
Creighton’s work encourages a
different approach. Praetorio need not denote an urban centre at all. It
may instead describe:
- a staging point,
- a place of oversight,
- a managed coastal location,
- or a terminus where inland routes met maritime
practice.
Creighton points out that the word
is elsewhere used in that sense. In such a model, Praetorio is not a
destination so much as the starting, coastal, node: one that makes sense only in relation to:
- Malton/Delgovicia and the Derwent basin,
- the east–west route to York,
- coastal signaling systems,
- nearby landing beaches,
- and supporting estates or way stations.
Scarborough and Filey, in this
reading, are not rival claimants to a “lost city,” but neighbouring components
of a single functional landscape.
Guard Rails (Stated
Clearly)
It is worth being explicit about
what this exploration does not claim.
- It does not assert the existence of a large
Roman city called Praetorio at Scarborough.
- It does not claim continuous imperial
administration after 410.
- It does not relocate Praetorio with certainty.
- It does not propose Byzantine control of
Britain.
- It does not override archaeological method or
peer-reviewed caution.
What it does propose is
narrower:
- that the York–Malton/Delgovicia–coast corridor functioned as a
persistent axis of movement;
- that Roman, Sub-Roman, and later groups reused this
axis pragmatically;
- that coastal sites in East Yorkshire were part of a
working system, not isolated anomalies;
- that sand, beaches, and open ground mattered as much as
stone;
- and that some historical questions remain open not
because they are fanciful, but because the evidence was never meant to
survive.
It is an attempt to:
- respect the caution of scholars like Creighton while
taking their implications seriously;
- notice when geography keeps producing the same answers
across centuries;
- and suggest that Scarborough and Filey belong in
conversations from which they are too often excluded.
Stories do not need to assert facts
to be responsible. They need to raise coherent
possibilities grounded in evidence and restraint.
This is an invitation to conversation, not a demand for
revision.
Why This Matters
(Again)
When we imagine history only through
what survives in stone, we privilege the permanent over the practical. But much
of human activity: especially movement, care, training, and retreat: leaves
little trace.
Songs endure where structures
vanish.
Road corridors outlast administrations.
Beaches remember hoofprints no archaeologist can excavate.
If this essay does anything, I hope
it encourages us to look again at the coast: not as a margin, but as a continuity.
Why I Care (and Why
a Song Led Me Here)
Scarborough Fair survives because it could be adapted: because singers
across centuries found room to place their own losses, bargains, and
contradictions within it.
The landscape it names has done
something similar.
This corridor from York to the sea
has carried:
- armies and traders,
- healers and singers,
- retreating soldiers,
- and people who never wrote their names down.
The sea remembers.
The land remembers.
It is human to argue about what they mean.
That, perhaps, is reason enough to
keep asking the questions.
Endnote: Method, Collaboration, and Acknowledgement
I found John Creighton’s paper towards the end
of my analysis of the corridor. It is a brilliant piece of scholarship. I was
able to finally read The Place Names of East Yorkshire in the Roman Period in the great reading room of the Australian
National Library, at Canberra, where it had been misplaced for many years. My
thanks go to the librarians that finally rediscovered it.
This essay emerged through an extended process of informal discussion,
revision, and testing of ideas, including dialogue with an AI-assisted research
and writing tool. That collaboration was used not as a source of facts or
conclusions, but as a means of stress-testing assumptions, clarifying argument
structure, and maintaining explicit guard rails between evidence, inference,
and speculation. All interpretations, emphases, and remaining errors are my
own.
The argument also draws on conversations with
friends and colleagues over many years, on practical experience with horses and
landscape, and on the willingness of scholars such as John Creighton to
unsettle long-held certainties without rushing to replace them. If the piece
succeeds at all, it does so by treating uncertainty not as a defect, but as a
historically honest condition: one that invites further conversation rather
than closure.
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