Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[MonsGraupius]

John1
[quote pid='338157' dateline='1470731428']
Is it possible that this set of ditches under the A1 directly south of Water Newton village is another camp? 

Yes. The cropmarks are known and have been plotted continuing north of the A1. If we could see more of it we might have a better idea, but an early camp seems quite possible.



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I've been looking at numerous sites on google earth where you can see the camps on aerial photos and I have to say that almost without exception, it's impossible to see them on google earth. One problem is that the lines that show up are amazingly thin so that they are only visible on a PC screen when the camp fits the screen. A few other pointers are curved corners, gates and general "common sense" locations in terms of terrain.

Looking at this image, I see nothing in the crop marks that suggests a Roman encampment. Instead, when I look I see parallel lines all heading NNE plus some other parallel lines in the field heading W-E.

Looking at the elevation, google earth tells me the east "corner" is a mere 12m above sea level over 30 miles from open sea and that the river is 11m above sea level. That's a gradient of 1 in 4000, which means the area must be prone to flooding and extremely flat.

Then when I check, if I move ANY direction from the SE corner, Google Earth shows and INCREASE in height. This suggests that this SE corner would be a bog without man-made drainage to the river.

Given the parallel lines, the general terrain, the lack of features that would suggest a camp (Romans don't tend to build camps on low-lying bogging ground when there is a rise immediately to the west), I would say that there's no chance this is a Roman camp and it is very likely to be the result of drainage.