. The Victoria history of the county of Hertford. Natural history. CELTIC AND ROMANO- BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE BEFORE the Roman occupation and indeed till long afterwards the south-eastern part of Hertfordshire, lying on the London clay, and a little to the north and west of the clay, was a part of a dense woodland which also covered Middlesex and the south-west of Essex.' Few Roman remains have been found in this district, and, except along the line of Ermine Street, it probably remained comparatively uninhabited till it was cleared and settled two or three centuries before the Norman Conquest.'
. The Victoria history of the county of Hertford. Natural history. CELTIC AND ROMANO- BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE BEFORE the Roman occupation and indeed till long afterwards the south-eastern part of Hertfordshire, lying on the London clay, and a little to the north and west of the clay, was a part of a dense woodland which also covered Middlesex and the south-west of Essex.' Few Roman remains have been found in this district, and, except along the line of Ermine Street, it probably remained comparatively uninhabited till it was cleared and settled two or three centuries before the Norman Conquest.' The rest of the county is on chalk, which on the north-eastern side is covered with boulder clay and to the west, on the Chiltern Hills, by ' clay with flints.' Both these surface-soils, but particu- larly the former, are known for their fertility, and consequently these districts have long been famed as corn-growing lands. This may be the reason why they were selected for settlement by the Belgic tribes who overran the south-eastern quarter of Britain about 200 and are known to have been agriculturists.' This -,. t r- c c o. 1 • 1 Top of Late Celtic Sword Scabbard people came from Gallia Belgica, which from Verulamium covered the northern part of Gaul, from Paris to the Rhine, and seem to have settled here by tribes. They continued an intimate intercourse with their kinsmen across the Channel and had a higher standard of civilization than the other inhabitants of this island. They were the first to introduce into Britain a coinage such as was in use in Belgic Gaul, and certain elegantly-shaped cordoned urns seem to be confined to the district settled by them. In general, they shared with the rest of Britain the Late Celtic art, principally in bronze, showing elaborate designs of the returning spiral of which that on the top of a sword scabbard lately found at Verulamium is a good example. The orna- ment on it is characteristically Late Celtic, possibly of the earlier p
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