A very informative website entitled ‘Roads of Roman Britain, A Gazetteer’ gives lots of details about Roman roads in different regions. The Yorkshire region is shown as having had many. One interesting reference given is where the Rev. E. Maude Cole contributed an article on the Roman Road from Stamford Bridge to Brough in the Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society, 1899 in which he describes this Roman Road as ‘The only certain Roman Road that I know of in the East Riding’ (this in 1899 of course). His personal field excavations had revealed a ‘layer of mortar a foot below the surface (in 1899) and 15 feet wide’, this from various locations. He also mentioned that in the woodland and parkland of Houghton Hall (s.p.b.), north-west of South Newbald, trees would not grow along the line of the Roman Road, nor hedges in other locations. Whether this is still true or not I know not.
Clearly natural regeneration (or in this case managed regeneration) will be effected by the remains of previously built structures below the surface. To overcome this problem, and to ensure that the root ball of a young tree can grow into free draining soil, the correct practice nowadays is where large holes are quarried in the topsoil and backfilled with top soil when the young tree is planted (at the moment I cannot remember the correct name for this way of doing it). At the time of writing (Feb. 2024) young trees are being planted in this way in the reconstruction of Queens Gardens, Hull (I’m choosing at this point to turn aside from my horror at an avenue of mature lime tree have been felled in this process). At Minerva Pier, also in Hull, the young trees there were planted in the same way as part of the improved flood defences scheme of work, they are doing ok despite their ‘coastal location’.
In fact tree root systems, once the tree has got going, are capable of diverting round obstacles in the ground in quite an effective way.