Margary numbers are the numbering scheme developed by the historian

Ivan Margary Ivan Donald Margary, (1896–1976) was a British historian who, during his lifetime, became the leading authority on Roman roads in Great Britain. He wrote numerous works on Roman roads of which his most influential and complete was ''Roman R ...

to catalogue known and suspected

Roman roads in Britain Roman roads in Britannia were initially designed for military use, created by the Roman Army during the nearly four centuries (AD 43–410) that Britannia was a province of the Roman Empire. It is estimated that about of paved trunk ...

in his 1955 work ''The Roman Roads of Britain''. They remain the standard system used by archaeologists and historians to identify individual Roman roads within Britain. It is not known how the Romans identified the roads they built within Britain, and well-known names such as

Watling Street Watling Street is a historic route in England that crosses the River Thames at London and which was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the Middle Ages. It was used by the ancient Britons and paved as one of the main ...

and the Fosse Way largely date from the Anglo-Saxon period, are sometimes ambiguous or duplicated, and cover only a small proportion of the known network. Margary's numbering system follows similar conventions to modern road numbering systems. He divided roads into three categories: ''Main Routes'' are given single-digit numbers, ''Principal Branches'' two-digit numbers and ''Minor Branches'' three digit numbers. Individual sections of longer routes are identified by adding letters to the route number, for example

Dere Street Dere Street or Deere Street is a modern designation of a Roman road which ran north from Eboracum (York), crossing the Stanegate at Corbridge (Hadrian's Wall was crossed at the Portgate, just to the north) and continuing beyond into what is n ...

(Margary 8) is divided into sections 8a, 8b, 8c, 8d and 8e. Double letters are sometimes used to indicate parallel or alternative routes. Lesser roads in particular areas are given similar numbers – for example many roads in Wales have numbers in the 60s. Margary's cataloguing system has been criticised as being essentially arbitrary in several respects. Margary's hierarchy of routes is not necessarily that of the original designers or users of the network. Evidence for whether the Romans considered different lengths of road to form parts of a single route can be ambiguous, so the fact that they are given a single Margary number can be misleading. Margary's network also largely consists of roads built by the Romans, not necessarily roads used by the Romans, who may have continued to use native British trackways. Margary's system is nonetheless widely used for its practicality, and the awarding of a Margary number to a route came to be considered a hallmark of authenticity among researchers in the field.

Main routes and principal branches

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{cite book, last=Davies, first=Hugh, title=Roman Roads in Britain, year=2008, publisher=Shire Books, location=Oxford, isbn=9780747806905 Roman roads in Britannia