As his latest novel about the Roman Empire is published, North Yorkshire history buff Simon Turney explains that the relics of Ancient Rome are still very much part of our lives today

Rome is all around us…

Take a stroll around Yorkshire. Yes, I know, it’s a big county, but pick a part and take a proper look. You might see old coal mines, industrial works and sadly-run down mill towns. You might see bleak, blasted dales and endless lush beautiful greenery in the deep dales between. You might see small farming communities, ruined abbeys, high peaks or great thriving commercial cities. But wherever you are, and whatever you see, you’ve clearly still seeing modern Yorkshire. You can’t find ancient Rome in that, right?

But it doesn’t take a lot to read between the lines and to see what was rather than what is. If you search Yorkshire for its Roman past, you will easily find great remains like York’s Roman baths, or Aldborough’s mosaics, or Cawthorne’s fortifications or Scarborough’s signal station. But these, impressive though they are, are just scattered remains – small reminders of a past that, though it can be hard to tell, has defined the Yorkshire in which we still live.

So imagine you’re passing through Yorkshire. Perhaps you’re on the A1 north of Boroughbridge or maybe you’re heading from York through Leeds and then west on the A64/A65… Bet you’d like to go east from York, though, to Bridlington via Wetwang instead for the lovely Wolds and the coastal breeze?

Well there’s a thing, because if you’re traveling any of those roads, or dozens of others, you’re following in Roman footsteps. The roads of Roman Britain have defined some of the more major routes we still take today. But not just the major routes - beyond that, you can look at closer road systems and see patterns two millennia in the making. Often the road systems of Roman forts and towns have left their mark directly on modern street plans. Ilkley’s Leeds Road and Brook Street follow the line of the Roman fort’s Via Praetoria and Via Principalis. Look for a cross of straight roads at the centre of a former Roman site and you can be fairly sure those roads follow the same route they did 1800 years ago. This shows how roads define our modern geography.

Now let’s look at the empire’s successor structures. In the world after Rome’s departure from Britain, the Christian church put its stamp rather heavily on the country. And like many new powers, they made sure to exhibit their authority in the most obvious way possible, by building their religious centres on top of Rome’s most important sites, often temples or amphitheatres, military headquarters, or a forum. York minster, Aldborough church and Doncaster minster all stand atop the administrative centres of Roman towns or forts. And though it’s still a mystery as to whether York had an amphitheatre, circumstantial evidence suggests it could be buried deep under the ruined Saint Mary’s Abbey which lies in the Yorkshire Museum Gardens.

So we can see roads defining lines and power places hidden beneath churches. But there’s also a lot of history buried in the names themselves. It doesn’t take a lot of work to see how the fort of Cataractonium gave its name to modern Catterick or Danum to Doncaster. Others are more cryptic, but anywhere that ends in ‘–caster’ is a Roman site, these being corruptions of the Latin ‘Castrum’ meaning ‘fort’. So Tadcaster and Doncaster (Danum-castrum, see?) become clear. And it doesn’t stop there. Other Latin elements appear all over the place. Malton’s Roman name Derventio lives on the river Derwent winding below the remains of the fort. Ilkley is arguably possibly the Olicana found on Roman maps. There is a stretch of the A1 that runs along ‘Roman Ridge’. A quick wander through Catterick village will delight a Roman fan with ‘Per Ardua Way’ leading to ‘Centurion Close’. It’s really rather hard to escape all the history, isn’t it? The Roman world is still there insisting itself upon our environment proving difficult to ignore.

Wherever you go in Yorkshire, you’re a hair’s breadth from your Roman past, and it colours your world even when you don’t see it. So let your imagination run wild. Go to Scarborough castle and walk out to the cliff edge. Here’s a late Roman signal station – the best preserved in the country. Imagine as you look north along the coast there’s a flame leaping up from the furthest headland. That’s the next signal station at Ravenscar seeking your attention. There are two more beyond that before the Tees estuary. Now turn and look south. There’s the next flame you can see from the Filey signal station. Can you picture it? Even here at the very edge of Yorkshire, standing high above the sea, you are nestled in the lap of Rome.

Take a penny out of your pocket. If you’re old enough to remember Imperial currency before the metric system and consider how a penny was marked. Why did they use ‘d’ instead of ‘p’ as in Shillings and pence (s & d)? It’s because we can’t let go of our Roman past - because the ‘d’ is for Denarius, a silver Roman coin.

Walk past the library (librum = Latin for book), to the castle (castrum = Latin for camp), say hello on the way to the vicar (vicarius = Latin for deputy). Look down the street at that Audi (Latin for ‘listen’) behind the Volvo (Latin for ‘I roll’). There is nowhere you can go where the Roman world is not still superimposed on our modern Yorkshire.

So the next time you think the ancient world is just that – buried, removed from us, just a few crumbling walls in a field – look closer. Look between the cracks, and you might be surprised at what you can see.

Darlington and Stockton Times:

Insurgency by S J A Turney (Canelo, £9.99 paperback, available from Amazon; £3.99 ebook)

• Insurgency, the fourth instalment of the Tales of the Empire, is an historical fantasy of valour, honour, and determination against all odds from the bestselling author of the Marius’ Mules novels. For 20 years, civil war has torn the Roman Empire apart, and the once proud soldiers of the Imperial army now fight as hired hands for greedy lords fighting over the remnants of a more glorious time.

Now the Empire is rising again under the benevolent reign of Emperor Kiva the Golden. Meanwhile his younger brother – the gifted warrior Quintillian – has been driven away from the Imperial Palace by an uncontrollable love for the Emperor’s wife Jala. Instead the honourable fighter chooses a life of simplicity as a sword for hire. Not all ties of loyalty can be escaped, however, and the bonds of family run deep…

• Simon Turney lives in rural North Yorkshire. A lover of Roman history, he decided to combine writing and history with a new look at Caesar's diaries, spawning the Marius’ Mules and Tales of the Empire series. When he’s not writing, he spends time visiting classical architecture and ruins. Insurgency is his 18th novel.