Boudicca - In Search of the Defile

In AD 61 Queen Boudicca led an army of tens of thousands of warriors that revolted against Rome and ransacked Camulodunum (Colchester) Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans) killing everyone in their path. Thousands of people were said to have been slaughtered before her vast army was stopped by the Roman General Suetonius Paulinus and his legions. Roman historians inform us that up to 80,000 Britons were slain on the battlefield.

Writer Peter Sweeney looks at the many battle site suggestions and argues that the battle could not possibly have occurred in the midlands as some scholars suggest and argues that the battle must have taken place nearer to St Albans.

Peter examines the Dunstable Downs, a chalk escarpment on the north-eastern part of the Chilterns at the crossroads where Watling Street meets with the Icknield Way and just 12 miles from St Albans.'

The Dunstable Downs must be the place' Peter says, 'It retains a deep 'Defile' and has rising slopes on both sides that would have protected Paulinus' flanks. The hill also opens out onto an open plain at the base which could be where Boudica's baggage train was situated where the non-combatants placed themselves to watch the spectacle. - Exactly what Tacitus describes in his Annals.' he says.

Peter even points out a solitary mound on the edge of the plain which he believes could be Boudicca's resting place.

The reader is left debating whether we should investigate this site further.