on hills, including Tasburgh Hill. Where the road follows its original course in the north of the parish we can imagine couriers of the Imperial Post galloping by, smart mule carts, merchant's pack horses, lumbering farm wagons delaying other traffic and weary pedestrians; all using the road for many of the same reasons that we do today. The possible sites of Roman farmhouses are indicated by scatters of tile fragments at three locations. Excavations in the eastern end of the churchyard in 1975 and in 1979/80 produced 3421b of Roman tile pieces and two sherds of Romano-British pottery (Point X on Map). Broken roof tiles and pottery fragments have been held to indicate a farmhouse at the top of the now defunct Figgett Lane (Point Y on Map). A third farmhouse has been inferred from tiles found at Church Wood near Rainthorpe Hall (Point Z on Map). A minor Roman road to, or passing, this farmhouse is indicated by the north-western parish boundary, once a lane, which runs in a straight line toward the corner of Church Wood. Straight lengths of parish boundaries sometimes indicate the line of a lost Roman road. Two Roman coins have been found in the village, one close to the church and the other a short way uphill from the ford near the old Horseshoes public house. Pottery, held to be Roman, has been unearthed in association with burials at Chapel Hill. Five miles north along the Roman trunk road stood the tribal capital, Venta Icenorum, which translates as 'market town of the Iceni'. The Tasburgh farms were well placed to supply produce to Venta with its town hall, forum, public baths, arena and temples. A few miles south along the trunk road, a little beyond the present day Long Stratton, was a village which had grown up around a relay station for the Imperial Post. Roman rule finally disintegrated in AD 410. Anglo-Saxons, probably already here as mercenaries, were at Venta, soon to be joined by kinfolk arriving to settle. There is evidence that the better-off Britons fled leaving their villagers to be merged into an Anglo-Saxon dominated world which had become the kingdom of East Anglia by about AD 500. The only signs of early Anglo-Saxon activity in Tasburgh are pottery fragments from the churchyard excavations indicating that this site continued to be occupied. By AD 627 East Anglia had a Christian king