The Fosse Way was one of the great organising lines of Roman Britain, a frontier before it became a road, and a road before it became a spine of settlement. Its long, unwavering course from Exeter to Lincoln is so straight that it still dictates the alignment of modern lanes, parish boundaries and even county edges. Yet its western end, in Somerset and Devon, is the most complex and least understood part of its story. Here the Fosse Way was not a single line but a set of choices forced on the Romans by the landscape, the sea, the marshes of the Axe valley and the great barrier of Selwood Forest.
In Somerset the Fosse Way is at its most classical: a direct line from Ilchester to Bath, running with the confidence of an army road across open country. South of Ilchester the character changes. The Roman engineers were confronted by the deep, wooded combes of the Blackdown Hills and the marshy floodplain of the Axe. Instead of forcing a single engineered line through difficult terrain, they allowed the road to divide. One branch continued south‑west towards Honiton and Exeter; the other turned south‑east towards Axminster and Axmouth. Both were true Roman roads, both served military and administrative purposes, and both remained in use for centuries after the legions had gone.
The Axminster–Axmouth branch is the most distinctive. It ran down the valley of the Axe, crossing the river at the point where Axminster later grew up, and continued to the sheltered harbour at Axmouth. This was not a minor spur but a strategic outlet to the Channel, used for supply, communication and the movement of troops. The Romans needed a port on the south coast that was not exposed like Lyme and not as distant as Dorchester. Axmouth, then a usable harbour before later silting, met that need. The road that served it was built with the same straightness and purpose as the rest of the Fosse Way, and its line can still be followed through Kilmington, Shute and Colyton.
The Exeter branch, by contrast, was the long western arm of the Fosse Way proper. From Ilchester it ran south‑west across the high ground, avoiding the worst of the marshes, and headed towards Honiton before turning to Exeter. This was the road that connected the Roman civitas at Isca Dumnoniorum with the rest of the province. It carried administrators, merchants, soldiers and the slow, steady traffic of an imperial frontier. Its alignment survives in modern roads, hedgerows and parish boundaries, and its influence on settlement patterns in East Devon is unmistakable.
Axminster was the hinge between these two western arms. It was the point where the Fosse Way divided, where the river could be forded, and where the Roman military could control movement along the valley. The town’s later importance as a market centre, a crossing of routes and a place of early Christian influence owes much to this Roman decision. Kilmington, lying just west of the junction, grew up on the line of the Axmouth branch and remained tied to it long after the Roman administration had vanished. The later medieval road network, the turnpike system and even the eighteenth‑century mail coach routes all followed the Roman logic: Axminster as the hub, Axmouth as the outlet, Exeter as the administrative centre.
The western end of the Fosse Way was never a single fixed line. South of Ilchester the Roman engineers had to deal with the marshes of the Axe valley and the barrier of the Blackdown Hills, so the road divided. One branch ran south‑west towards Honiton and Exeter, keeping to the higher, drier ground. The other turned south‑east towards Axminster and Axmouth, following the valley floor to reach the sheltered harbour at the river mouth. Axminster became the natural hinge between the two routes: a controlled river crossing, a junction of roads and a secure point from which the Romans could reach either the administrative centre at Exeter or the coastal outlet at Axmouth. Kilmington lay directly on this Axmouth branch, which explains why later medieval and coaching‑era roads continued to follow the same alignment long after the Roman administration had disappeared.
