Via Julia Montana and other Roman Roads in Wales
This map shows the route of the Roman road, the Via Julia Montana, which has a generally accepted section in the Tywi Valley. This section is displayed in dark blue. The conjectured full route, together with other Roman road routes throughout Wales, is shown in lighter blue.
The Via Julia Montana was part of quite an extensive Roman road network and ran from Carmarthen, through Brecon and Abergavenny, to Usk. Another route known as the Via Julia Maritima ran nearer the coast between Carleon, Neath and Carmarthen.
In 1849, Samuel Lewis noted that "the route of the road rests only on conjecture, is thought by some to have entered [the county] from Brecknockshire...and thence proceeded by Llangadog and Llandeilo-Fawr, to Carmarthen, where it joined the Via Julia Maritima". By the end of the century, OS maps plotted the route through Carmarthenshire with greater confidence. Residents in the local area continue to refer to parts of this route as "the Roman Road".
Other evidence of Roman roads has been identified, for example near Cynghordy, but much further investigation is needed. Most of the roads shown are conjectured routes based on the scholarly work of numerous experts and published as map data by the Itiner-e project. This is not necessarily exhaustive and there may have been other roads. The existence of the network is important in understanding the Roman occupation of Wales.
The well known Sarn Helen Roman road actually refers to several stretches of the network and there is some debate over the exact route. The generally accepted route is from near Conwy, south to the Dyfi Valley and past Tregaron, then south-east at Llanfair Clydogau to Llandovery and Brecon, where it turns south-west across Bannau Brycheiniog to Neath. The approximate route can be seen on the map.
The red lines shows Green GEN Cymru's proposals for new electricity lines with pylons. In the Tywi Valley especially, but also the Irfon and Teifi valleys, the construction corridors are very close to or overlap the Roman road routes. There is high risk of losing important historic evidence.
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| Steel lattice pylons lines = red, with darker individual pylon markers where known |  |
| Option B alternative mid section of Towy-Usk = pink with darker pylon markers |  |
| Wood pole overhead lines = brown, with darker pole location markers where known |  |
| Towy-Usk undeground section = purple |  |
About this map:
Route data for conjectured Roman roads is from Itiner-e digital atlas of ancient roads, by Brughmans, Pažout, de Soto and Bjerregaard Vahlstrup and licensed under CC BY 4.0
Pylon line route layer data is produced by and copyright of Deeproot Software released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. Representation is best effort and based on available information. Pylon route lines may change as planning progresses.
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