Leintwardine

Leintwardine is a small to mid-size village and civil parish in north Herefordshire, England, close to the border with Shropshire. History Roman A popular misconception is that the Romans called the village Branogenium. Branogenium in fact refers to a Roman fort roughly south of the village. The Roman name for Leintwardine was actually Bravonium. The High Street in Leintwardine is on the same line as the Roman road known (to the English) as Watling Street. (The modern-day street in the village named Watling Street runs to the east of the original Watling Street, roughly on the alignment of the eastern edge of the Roman settlement.) The name Bravonium, as it appears in the Antonine Itinerary (Iter XII), is derived from the Romano-British word for quern. This suggests that there was either a hill or rock formation here that looked like a quern, or that there were quern quarries nearby. In the Upper Silurian series, the Leintwardine beds outcrop in the area and these consist of a calcareous sandstone which would have been suitable for making querns of a finer grade than could be obtained from Millstone grit, which was commonly used. Querns of this calcareous sandstone have been found at Viroconium.