Roman Cornwall
During the time of Roman dominance in Britain, Cornwall was rather remote from the main centres of Romanisation. The Roman road system extended into Cornwall, but the only known significant Roman sites are three forts:- Tregear near Nanstallon was discovered in early 1970s, the other two found more recently at Restormel Castle, Lostwithiel (discovered 2007) and a fort near to St Andrew’s Church in Calstock (discovered early in 2007). A Roman style villa was found at Magor Farm near Camborne. Furthermore, the British tin trade had been largely eclipsed by the more convenient supply from Iberia.
Only a few Roman milestones have been found in Cornwall; two have been recovered from around Tintagel in the north (detailed below), one at Mynheer Farm (near the hillfort at Carn Brea), and another two close to St Michael's Mount one of which is preserved at Breage Parish Church. The stone at Tintagel bears an inscription to Imperator Caesar Gaius Valerius Licinius Licinianus, and the other stone at Trethevy, is inscribed to the imperial Caesars, Gallus and Volusianus.
According to Léon Fleuriot, however, Cornwall remained closely integrated with neighbouring territories by well-travelled sea routes. Fleuriot suggests that an overland route connecting Padstow with Fowey and Lostwithiel served, in Roman times, as a convenient conduit for trade between Gaul (especially Armorica) and the western parts of the British Isles.
Archaeological sites at Chysauster and Carn Euny in West Penwith and the Isles of Scilly demonstrate a uniquely Cornish 'courtyard house' architecture built in stone of the Roman period, entirely distinct from that of southern Britain, yet with parallels in Atlantic Ireland, North Britain and the Continent, and influential on the later development of stone-built fortified homesteads known in Cornwall as 'Rounds'.
Read more about this topic: Kingdom Of Cornwall
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“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)