During the Roman period, what is now the Strand – running along the southern boundary of the area that was to become Covent Garden – was part of the route to Silchester, known as "Iter VII" on the Antonine Itinerary.[7][8] Excavations in 2006 at St Martin-in-the-Fields revealed a late Roman grave, suggesting the site had been sacred since at least 410 AD.[9] The area to the north of the Strand was long thought to have remained as unsettled fields until the 16th century, but theories by Alan Vince and Martin Biddle that there had been an Anglo-Saxon settlement to the west of the old Roman town of Londinium were borne out by excavations in 1985 and 2005.