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X. An Essay towards a Discovery of the great Ikineld-Street of the Romans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

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Extract

Whatever ground there may be for supposing the city of Winchester to have been built near 1000 years before Christ, there seems to be no doubt of its having been a Roman station, and probably one of their cities; a pavement of brick, and coins of Constantine the Great, and others, were discovered in digging the foundations of the palace, which was begun by Charies II. It is said to have had formerly six gates, four principal of which still subsist. The Britons called it Caer-Gwent, or the White City, from its chalky situation, and it is agreed to be the Roman Venta Belgarum of Ptolemy and Antoninus.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1787

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References

page 88 note [a] Camden, Brit. vol. I. p. 215.

page 89 note [b] N° 5 seems rather to belong to this Iter. Alresford and Alton are in a line to Farnham, but very much out of the way from Winchester to Silchester, Vindomis. Dr. Stukeley makes Farnham to be Calleva, instead of Wallingford as Camden, or Henley as Talbot, interprets it, and, that it may answer that name, makes the road from thence to Winchester in the 15th Iter go round by Silchester, a long and needless circuit, when there was a straight road through Alton and Alresford. But Silchester would come naturally in the way from either Wallingford or Henley to Winchester.

page 89 note [c] Camd. vol. I. p. 214.

page 89 note [d] The turnpike road having taken a new course, this is no longer the common way to Alton. In the Gent. Mag. for 1783, p. 324, it is said, that in a wood called Monks wood near Alton were lately discovered deep trenches and evident remains of an old camp.

page 90 note [e] This seems to be the 15th Iter, rather than N° 1.

page 90 note [f] Chute park was made a park by Sir Philip Medows about the year … of the lands that were known by the name of Escourt, a place of great antiquity, and distinguished in all former maps of Wilts, as if it were a town or village. This park is all in Wilts, and when Sir Philip made it, he got a writ of ad quod damnum to make the East bound in a straight line, thereby taking in this road, which now makes a grand gravel terrace walk. It is raised in a high ridge, on the summit of a high hill, and commands a view of the Ifle of Wight and Salisbury steeple, the former at more than forty, the latter at more than twenty miles distance. The basis of this causeway is a high bed of flint; the next stratum is like the cinder and ashes of a blacksmith's forge, but from whence such a quantity could be collected is truly marvellous. I analysed it by washing it in a bason of water, and by often decanting the black ablutions whilst any colour stained the water, what had looked like the cinder was left perfectly white at the bottom of the bason, and resembled the small fragments of marble made by the stonecutter's chippings, and much of the same grit. The sediment of the black water, being dried, made a powder like gunpowder rubbed fine, but was not at all inflammable. The upper stratum is not much less wonderful, though it is no more than a beautiful gravel, as no parts of the country near produce any such material.

page 91 note [g] From this causeway at Worthy Cow-down branches off a turnpike road for Whitchurch, Newberry, &c. And further North, near Newton Stacey, a turnpike road branches from it to Gosport and Southampton through Winchester, and a branch through Wherwell to Andover, from thence in the same direction to Weyhill, and from thence one by Everly and Devizes to Bath and Bristol; another by Amesbury to Shruton, Warminster, Froom, &c.

page 91 note [h] At Scot's-poor the Marlborough road from Andover proceeds straight on to Burbach, and thence along the Western side of Savernake forest, which it leaves at the brow of the hill, where it joins the road part of the 14th Iter from Silchester to Newberry, and passes with it, crossing the river Kennet, to Marlborough, viz. Calleva, Spinis, Cunetio.

page 91 note [i] The peasants, being persuaded that great riches were hid in this barrow about the year 1750, bestowed almost a summer's labour to dig into it; when at last they found three prodigious large stones, much of the form and size of those at Stonehenge, and probably brought, as those were, from Marlborough Downs. These stood up perpendicular, having two others of like sort laid on the tops of them, and thereby making a sepulchre, for under them was deposited one human skeleton. When I visited it, one of the men presented me with a fragment of the lower jawbone with two or three of the teeth.

page 92 note [k] In the 13th Iter of Antoninus, the copier has omitted one station, as he makes the sum to be 109 miles, but on casting up the particulars they make but 90. It makes from Durocornovio (Cirencester) to Spine but 15 miles, whereas it is in fact about 34. Wanborough seems to be the station omitted; and, if we read the Iter thus, Cirencester to Wanborough 15, Spine 19, which are very nearly the distances, it makes the particular sums added together, 109.

page 94 note [l] It was long before any Roman road could be traced beyond Little Chester near Derby to Chesterfield, but it has now been accurately done by Mr. Pegge*. He however can find nothing of it in Derbyshire beyond Chesterfield, though it is agreed that it enters the county of York near Beighton, in its way to Temple-Brough.

page 95 note * Essay on the Roman roads through the Coritani, p. 31, 32.

page 95 note [m] Plot's map still more clearly.

page 95 note [n] Essay on the four great Roman ways, at the end of the sixth volume of Leland's Itinerary.

page 96 note [o] He says it goes West to Bluberry, and near that town is visible enough; a hill between Aston and Bluberry called Bluberton, appears to have been a Roman fortification, though the works are now nearly demolished. From Bluberry to Wantage, but whether by the modern great road to Upton and Harwell, or more to the left to Chilton under the hills till we come to Lockyng, where is a raised way called Icleton-meer, pointing to Wantage, he doubts. After it passed Wantage it is called Icleton way all under the hills between them and Childrey, Sparsholt, Uffington, so under White-horse-hill, leaving Woolston and Compton on the right, thence to Ashbury and Bishopston, p. 43.