depending on your definition you find us on the largest hill fort in Europe certainly the largest
in Britain it measures at least a thousand meters east west it's immense 600 years before the romans
invaded this was started to be converted into something resembling what it looks like today
i can't quite get over the the size of the earthworks here it's immense
now we're on the south side of this hill fort and just down in the valley there
is the south winterbourne river and no doubt the tribe that were living here at the time a
celtic tribe they'd made use of that river and they'd bought it up at the trackway
just to the west and that it entered from the west side now 600 years later when the romans
arrived in 43 a.d and thereafter well they had armies they had horses to feed and water
so in taking over this hill fort at 130 metres above sea level they'd have had the same problem
the water and how they get it up and down here to to quench the first of their armies
arguably that's why the romans decided not to settle there on maiden castle the
hill fort instead they decided to go a mile or so inland to what we refer to today as
Dorchester now Dorchester was sat right next to the river from so water problem solved
right well no because Dorchester is still at the 70 to 80 meter contour line and the river frome
is still 30 meters below us so that will do for the likes of me and you who can walk up and down
that slope but what about the upper class of roman society because we need to provide them
with baths so there must be a better solution indeed there was now the romans were a clever
bunch and they didn't do things without reason and now they had good reason they
had a fully fledged town and settlement of dorchester and they wanted to impress the
people in power with some fancy bits like some baths to do that you know good supply of water
now there was a short-term solution albeit wasn't necessarily a painless one
may break the back or two of one of their slaves the answer would be to build this the
very thing we're walking along now a man-made channel that would carry water in a steady flow
right up the valley to where the river from would meet the 80 meter contour
now that's seven miles away as a crow fly so if you follow the contour of the land wiggling
in and out well that's about eight to fifteen miles welcome to the dorchester roman aqueduct
and thanks to a chap called david who has helped give us some context now this is a
map of the area you can see dorchester on the right and in red is the 80 meter contour
against the blue of the river from now way over to the west up the frome valley
our river and the 80 meter contour finally meet we'll come back to there shortly so having left
poundbury hill fort and we're now heading west up the frome valley to try and find more examples
of what's left of this aqueduct and here we are with perhaps one or two of the most famous bits
in this unplowed field and you can see the the way they carved it out of the landscape here
it's still here for all to see some 2000 year old earthworks that's a wonderful sight now
the reason i was vague early when i said 8 to 15 miles it's for good reason because this product
has perhaps more contradictions when researching it than any project of research to date you see
the length of the aqueduct is one that's caused quite a lot of controversy in the last 25 years
so as you may have just seen there's many places where this aqueduct is lost to houses to plowed
fields and i'm just climbing up an embankment here and i'm used to climbing up in embankments
where there's a railway at the top or maybe an old canal embankment but today as you know i'm
doing something completely different and here we are as suspected 80 meter contour in these woods
is this beautiful section of what would have been carrying water around about 2
000 years ago lots of wild garlic about really really beautiful little stretch of wood here
so
so this is notton and we're now quite far west along the throne valley and with the 85 contour
meter level now it's quite important because we're just above the river from so this was
believed for fairly obvious reasons that this was a rough starting point for the aqueduct no traces
have been found here but it would be quite easy to cut a channel in the side of the river sluice that
off um and there you have it there's your flow of water whenever you want it but that changed
over time and if we head back in the direction we came from to the east we'll tell you why
so as we head back west we're trying to find nunnery mead which isn't a million miles away
from where we were just back in notton munnary mead has a roman villa so that certainly adds up
as to could be the potential starting point of this aqueduct but first of all it's important
that we mention how this aqueduct was built well obviously it was dug out but then you've
got to remember it's really important to know that all of this land around here is chalk
so if you just let water flow in it well it's going to seep into the talk it's very porous
that wouldn't work so they lined it with wood and then the wood they lined apparently with a clay
now how true that is i don't know because there's not much clay around it would have taken some
effort to get the clay to this aqueduct now again that's important for a huge point
that we're going to come up to very shortly but first of all nunnery mead and the roman villa
so nunnery mead 1796 there are some excavations here and in all of these earth works they found
a lot of mosaics proper roman mosaic floors that gives you an insight into what this place was
apparently it was a a private residence now we're now at the 80 81 meter contour level so let's just
have a quick look by the river just over here and i'll show you something we've just seen
so what we thought we found here is the channel now it's 80 meter contour we're level with the
river from over there so it'd be perfect but actually when you look at this it goes
down and down and down so it doesn't really fit with our 80 meter contour level now the issue
we've got between here and a couple of miles back towards the east the issue we've got is
there are no remains of this aqueduct let's go back another mile or two further east
to frampton just south of frampton and we'll turn everything we've just said up on his head
so we just saw a sign back there saying roman aqueduct that's really curious
because i was about to turn this video on its head and tell you that between 1998 and 2005
bournemouth university conducted a study and they excavated a large proportion of a
valley ahead of us just south of frampton and they found evidence that there was a
dam now the dam headed off a brook church brook which is a tributary to the river froome and that
was instead the source of this aqueduct so instead of it going back as far as notton or nunnery mead
because there is no evidence of the aqueduct back that way instead of that they said that
it was all taken from the dam that they made ahead of us that sounds crazy for a
number of reasons which we'll discuss just down the bottom of the hill in the valley
so here we are at today's uh potentially most important site and ahead of me behind the camera
right now is a lovely view up the valley and it is a a fairly short valley maybe saw 400 meters now
i wouldn't have been able to see this view in around about 80 a.d so sort of 30 40 years
after the romans came because this is according to bournemouth university where they built the site
of a dam so instead of this view up the valley i'd be looking at this huge dam in front of me
from the top of that dam they apparently took water um and started the aqueduct at the 80
meter contour now we're at the 80 meter contour here so somehow they got the water they say from
top feed down and then followed on to the aqueduct off down to the east of the valley so you've got
the site up there of the dam sort of right here in front of us up into the valley now
you can see but apparently 150 a.d it collapsed and they said you can tell that because there's
sort of spoiled heaps if you will from when it collapsed and the water pushed it forward so
potentially this short healer here in front of us that we're looking at could be the the soil
from that now there's a lot of problems with this theory in my sort of uneducated
unacademic head so let's just walk back over this way and i'll tell you exactly what we mean
so that theory kind of makes sense to a degree because there are there is no evidence of the
aqueduct further to the west of here and yeah this is a beautiful valley that could potentially be
quite easily damned from the church brook but then you ask yourself a couple of questions like well
the the aqueduct itself was lined it was lined with other clay or so it was form of cement from
lime so what did they line the dam with surely that needs to be lined too otherwise it's going to
seep into the chalk i don't quite understand that so maybe there needs a little bit more explanation
here and of course the other one thing that the study said is 3 600 liters of water per minute
could be sent down the aqueduct well looking at church brook today in the middle of may well again
that doesn't quite add up because it's not even flowing at the moment so still a few questions to
be had here what do you think do you think the the aqueduct came from the valley here damned off or
do you think that maybe it came from the nunnery mead and notton certainly if i was an engineer at
the time i think i'd have chosen the easier option which would have been to uh use the river froome
right up there back at nanowrimo where you could just tap into the side of it sluice it off you go
so as we make our way back up the hill in this wonderful little nature reserve we found
just saying goodbye to the aqueduct and the start of the aqueduct where the dam was
in this in the theoretical dam in this field behind us
and of course really enjoyed today something completely different to what we normally do
who knew there was even an aqueduct left in this country i think there's a handful sort of half a
dozen maybe left so maybe that'll involve another little map series in itself if you've enjoyed what
we've done today click on the subscribe button if you haven't already and uh drop a comment and
tell us what you think what did you think the fury was does it start back up at nunnery mead
or does it start here in the valley we'd love to hear your thoughts and theories because you
guys do that quite a lot but for the meantime we'll bid you farewell thanks for watching
you