have we found something that nobody on this planet has found before?
honestly i can't tell you how excited i am about this what we've just potentially found.
about a year ago we made a video from the hampshire whiltshire borders
here in the south of the uk about a roman road that took an immediate and unique
deviation from its course now that video has been troubling me ever since you see
roman roads wouldn't do that if you wanted to go around a hazard be it a lake or a cliff edge or
a steep valley in this instance you'd simply take a more direct route around that hazard
the idea that a roman surveyor would arrive at the top of a hill like this and decide to take
an immediate deviation to the west implies no planning whatsoever and that's just not roman
so to give you a little context about where we are in today's video we are taking a look at
roman road 43 which connected winchester in the south of the uk up to marlborough and beyond here
is google in all its 3d glory looking south at winchester and heading backwards along the route
north just look at this beautiful straight line which leads us up to the point of today's video
now the straight line just stops around here where there is a massive deviation it goes all
the way around the valley along the causeway until you get back to here when we get back on track
so if you look at any roman road map of great Britain you will find nothing like
this deviation a complete semi-circle around its straight-line course now
the key wording here is immediate deviation because in the previous
video we made so many people pointed out that roman rose did go around things
so before we come to what discoveries we may or may not have made about this let's have a look and
see what evidence actually exists that this roman road did indeed take this immediate deviation
west and head along the duke causeway what evidence did you find um well there's the os map
well it's not really evidence is it what's the source well the source for the os map because
they're quite detailed in their sources is Magary and Magary said the road took a deviation here
anything else nothing okay so os maps themselves did actually add the modern road a long tube
causeway is one meter above the surrounding land and this may well conceal the agar so we're very
close now to the immediate deviation on the south side of causeway where it allegedly took its
immediate path left so this is where you're going to try and be smart and prove the point that there
was no deviation well no because i think unless anybody actually physically digs up the road or
under the road or whatever you're never going to really find out and no one as we discussed earlier
no one has done that but there are a few things which do counter the argument for the deviation
so back when all the evidence had been gathered by os for their assertion that
this is exactly where the roman road went bear in mind airplanes had only just been invented
so the use of modern lidar to try and assess the landscape now has dramatically changed things this
one is from dot houseprice.io and is a southern section of our semicircle looking south south east
top middle of the image here is a straight part of the roman road heading south towards
Winchester and off to the right or the west went the curve deviation now i played about
with the light settings here as you can do and unbelievably when we got the sun in just
the right place we saw what we were convinced was a terrace in the hill i can't tell you how
excited this made me a terrace is basically a route down a hill that romans would take
so could this actually suggest that they did in fact carry on here in a straight line
and not take the deviation along the causeway around the semicircle there was only really one
way we thought we could find that and that was to have a look on the ground
and that's exactly where you find us now we're walking along
what is actually grim's ditch now grim's ditch is an ancient route way
across the south of England and that route way pre-dates the roman road by around 500 years now
we're slightly off of the top of the ridge we're slightly off of the top of the ridge to cause
way there because groomers ditch did that they took around about 100 yards off of the causeways
now what we're looking for is what we found on the lidar which is a possible terrace for
the roman road should it have at least tried to carry on going north on its original intended
okay route very close now to where we think we may find a terrace of a roman road
there's another huge great pit there so why is that pit there
to 300 yards away from the causeway what's that pit for that makes me wonder if they
did actually take this route instead of the causeway at least to start with perhaps why
else would there be a pit there there's no other buildings or houses anywhere near us
now if the roman road did post date grim's ditch and if the roman road did go straight here
at least try to at the start before they built it properly
we should find a break in grim's ditch we should find that they went straight through grim's ditch
and then built at what would be a terrace down the side of the hill into the valley
there rebecca we found it that's that's what we found on the lidar
and it does break through grim's ditch
have we found something that nobody has found before have we found well somebody must have
found it before but you know nobody's actually made a point of it we found what we think
could be part of the roman road that went north to south and didn't actually take
the two causeway deviation yeah it's risen above it's risen above groom's ditch
and it goes down the side of the hill in exact alignment with the roman road so what we think
we've found is maybe and this is only speculation science stop when speculation starts this is only
speculation is a potential at least a an attempt at getting down this hill now if it was an attempt
that would explain why they had the immediate deviation because maybe they they thought we
can do this route but perhaps the conditions weren't um good for that so what they decided
to do was then take that immediate deviation around two causeway but if you come this way
right here is a break in grim's ditch this is exactly where we expected to find that breaking
grim ditch and this alignment right here on my arms goes that way south to Winchester an
exact straight line to the roman road south that way up towards Marlborough or Swindon
um north now this fits perfectly there is there what looks like a terrace now the terrace is what
they used to get down the side of a hill or an embankment or something like that
could this be the terrace that goes down the side of the hill where they attempted to cut through
this big valley here and continue their straight line that attempt may have failed and that would
explain why they did take an immediate deviation they hadn't planned for the failure of this road
here and therefore they had to take an immediate deviation and took the four or five mile route all
the way around to causeway with such immediateness so this could be it this could be the break that
we've been looking for to explain why there was an immediate deviation that to me is just brilliant
um so as we as we walk back along grim's ditch we're just discussing what we could we could
make of the conclusion of this we're not experts we're completely um this is completely conjecture
about what we're discussing but i would suggest that maybe that terrace that we found was perhaps
an early attempt that they may have used to get down this hill and then perhaps as rebecca said
after maybe adverse weather or conditions floods whatever they decided that actually
it wasn't working and they had to take the immediate deviation that would completely um
let us understand why they did take an immediate deviation and didn't sort of plan ahead
um who knows but i hope you've enjoyed enjoyed this little um
uh soiree sorry is that word is it web i'm not sure it works with what we do anyway
thanks for watching give us a subscribe give us a like if you enjoyed the video
and comment down below with your thoughts as well we'd love to hear them yes please do
um i can't i can't contain myself i'm not going to say anything else about this ditch
and my excitement but let it not be said that i'm excited let it be set i'm very excited