I tend to spend far too much time looking at Old Maps largely looking at the lines
and the marks and the features the tapestry of a millennia of footsteps that have gone before
us what made people choose this route or that route why did they take the Ridge and not this
Ridge why not the valley so many questions so this is Knook castle and although it dates back
to the Iron Age there's some really interesting finds here that are quite relevant I think just
to our West a Roman corn Stone was found just to our North here I found a Roman corn Kiln I think
a lot of this actually dates back to the Iron Age and Beyond I think even Sir Richard Hoare
in the early 1800s remarked that The Villages here are marked great cavities and black soils
and even the untrained eye will be able to pick out the villages and the streets foreign
miles from any major Roman Road if flour production was done here in Roman times
and transported to the local towns or cities or Villas then surely it would have been done closer
to a road Network wouldn't it now there are still a number of the known Roman Road networks visible
today have a look for the classic earthwork symbol on an OS map and fingers crossed you
might just find the classic Ridge of the Roman Road on the ground commonly referred to as the
agar but what about the Minor Road networks surely the Romans had more than just these main roads
my mind then went back to something I'd seen as a kid on an OS map
Roman villa not too far from my hometown
so I never really thought about that Villa again until I came across that find the corn Stone up
on kmook in wiltshire so how exactly is a villa here in North West Hampshire linked to the corn
Stone back in Wiltshire well give me a minute to explain exactly how they are, at least in my head
now the Villa is just to my right somewhere we'll try and find the location in a second
and I've walked up this trackway it's very very old there's countless species in the
Hedgerow on the right some extremely old trees and a lot of Earthworks on the side
of the hill so my mind is saying to me how exactly did the Romans that lived
here get to that point what route did they take now there's a couple of local
major Roman roads but there's still about three or four miles away in each Direction
so from the south there seemed a really obvious direct route from the portway
but before we take a look at that I guess we could best check out to see if there are
any other sites locally that might perhaps help piece this little question together
so I looked up all the archaeological records for this area and I found something which
turned the whole notion of this video upside down this is callus corner I'm about a mile
and a half Southwest of the biddeston Roman villa and ahead of me just there is a field
which in the 1960s a major excavation took place nothing remarkable to see they found
a lot of Bronze Age remains now they also found a Roman villa by in itself isn't remarkable but
yep you've guessed it another Roman villa cross this stile with a
dog gate not just a Roman villa in this field here ahead of me but also Roman
Mosaic a Roman pavement there's nothing much to see it's just a Plain field not
if any Earthworks but you're probably beginning to build a picture now because I certainly am
now you may not see that picture until we plot them all on a map here's where we've been so far
as a teaser here we are yet again on a slight Plateau near the village of clanville and yet
again another Roman villa was found just the other side of this Hedgerow here probably afforded a
lovely view to the South down the valley there was a milestone found just in the field there
if you head down to Winchester Museum you can see that today and it was uh dated with the the name
of a Roman Empress I think later in the Roman era instead of being a milestone they used to use them
as a political propaganda if you will Marcus karinas the greatest Roman Emperor or words to
that effect it turns out that between his Reign 283 A.D and 285 A.D it was almost banished from
the records as being one of the worst emperors tells you a little bit about the rain he had
okay so let's stop teasing you why have all these Villas given me such a cause to Waffle
about them to the extent I have let's plot them on a map now as I was researching this
one at a time wow I was quite staggered as to the pattern it was forming before
me they seemed to form a circle more or less uniforming gap between them
so there's just one more to plot on that map and that one would seem to be the one that
solves the puzzle it's a real eye-opener we'll come back to that very shortly but
in the meantime none of this is actually helping I know this is helping us solve the
mystery what a Roman Road B Road looks like you see with one Villa oh they seemingly be
one or maybe two routes down to the main Roman Road it should be quite easy to find
when you've got half a dozen Villas now all of a sudden that becomes a little bit more complex
foreign you may have worked out why the corn Stone and the corn Kilns up on the Hills at
Nook have been bothering me now bothering is probably the wrong word but given the
relatively remote location of those Chuck lowlands up there I decided to visit the
village just in the valley about a mile further south and the Fordham Point here at heytesbury
So a while back somebody suggested to us that they'd found an old Roman Milestone somewhere here
near the Fording point now I've had a really good search around here and I can't find anything at
all there's a few blocks there that could be down on the floor there's about three forwarding points
here that go on through the woods there and I've searched high and low I can't see anything but it
does indicate to us that potentially here is where the Romans cross the road headed south from their
their grain workings maybe up on the hill just to our North really wish I could find that stone
Was there a Ford
down at heytesbury, well it doesn't really matter the point is they did
have to get back to the Roman Road Network to supply either the local economy or the
economy further filled perhaps down as far as Salisbury now to do that they had to get
down to Roman Road 45. now that was about seven or eight miles south of that point
so a quick scan of the likely routes heading south here from HP using our traditional OS
map gives us a couple of options Southwest from HP along a Ridgeway giving us a nice alignment
towards serum but I couldn't find any evidence on the archaeological records here of any Roman
occupation now that's not to say that it wasn't used but we kind of want something tangible here
so this is a second route south from hates were in the Ford back there and it was the
least likely of the two before I started doing a little bit of research and actually it turns
out it's the more likely of the two I'll come to that shortly because there's something at the top
of the hill it's hugely important and does tell us that this is a Roman B Road in the meantime
somebody recently pointed out to me that when you're talking about an ancient trackway if you
take a hundred meter stretch count the number of different Native species within the Hedgerow
well you can times that by 100 and that gives you the age approximately of that
trackway so I think I've done 100 meters here I've counted at least 15 different species so
that would mean it's at least 1500 years old well that certainly works with the theory
it's Karen's at the top of the hill I'll show you exactly what we're talking about
foreign I've walked about two miles south of tytherington and heytesbury where the forward
was and just the other side or next to where the barn is now that's flapping about in the
wind well that was a sight of a Roman villa and that tells us something hugely important
it means this trackway North and South would have been used by the Romans it was the least of the
two that I thought would have been used because I thought they would have taken a more direct
route back to Salisbury but who knows it doesn't matter because it was a Roman villa just there
so what does that tell us well this tells us what a Roman B Road looks like it looks like
an old trackway ahead of us the trackway continues probably another two miles to go at least until we
get to that traditional Roman Road the lead road but certainly quite pleased that the research has
led us to this exact spot and this is what a b Road would look like so now that we've satisfied
our curiosity a little over in wheelchair with the movement of grain what happened to the last thing
I was going to plot on that map the missing piece of the puzzle in those circle of Roman Villas well
it turns out that right in the centre of all those Villas was a Roman bath found right here
next to the main road between Andover and Swindon now nothing substantial there but it was likely a
communal point for all of those Roman Villas that lived in this circle of land with no evidence of
traditional Roman roads here and a mass of modern agricultural tearing things up we're left guessing
with what the local roads and routes would have looked like perhaps except for one so I think one
of the biggest clues for me today in our search for a Roman B road is probably this this is a
Terrace up to the biddeson villa and I think if you're affluent enough to have a villa in this
area as a Roman then you certainly be uh looking to build yourself a nice Road up to your Villa and
this has clearly been terraced at some point maybe it's not Roman at all it's just me speculating I'm
not an academic and that's what you get with this channel bit of speculation for me so it's been an
interesting Journey for me today I've been Paul if you like this sort of content then obviously
give us a like and a comment below uh we'll see you this time next week thanks for watching