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The Silchester Region in the 5th & 6th centuries A.D.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

B. H. St. J. O'Neil
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Extract

Until a few years ago it was customary amongst many historians to suppose that the towns of Roman Britain ceased to exist in or very soon after A.D. 410. Records such as that of Pevensey, admittedly a fort rather than a town, which was not taken until A.D. 491, had always suggested a modification of that View, and more recently efforts have been made to demonstrate that life of some sort continued unbroken in certain of the towns throughout the Dark Ages. Dr R. E. M. Wheeler has argued thus particularly in the case of London.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 18 , Issue 71 , September 1944 , pp. 113 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1944

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References

1 London and the Saxons, London Museum Catalogue, 28 ff.

2 Roman Britain and the English Settlements, 2nd edition, 429.

3 The writer is indebted to Prof. Ifor Williams for the following opinion. From a perusal of photographs and published references he is inclined to prefer a date c. A.D. 450 for this inscrip tion, but he points out that an examination of the actual stone might cause him to modify this view.

4 Western Seaways (in Custom is King : essays presented to R. R. Marett, London, 1936).

5 Numismatic Chronicle, 1929, pp. 328–32.

6 Arch. Journ., XCIL, 65–8. Richborough is a fort not a town, and many of its latest coins may have come from dispersed hoards.

7 Numismatic Chronicle, 1929, pp. 332–4.

8 The Pottery found at Silchester, 1916.

9 ibid. pl. LII, 90 and 89 (Bobs Mount, Reading).

10 ibid. LXXXII B and Trans. Bristol and Gloucs. Arch. Soc, LVI, 113–5.

11 Celtic Ornament, 1933, 139–43 and fig. 36a.

12 Arch. LIII, 563–8.

13 ibid. LXXX, 235–6.

14 Clapham, English Romanesque Architecture before the Conquest, 9–15.

15 op. cit. p. 431. Mr Crawford suggests to the writer that Cilchester, the 13th-14th century form of Silchester in the Close Rolls, may indicate a survival until a comparatively late date of the name Calleva.

16 ibid. pp. 381–2.

17 ibid. p. 356.

18 ibid. p. 365.

19 ibid. p. 379.

20 ibid. p. 395.

21 ibid. pp. 406–7.

22 In our own day we have witnessed the passage of troops through ‘neutral’ countries on just such an understanding!

23 op. cit. pp. 358–9 and 392.

24 ibid. p. 406.

25 The name Reading and the cremation cemeteries there are the early Saxon elements nearest to Silchester, but it seems unlikely that there was early penetration thence towards the town.

26 It is noticeable that scarcely any traces of the Saxon invaders have been found in the Kennet valley, v. Peake, Archaeology of Berkshire, p. 129 and map V, p. 157.

27 Arch. Journ., C. (forthcoming).

28 This and the other earthworks here mentioned have been fully described in ANTIQUITY, 1943, XVII, 188–95.

29 It can be shown, from surface observation, to be later in date than a promontory fort of Early Iron Age type, loc. cit. 192.

30 loc. cit. 194.

31 In the absence of archaeological proof they may be dated to this period tentatively by comparison with similar works elsewhere (e.g. Wansdyke).

32 ANTIQUITY, 1931, IV, 162–4.

33 It lies just south of an alternative route for the Ridgeway, i.e. from Aldworth to a crossing of the Thames at Goring, the very spot which seems to have been the southernmost point of the intensive early Saxon occupation. It also lies astride what may have been an early route from Goring to Newbury.

34 This portion of that road is reasonably certain.

35 Arch. Journ., c. (forthcoming).

36 ibid, and O. G. S. Crawford in The Antiquary, 1915, p. 253, notes also three other similar dykes nearby.

37 Various finds of Roman objects have been made along it, v. Peake, Archaeology of Berkshire under Brimpton and Greenham. A portion of this track is mentioned as a ‘herpath’ in the Bounds of Brimpton of A.D. 944 (Cart. Sax., 11, 802 in The Antiquary, 1915, pp. 250–4). As Mr Crawford points out (ibid. p. 250) this word indicates ‘highway’, but ‘does not necessarily refer to a Roman road, rather the opposite. It seems to denote an important road, still in use, that had grown and not been laid out’. Its course is marked on the map in accordance with the evidence of those Bounds.

38 See especially Peake, Archaeology of Berkshire, map in (Early Iron Age) also Trans. Newbury District F.C., VIII, 205–15 (‘The Origin of Newbury’). The writer has adopted Mr Peake’s site for the crossing of the Kennet, but is himself responsible for the line of the rest of the trackways marked on the maps. In present circumstances they can only be drawn in from the O.S. maps, and may not be accurate in detail.

39 op. cit. pp. 407–8.

40 op. cit. pp.446, 449.