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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Alchester, 1½ miles south of Bicester and 11 miles north-north-east of Oxford, has been recognized as a Roman settlement site since at least 1607 when Camden described it as ‘… desertae stationis paucae reliquiae, Alchester vocant’ Although there was at that time apparently little remaining to be seen, the site continued to be of interest to succeeding antiquarians who described not only Alchester itself but the presence of numerous remains of buildings and small artefacts of Roman date in the fields surrounding it. Excavations undertaken in 1766, the mid-1800s, the 1920s, and 1974 were small-scale and, with three exceptions, concentrated exclusively on the northeastern section of the site. The lack of any systematic or large-scale investigations of the town and its environs has left unanswered many questions about the siting, subsequent history, and internal planning of Alchester.
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