























By J. U. Powell, M.A. eal 
200. B.C. will be a round date for the second Belgic conquest, in 
which they took South Wilts, and Dr. Guest’ has traced their 
_ boundary dykes, one running near Tilshead. The camps, too, are 
of this early time, or even of an earlier; not Roman. We must 
not picture the Roman soldier pacing these ramparts, and as he 
gazes over the featureless downs, thinking wistfully of the terraced 
hills of Italy with the vineyards climbing “ acclive solwm collesque 
_ supinos,” as may be seen on the Rhine or the Lake of Geneva at 
the present day. But down in the valley the Roman farmer in 
_ the second century A.D., will have driven his ewes across the 
Norton ford, and penned his lambs under the sunny slopes, just as 
his successor does to-day, and taken the honey that his bees gathered 
from the wild thyme on the hills. For in the meadows near 
the water between Bishopstrow and Norton, are traces of two 
Roman villas. From the fact that it was Somerset and Dorset, 
not Wilts, that were thick with Roman settlements, it is probable 
that the Roman advance came from that side, not from the 
Salisbury side. For there are eighty places in Dorset where there 
are traces of Roman occupation, and Mr. Moule? thinks that search 
would reveal at least a hundred.* The site of one of the two can 
ust be traced, and bits of building stone, and tiles with incised - 
a 
Tines worn smooth by use may be found. But after their first 


u irtwost of the neighbourhood,” as the writer in Vetusta Monwmenta, 
ii, 43, says. The site of the second building is probably in the 
ir plantation at the west end of Pitmead. The banks round it 
contain a few pieces of rough black pottery and tile, and there is a 
well-defined rise or heap in the plantation, measuring about thirty 
paces by ten, under which is probably the debris.+ Here and there 
1 Guest, Orig. Celt., ii., 201. 
§ 2 Old Dorset, p. 110. 
z ‘I do not know how many Roman sites there are in South Wilts. Why 
does Kelly’s Directory of Wilts (p. 3) say that there are Roman settlements 
at Heytesbury and Codford ? 
a a * For the account of the excavations, the gyre: and the human remains 
