By J. U. Potvell, M.A. 279 



Borehain towards Salisbury, as the Bishop holds. The view 

 originated in a conjecture of Hoare ; as he says himself ^ " All this 

 is a conjecture, as no signs of any lionian causeway are visible." 

 Indeed, as the Bishop points out,^ Salisbury was not an important 

 centre. " Had the Belgte been a strong and hostile race and 

 Sorbiodunum (Salisbury) required the presence of a legion, either 

 New Sarum would have been founded much sooner, or Wilton or 

 Stratford-sub-Castle would have grown up into greater prominence," 

 and Salisbury must have become a Eoman settlement. The in- 

 ference is, that whatever road there may have been was not 

 "Roman," that is, in the sense in which, say, the Fosse Way is 

 Roman. 



I am inclined, however, to believe that Mr. Daniell is right in 

 tracing an ancient road from Warminster behind Bishopstrow 

 House, although it is misleading to call it a "Roman Road." 

 Where did it go to thence ? Not along the valley, but diagonally 

 across the valley. Mr. Daniell lost it as it emerged from 

 Bishopstrow House plantations, but where it emerges from them 

 one can see quite clearly a depression running across the pasture 

 behind Bishopstrow Farm straight for the parish boundary post 

 between Bishopstrow and Norton. Now, as Mr. Codrington points 

 out, parisli boundaries constantly follow the line of Roman roads : 

 we follow it, therefore, down the boundary under the beeches, and 

 it takes us almost straight to the western of the two Roman 

 buildings in Pitmead, the one of which WiQdebris is in the plantation- 

 From that we have an unmistakable causeway guiding us to the 

 water iiieadows between Heytesbury and Sutton, and old tracks 

 take us up the downs between Tytherington and Gorton ; for 

 viewetl from Scratchbury, above, this Pitmead " drove " seems to 

 head for those hills. There appears to be little doubt that this 

 road linked up Warminster and the great house at Pitmead with 

 the Stockton hill-settlements. And just as this causeway runs 

 past the villa eastward, so it runs in a line westward, forming a 



' Hoare, Ancient Wilts, Soman JEra, p. 108. 

 « Wills Arch. Mag., xxv., 202. 



