By J. U. Powell, M.A. 281 



Somerset and the forest of Selwood, which are both dry and safe, 

 and secondly, because they are on the two main roads in the West 

 of Britain which led to the sources of mineral wealth in early 

 iiritain, tlie lead mines of Somerset and the tin mines of Cornwall. 

 And it is just at the junction of the two roads, namely, at the 

 woods above Stockton, that the traces of habitations and fortifi- 

 cations are thickest. 



It was up this road that the tin came from Cornwall long before 

 the Romans ; along it came the lead from Mendip, to be shipped 

 at Thanet; through it, in later times, fresh blood poured into 

 England as the Saxons in their advance westward streamed down 

 the local roads that led from it ; and over it marched the Hampshire 

 men who rallied to Alfred against the Danes. As it runs further 

 east it is known as the " Pilgrims' Way " and heads for Canterbury, 

 and so links up the whole of the South of England. It is very 

 significant that Prof. Boyd Dawkins ^ finds a general similarity in 

 three settlements along or near the line of its course. The general 

 plan of Bigbury Camp, two miles from Canterbury, resembles the 

 Eomano-British village of Woodcuts, explored by General Pitt 

 Rivers, and the type of the socketted leaf -shaped iron spears found 

 at Bigbury also occurs in the large late Celtic or early Iron Age 

 village of Glastonbury. An iron adze occurs in both places, 

 and sickle-heads with sockets for wooden handles occur in both ; 

 the form of the billhook is the same, and an iron implement, 

 probably the coulter of a plough, found at Bigbury, is like an 

 implement found at Glastonbury. And not far off its route 

 General Pitt-Rivers found iron sickles at Woodcuts. 



Its course is along the Surrey downs to Farnham to join the 

 network of trackways of Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.- A 

 road reacliing Winchester thus, would, in Romano-British days, 

 have been continued by the Roman road to Horsebridge and Old 

 Sarum, and would meet at Winchester the road that comes up 

 from Clausentum, the port on the Itchen, and so connect witli 



' Archaological Journal, Vol. LIX., No. 235, p. 211, sq. 

 * Boyd Dawkins, loc. cit. 



