By J. U. Powell, M.A. 283 



the new Ordnance Map, wliicli seems to follow what Hoare maps 

 as a British earthwork. The Roman road through Groveley and 

 Great Ridge Wood would repay careful retracing on the line of 

 the old Ordnance and Sir R. C. Hoare's map. The roads and 

 drives have been altered, and 1 found it difficult in the summer to 

 follow it, the more so because of the restrictions of game-preserving. 

 I could not learn from the Ordnance Survey people that they had 

 any good authority for their crooked line of the road," that is, for 

 the crooked course through Great Ridge wood. Mr. Codrington 

 does not speak of any cutting of a section near Salisbury, made to 

 examine the construction, and it is possible that such a cutting 

 would strengthen the evidence for its being the work of Roman 

 engineers. 



After the road disappears at Dinton Beeches it was traced by 

 Hoare by a line of large flints across arable fields ; and there both 

 he and the Ordnance Survey of 1817 map it straight through 

 Great Ridge Wood till the wood ends above Lower Pertwood. 

 But the new Ordnance Map (survey of 1884-86) marks a Roman 

 road; in a wavy line south of the old straight course and roughly 

 parallel to it. Now it may be observed that this wavy line can 

 be traced eastward into Grovely Wood for more than a mile 

 beyond Hanging Langford Camp, crossing the straight road and 

 running parallel to it some 600 yards north of it. On the open 

 land between the two woods it consists of a broad ditch now 

 overgrown with bushes, the width from the top of bank to bank 

 being on an average about 10ft. to 12ft.; in places it has become 

 a broad lynch. It forms the boundary between the parishes which 

 run up from the Wylye valley and those whicli run up from the 

 Nadder valley. It appears to be a ditch or earthwork, covering, 

 like Bokerly Dyke, the open space between two forests, and, un- 

 like that dyke, being continued into the forests. If it is a road 

 and not an earthwork, it may have been the old British " lead " 

 road before the new straight Roman road was engineered ; but 

 whichever it is, it probably ought not to be described, as the new 

 Ordnance Map describes it, as a "■Roman road." It was during 

 Claudius' reign, and about 49 A. D., that the lead trade appears to 



