284 South Wilts in Romnno-British Times. 



have been developed by the conquering Eomaiis/ and it may have 

 been then that a new road to the lead mines on the Mendips was 

 made to supersede the old winding woodland track Tliere was less 

 need for the Romans to engineer the " tin " road which ran to the 

 south of it, because even in the time of Posidonius, who visited 

 Britain about 100 B.C., the British road was already good enough 

 for waggons in which we know that the tin was carried. 



At all events, the road, both in the old and new maps, disappears 

 at the west end of G-reat Ridge Wood, for a mile and a quarter ; 

 then it reappears in the old map as a ridge for about 660 yards, 

 which have shrunk to about 500 in the new. It is still slightly 

 visible on the down above Lower Pertwood, which has gone back from 

 arable, and the tumulus which it skirts has almost been ploughed 

 away. This tumulus is considered by Mr. Codrington in a letter 

 to me to have been used as a landmark in laying out the road. 



Thence westward its course is uncertain. Codrington proposes 

 to trace it over Long Knoll, along which a boundary runs, a 

 mile south of Maiden Bradley ; beyond this he loses it. I prefer 

 to track it first from Lower Pertwood to Monkton Deverell, 

 though all traces of this part of its course have been lost under 

 the many marks of ancient cultivation; then to White Pits; then, 

 like Hoare, following the track which slopes up the side of Cold 

 Kitchen, to the British village which is on the top, and along which 

 a boundary runs ; and so down to Maiden Bradley. This way over 

 Cold Kitchen is best regarded as a pack-horse way, or summer 

 way, used when the track marked " British Trackway," and leading 

 from Kingston Deverell to Norton Ferris, and one of the cattle 

 roads from the west, was impassable. Local tradition calls this 

 " British Trackway " the " Ox Road," and it runs roughly parallel 

 to the ox-road mentioned before, but leading from Mid and East 

 Somerset; while the ox-road mentioned previously led from the 

 south-west. It does not fall within our province to trace this 

 road beyond Maiden Bradley. But the historical importance of 

 this road running through South Wilts was very great, and in 

 view of the recent discussion by high authorities about Roman 



' Conybeare, Roman Britain, p. 188. 



