82 PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 



on the little river Coin, and may reasonably be identified 

 with the Onnanford, near Withington, mentioned in 

 ecclesiastical records of the eighth century, but which the 

 Rev. C. S.Taylor, in an article on "Gloucestershire in the 

 Eighth Century," says cannot now be traced.^- As 

 further evidence that places whose names have the affix 

 " ford " are upon ancient highways we have the fact that 

 Fairford, Whelford, and Kempsford are joined by a road 

 still called the Welsh Way. 



BRITISH TOWNS AND TRACKWAYS 



In endeavouring to ascertain what track-ways may have 

 existed in the Mid-Cotteswold area before the coming of 

 the Romans there are some considerations which are 

 useful for guidance. 



(i) " When the Britons," says Caesar, "have fortified 

 " a thick wood with rampart and ditch, they call it a 

 " town.''t With such a definition, it does not require any 

 stretch of the imagination to identify many of the Cottes- 

 wold camps as British towns. Cooper's Hill, with its 

 double mound enclosing an area of about two hundred 

 acres ; Norbury (near Colesborne) with its area of 

 six acres, defended by a single mound and ditch, 

 and close to thick woods ; Crickley, with its nine 

 acres, protected on three sides by precipitous hills, and 

 with a thick wood on the fourth side ; Dowdeswell, with 

 an even larger area, in the middle of thick woods ; Cold 

 Aston, whose entrenchments have disappeared under the 

 plough, but in which a great number of flint arrow-heads 

 have been found ; Salmonsbury, in the parish of Bourton- 

 on-the-Water, with a mound and ditch defending an area 

 of sixty acres ; Eubury Camp, in the village of Condicote, 



* Trans. Bris. and Glou. Archceo. Soc, Vol. xvi , p. 229. 

 "i" Caesar, " Gallic War," Book v. 



