158 
ago in the Abbey Cemetery, a stone tablet marking the place. 
The coins are shown by the Curator. 
THE WANSDYKE. 
Right across Combe Down Parish runs the Wansdyke, a 
wide ditch with a high earthwork mound. The origin of this 
singular line of demarcation has never been satisfactorily 
arrived at, but it is supposed by many that it divided the 
territories of the Britons and the Belge (a later immigration). 
The city of Bath is said by Ptolemy to have been in the 
borders of the Belge. 
When it was built is uncertain, Collinson places it 
before the Roman period, because it is intersected in 
the neighbourhood of Marlborough by the Via Julia, and 
he concludes, therefore, that the Wansdyke must be con- 
siderably earlier than the Roman road. The same thing 
occurs at the Burnt House, Odd Down, where the Wansdyke 
is intersected by the old Roman road to Devonshire. 
Taking its commencement from Andover, it passes through 
Savernake Forest and across the Salisbury Plains and Wilt- 
shire Downs, visiting Tan Hill, Sheppard’s Shord, and Hed- 
dington, and passing through Spye Park, it appears on a 
lawn at Lacock Abbey and may be seen at Whitely Common. 
It appears in a field in Warleigh Manor (the residence of 
Colonel Skrine) in the parish of Bathford, and is to be seen 
again in several places in Bathampton Parish. 
It can be traced in Smallcombe Wood and crosses the 
Claverton Road at Wansdyke, the residence of Mr. A. Moger, 
and taking its way by the Kennels of the Bath and County 
Harriers it appears in the monument field on the Prior Park 
estate, and passing by the back of Prior Park mansion it 
emerges at the Prior Park upper gates. It then appears to 
have crossed the present tram route from Bath into the Firs 
Field, and passing through Richardson’s Avenue (above 
Davidge’s Bottom) it forms the high land studded with 
ancient trees at the back of the King William Arms and Rock- 
hall Gardens, and thence it pursues its way along the bridle 
path at the top of Horsecombe Valley to Cross Keys, whence 
it forms the base of a stone wall in the direction of Burnt 
House, at Odd Down, and here it was crossed by the old 
Roman Fosse road, It then takes the brow of a hill which 
crosses through the middle of an arable field, and may be seen 
again in a hedge and meadow as it descends to Englishcombe 
