COURSE OF THE AVANSDYKE. 13 



tlie N. From the antient settlement 011 Hainpton Down, 

 the traces of it have been much obliterated, and are barely 

 visible, but when you come to the back of Prior Park, they 

 become very distinct in a grass field just behind the house. 

 With very careful examination, and aided by a friend who 

 had made it a subject of diligent study, and to whose 

 exertions I am much indebted, I think I have been able to 

 trace its course from Hampton Down Camp across two 

 arable fields and a portion of Ciaverton Down, (where it 

 crosses the road to Ciaverton, and the turnpike road to 

 Warminster) until it is quite lost in a third tillage field, 

 but may again be discerned in the tillage field at the back 

 of Prior Park, before you come to the stone quarries which 

 have again destroyed its continuity. After the grass field 

 behind Prior Park, where it Ä very distinctly marked, it 

 would seem to have skirted the head of the Mitford valley, 

 and is again to be met with just beyond the Cross Keys 

 public house. 



Sir Richard Hoare says that a small fragment of the 

 dyke was visible on the S.E. side of the great road 

 (leading from Bath to Warminster, on which the Cross 

 Keys house is situated) as if bearing along the east side 

 of the valley towards the river. I have more than once 

 very carefully examined this point, and cannot satisfy 

 myself that this exists at present. The ground is here 

 much broken, and although a wall and fence run upon a 

 somewhat elevated portion of ground, there is no distinc- 

 tive mark which would enable one to say that this was a 

 portion of Wansdyke. I fear that its course from the 

 Cross Keys to Prior Park must be left to conjecture, and 

 we must assign to it the probably route I have mentioned. 

 From the Cross Keys public house it can be traced until 

 it crosses the high road from ßath to Radstock and Wells 



