WAREHAM AND LYTCHETT HEATH. Ixix. 



object of finding any clue to the date. Under the trees inside 

 the corner they could see what was said to be a Roman amphi- 

 theatre. That Wareham was a Roman town had never been 

 questioned. The streets were laid out on the usual Roman 

 plan, with North, South, East, and West streets ; and, more- 

 over, a Roman road passed under those walls and on to 

 Dorchester. Others had said that it was not a Roman amphi- 

 theatre, but a mediaeval cockpit. He pointed to a neighbouring 

 part of the walls which was called The Bloody Bank, because a 

 number of the rebels of the Monrnouth rebellion condemned to 

 death by Judge Jeffreys at the Bloody Assize at Dorchester were 

 sent by him to Wareham to be executed, as a warning to the 

 neighbourhood, and the gallows were set up on that prominent 

 part of the walls. 



The ASSISTANT SECRETARY observed that the Roman origin 

 of Wareham was by no means generally acknowledged. For 

 instance, it had been undoubtedly questioned by two of the 

 best Dorset antiquaries of the old school, namely, Mr. Charles 

 Warne and the Rev. William Barnes. In Mr. Warne's valuable 

 map of ancient Dorset, prepared after exhaustive investigations 

 and showing the prehistoric, Celtic, Roman, Saxon, and Danish 

 towns, camps, forts, roads, &c., the town of Wareham was 

 indicated as being Saxon-Danish, the Danish period being, as it 

 were, a parenthesis in the Saxon. Moreover, Mr. Warne showed 

 no Roman road coming to Wareham or at all near it. If that 

 was indeed a Roman road which had been said to pass under 

 those walls and on to Dorchester, it was strange that it should 

 have escaped Mr. Warne's observation. Then, the Rev. William 

 Barnes rightly attached importance to the negative evidence that 

 no Roman tesselated pavement had been found near Wareham ; 

 the nearest find of such pavement (as Mr. Blackett had admitted) 

 being at Furzebrook, three or four miles away. The finding of 

 Roman coins, pottery, and other adventitious articles was of 

 comparatively slight value as evidence of Wareham having been 

 a Roman town. What, too, was the name of Roman Wareham ? 

 Now at Dorchester, the Durnovaria of the Romans, there was 



