EARLY MAN IN DORSET. 39 



have lately been splendidly illustrated by Mr. Heyvvood 

 Sumner. In Shaftesbury we have a Hill-top town which has 

 lasted as such from Ancient British days till now, and there 

 are three villages, Ashmore, Whitsbury, and Woodyates, 

 which have a similar continuity of history. With these 

 exceptions, the Saxon conquerors of a later date abandoned 

 the British sites, whose remains, save for weathering and 

 agricultural operations, remain fairly intact. They show 

 that the wide and windswept downs of the Chase were a 

 sort of Metropolitan area for Southern Britain, the surface 

 being free from the swamp and tangled forest w r hich made 

 much of the country uninhabitable. The great explorer 

 of the Romano -British villages is, of course, the late General 

 Pitt-Rivers, whose monumental works must be studied by 

 all who care for the subject. 



ROMAN ROADS belong to this period, and Dorset possesses 

 an extremely fine example in the Ackling Dyke. This name 

 is a corruption of Icknield, the name of the via which ran from 

 Norfolk to Sarum, and continued south to near Badbury 

 Rings, where it divides ; the eastern branch reaches the sea 

 at Hamworthy, the western goes by Bere Regis to Dorchester 

 and thence by Bridport to Exeter. The remains of the 

 Ackling Dyke where it crosses Cranborne Chase are most 

 instructive. Mr. Sumner gives us the following layers of 

 which it is built up. We find, beginning from the top (1) 

 surface mould, 5 inches ; (2) gravel with rounded pebbles, 

 6 inches ; (3) rammed chalk rubble, 6 inches ; (4) Tertiary 

 gravel, 10 inches ; (5) rammed chalk, 6 inches ; (6) a single 

 layer of nodular flints lying on the old surface line, the total 

 height from which to the top of the road was three feet. 

 Thus the road is built up in a way which suggests that the 

 thing most dreaded, even on these now dry downs, w r as 

 sw r amp. The width must have been considerably greater 

 than it is now, or it could not have been used as a road, at 

 any rate not for wheeled vehicles. The important Roman 

 station, Vindogladia, was on it, probably close by the village 

 of Woodyates. 



