WINTERBORNE KINGSTON ROMAN WELL. 5 



the "Welch of Cambria, and till the last century, some of the 

 Cornish people. 



The presence of coins among the rough and fragmentary 

 materials in the well suggests the probability that they were of no 

 value when the well was filled up. The date of the latest was 

 that of Constantine, who died A.D. 340, not more than 60 or 

 70 years previous to the abandonment of the island by the 

 Romans, when Britain was left without a protecting force, and the 

 inhabitants were left to their own resources. The Saxons on the 

 south and east, and the Picts and Scots in the northern and 

 western provinces, combined to attack the Komano-British, and, 

 at the close of the fourth century, Kent and Sussex, and 

 probably Dorsetshire, were in the hands of the Saxons. It was 

 probably at this period when the Romano-Britons were scattered, 

 and the villages abandoned, the Kingston wells were filled 

 up. Shortly after the withdrawal of Roman troops several 

 Anglo-Saxons settled on the shores of Britain from the Firth of 

 Forth to Hampshire. They drove away, exterminated, or 

 enslaved the Romano-Britons, and reintroduced a period of 

 barbarism. Wherever the Anglo-Saxons came their first work was 

 to stamp out with fire and sword every trace of Roman civilisation. 

 Professor Rolleston has traced abundant evidence of the great 

 aptness of our Teutonic ancestors in destroying and equal slowness 

 in elababorating material civilisation. 



Southern Britain was thoroughly Teutonized by the English 

 invader. The nation which rose upon the ruins of Roman-Britain 

 was in form and organisation English. The language spoken in the 

 country then, was the same which had been spoken in Jutland. 

 Only a few words of British origin relating to agriculture, 

 household service, and smithcraft were introduced by the conquered 

 Britons into the tongue of their masters ; the dialect of Dorset 

 still retains a few more of the British vocabulary. 



About 4 feet from the well on its eastern side and 1|- feet from 

 the surface I found a circle, 6 feet in diameter, consisting of eight 

 burnt tiles of different sizes, the largest 11 inches by 10 J inches 



