ROMANO-BRITISH WARWICKSHIRE 



WALTON. House (?) : see p. 238. 



WARWICK. Some pieces of Samian (three in Warwick Museum, others penes Mr. 

 Thos. O. Lloyd) are said to have been found with bronze tweezers, ' tearbottles,' etc., 

 in the Priory grounds. The details of the discovery have not been recorded, but the 

 tweezers suggest Saxon burials. [For such details as survive see Proceedings of the Society 

 of Antiquaries, 1867, iii. 472, ser. 2 ; Warwick Archaeological Society Report, 1867, p. 10 

 (each mentioning graves, but not the potsherds, tweezers, etc.) ; ibid. 1868, p. 23 (skulls 

 and Roman pottery presented to museum) ; Warwick Field Club Report, 1873, p. II, 

 1875, p. 12, 1876, p. 40.] 



These potsherds appear to be the only Roman remains recorded from Warwick. 

 Reynolds [p. 469] refers to coins, but too vaguely to be of use. The reputed Roman 

 masonry under the clock tower in the castle seems not to be really Roman. The alleged 

 road to Alcester is equally unproven. Dugdale (p. 372 note) seems to have been right 

 in saying that Warwick was not a Roman site. Certainly the Roman name ascribed to 

 it by Camden and accepted by many later writers, Praesidium, is a mere guess, utterly 

 undeserving of acceptance. The only Praesidium known in Roman Britain was a small 

 fort in Yorkshire \Notitia Dignitatum Occid. xl.]. 1 



WATLING STREET. Coins found in the Street, near Higham (i silver of Trajan) [Burton's 

 Leicestershire, p. 131]. 



WEIXESBOURNE. Burial urn found 1823 [Warwick Arck<eological Society Report, 1843, p. 12 ; 

 Warwick Museum]. 



WESTON-ON-AvoN. Samian and other potsherds, small bronze boar, coin of Domitian, three 

 Constantinian coins [Warwick Archaeological Society Report, 1866, pp. 1 8, 23 ; Warwick 

 and Worcester Museums]. 



WHITCHURCH. A 'third brass' of Tacitus, found 1901 []. H. Bloom], 



WILMCOTE. Well (?), 9 feet diameter, regularly steyned ; containing horns and skulls of 

 animals, potsherds, coins ( I Aurelian). Other wells (or pits) near [Gentleman's Magazine, 

 1841, ii. 8l ; Journal of the British Archaeological Association, xxix. 41]. 



WOLFHAMCOTE. At Sawbridge (Salbridge) in 1689 a well was found 4 feet square; in it, 

 2O feet deep, was a large square stone with a hole in it, on which stood urns of grey 

 ware. Twelve of these urns were taken out whole, and about twelve others were 

 broken by the fall of a stone from above. Under the large square stone the well was 

 sounded to a depth of 40 feet more, getting narrower as it got deeper, but no bottom 

 was reached and apparently no more urns were found [Dugdale, p. 308 ; Stukeley, 

 Iter Boreale, p. 21 (vague) ; hence Gough, Add, to Camden, ii. 450 ; Reynolds, p. 460, 

 etc.]. The account suggests that the urns were all originally perfect and arranged pur- 

 posely in the well. Wells or pits containing urns which appeared to the finders to have 

 been purposely arranged have been found in many places [Victoria History of Norfolk, i. 29$, 

 296]. No satisfactory reason has ever been suggested to explain such a purposeful arrange- 

 ment, and some competent judges have ventured to doubt whether the finders have not 

 mistaken an accidental approach to symmetry for an intended symmetry of arrangement. 



WORMLEIGHTON. Wooden coffin, made of a tree trunk, and coins of Constantine found 

 between Wormleighton and Staunton or Stoneton [Stukeley, Iter Boreale, p. 21 ; hence 

 Gough, Add. to Camden, ii. 450, etc.]. 



1 Mr. Henry Bradley \An English Miscellany presented to Dr. Funtivall (Oxford, 1901), p. 15] 

 conjectures that Warwick is the Caer Wrangon of Welsh tradition the Cair Guiragon or Guoeirangon 

 or Guoranegon of Nennius' list of xxviii. civitates. He takes Wrangon (that is, Gwrangon) to be the 

 name, not of a person but of the Avon. The list is so obscure that it is hard to argue about it, but one 

 would not expect to find in it a site which was not really occupied in Romano-British days. 



It should be added that some nineteen Roman sepulchral inscriptions, now built into the wall of 

 a bathroom in the Spy Tower of Warwick Castle, have no connection with Warwick and are not of 

 Romano-British origin. Nothing is recorded of their origin save that they were found or detected when 

 the lower court of the Castle was levelled in 181 1, but one of them is known to have been elsewhere 

 in England in the eighteenth century, and their appearance and epigraphic characteristics declare that 

 they were brought originally from Rome. Great numbers of such inscriptions have been brought to 

 England by travellers on their ' grand tour ' or others, and many of these have been lost : some have 

 even made their way deep underground. When rediscovered, they have often been taken for Romano- 

 British antiquities (see the Victoria Hist, of Hampshire, i. 289, note 3 ; and my remarks in the Classical 

 Review, v. 240). The Warwick Castle inscriptions have been examined by the late Dr. HObner and 

 printed in the sixth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum : I have seen rubbings of all, and casts 

 of several are in Warwick Museum. 



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