A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



The inhabitants of the pile dwellings at Cookham were perhaps 

 some of the poorest of the land, but even they acquired something of 

 the civilization and customs of the conquerors. 



Although there were no large towns of the Romano-British period 

 in the county (for there is no sufficient evidence to support the claims 

 that have been advanced on behalf of Wallingford and Speen), villas are 

 fairly numerous throughout the county. These villas were the proper- 

 ties of large landowners, sometimes Romans but more often probably 

 Romanized Britons, who lived at the houses and cultivated the lands 

 immediately around them by their slaves and let the rest to the half serf 

 coloni. The houses were of types suitable to this climate and only to be 

 found in Britain and Northern Gaul. The simpler, and generally the 

 smaller, of these was the corridor house, which consisted of a row of 

 rooms with a passage or corridor running along one side of them. The 

 other type was the courtyard house, consisting of three rows of like 

 rooms and passages running along three sides of a square, with an open 

 courtyard in the middle. Both types were seldom, if ever, carried 

 higher than the ground floor. 



Excavations on the Berkshire sites have not been thorough enough, 

 in most cases, to decide which of these types was more usually adopted. 

 The only foundations in the county which have been sufficiently explored 

 to decide this point are those at Frilford, Letcombe Regis and 

 Hampstead Norris, which are all of the corridor type. Besides these 

 three, it is clear from the remains found at Basildon, Maidenhead, 

 Bucklebury, Hampstead Norris (Well House), Lambourn, Letcombe 

 Regis and Woolstone that Roman villas existed here although their 

 plans have not been ascertained. It would seem from the cemeteries 

 which have been found that there were villas also at Fawley, Pang- 

 bourne and Waltham St. Lawrence, though their sites have not been 

 discovered. 



Taking the distribution of the population geographically, the 

 settlements range themselves into three groups. First come those along 

 the valleys of the Thames, the Kennet, the Ock and the Lambourn, 

 next the few settlements on the chalk downs running through the middle 

 of the county and lastly those along the Antonine highways and to the 

 north of Calleva, the Roman town at Silchester in Hampshire. 



The first group, which is by far the most numerous and therefore 

 comprised the most populous districts, owed its origin to the waterway 

 of the Thames and its tributaries, and the fertility of the lands rising 

 from the Thames valley for the growth of corn. There are indications 

 of Roman occupation all along the south side of that valley from the 

 burial sites of Windsor and Pangbourne and the villa remains at 

 Maidenhead and Basildon to the native settlement at Long Wittenham 

 already referred to. It contains also a considerable number of sites, such 

 as Abingdon in the valley of the Thames and Boxford in the Lambourn 

 valley, whose claim to permanent occupation is less well substantiated, 

 besides many noted for miscellaneous finds of coins and pottery. 



198 



