ROMANO-BRITISH BERKSHIRE 



ASTON UPTHORPE. Site of a Roman camp on Lowbury Hill [O.S. (25 in.) xxi. 12]. Traces 

 of the foundations of walls enclosing a rectangular space, 56 yards long by 43 yards wide, 

 are said to have been observed here before the middle of the last century, and a great 

 quantity of fragments of Roman pottery, bricks and tiles, many Roman coins and a 

 vast amount of oyster shells were found within or near this area [Gent. Mag. 1838, i. 47, 

 48 ; Hewett, Hist, and Antiq. of Hundred, of Camp ton, 113 ; Arch. Journ. v. 279]. 



BASILDON. Early in 1839 some remains of a Roman villa {Arch, xxviii. 447, 448] were found 

 on the line of the Great Western Railway at Basildon, a village on the Thames, two miles 

 north of Pangbourne. The site was in a field called Church Field, lying between the 

 village and the church and only 200 yards from the high road to Streatley, Moulsford 

 and Wallingford [Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans, iv. 98-100]. Two tessellated pave- 

 ments were first uncovered at a depth of only 12 or 14 inches below the surface. Both 

 were destroyed by the workmen, not, however, before drawings had been made. One 

 of these drawings was afterwards lost, but the other was preserved, and a chromo-lithograph 

 of it appeared in Roach Smith's Collectanea Antiqua [i. 65] and shows a panel of mosaic 

 which is set in a wide border of plain red tesserae with a narrow inner band of red and 

 white triangles, and consists of a circle within two interlacing squares framed by an outer 

 square, the space thus enclosed being made octagonal by bands set across the angles. 

 The ground colour is white, and the bands forming the pattern are outlined in blue and 

 ornamented with a guilloche in red, blue and white. In the angles of the outer square 

 are red and white lotus flowers, and in the eight lozenge-shaped spaces enclosed between 

 the octagon and the two inner squares are fylfots in red alternating with interlaced rings. 

 The circle which forms the centre of the design has a red border with white rays surround- 

 ing a band on which is a key pattern in red, white and blue. Within the band are two 

 superimposed pentagons with concave sides outlined in blue, and containing a five-leaved 

 flower similarly outlined with a large red centre. The second pavement was a parallelo- 

 gram of red tesserae relieved by blue. 



There were no other remains with these pavements, but at a distance of about 50 

 yards the workmen found one perfect skeleton and the remains of another, a sword by 

 the side of one of these, and a portion of a wall about 3 feet in length. Twenty of what 

 are described as pavements from 6 to 8 feet long and made of large flints were uncovered 

 at a depth of 18 inches and supposed by the workmen to be graves, though only a few 

 small pieces of bone were found with them. Fragments of red pottery and tiles were 

 turned up in great abundance, but apparently no coins except a large brass of Lucilla 

 (A.D. 147-183). 



BEEDON. Old Street, supposed to be a Roman road, passes through this parish [Hewett, Hist, 

 and Antiq. of Hundred of Campion, 118]. Fragments of Samian and other ware, animal 

 bones and coins (undescribed) have been found here [Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans. 

 ii. 93, 256]. 



BLEWBURY. A single fragment of pale burnt Roman ware found about 1848 in a British 

 barrow near Ilsley Downs [Arch. Journ. v. 279]. 



Roman buckles and a key from Blewbury Fields \Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass. iii. 328]. 

 ' Roman Amphitheatre ' at Curknell Pit [O.S. (2Sin.) xxi. 7]. 



BOROUGH HILL CAMP. See Boxford. 



BOXFORD. At Wyfield Farm some foundations of ' a very large villa ' are said to have been 

 discovered in 1871, a part of a bronze armilla, a spindle-whorl of Kimmeridge coal, the 

 bottom of a vessel of Durobrivian pottery and some flanged roofing-tiles were also found 

 [Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans, i. 207]. 



Traces of an encampment on Borough Hill, a quarter of a mile from Wyfield Farm 

 [Ibid. ii. 61]. 



At Boxford Rectory fragments of Roman pottery and numerous coins [Cooper-King, 

 Hist, of Berks, 47]. 



BRADFIELD. Roman terra-cotta lamp picked up in 1884 in a ploughed field not far from 

 the workhouse. Some foundations pronounced ' too rough to be Roman ' were after- 

 wards discovered near the same spot. Dr. Haverfield, who exhibited the lamp to the 

 Society of Antiquaries, thought that the device between the central head and spout was 

 just possibly the Chi-Rho, and that the two finds might indicate the existence of a 

 Romano-British dwelling in the neighbourhood [Proc. Soc. Antiq. (ser. 2) xvi. 276]. 



BRAY AND MAIDENHEAD. As the modern town of Maidenhead was formerly in the parish of 

 Bray and is only a mile distant from the old village, it will be convenient to consider 



203 



