ROMANO-BRITISH BERKSHIRE 



Chester it seems possible that a pottery may have existed here for the purpose of supplying 

 the city with coarse and common wares. Coins of late Roman date have also been found 

 in the garden [Berks, Bucks and Oxon Arch. Journ. Jan. 1905, p. 114]. 



SUNNINGWELL. Fragments of ancient pottery on Sunningwell Plain [Arch. Journ. xxiii. 73]. 

 Fragments of Roman pottery of the coarse grey ' smother-kiln ' ware on Foxcombe Hill 

 [Berks, Bucks and Oxon Arch. Journ. July 1898, p. 44]. 



SUTTON COURTENAY. Bronze dagger and fragments of an earthenware cup found with a 

 skeleton, urns, fibulae and ring exhibited to the British Archaeological Association in 

 1845 \Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. i. 309, xvi. 33]. Strigil, bell, and fragments of a chain, all 

 bronze, found in the same village about 1850 [Arch. Journ. viii. 190-191]. The strigil, 

 which is of very thin metal and coated with a patina of fine colour, is good in workman- 

 ship and design. It is supposed that the chain was one of those scourges called -plumbata 

 tribulatee. The strigil and chain, a bow brooch of the aucissa type but uninscribed, some 

 early Roman bronze brooches, a ring and a vase with engine-turned pattern are in the 

 British Museum. 



THATCHAM. Roman urns found in 1888 at the top of Hartshill [S. Barfield, Thatcham and 

 its Manors, 13]. Steelyard, probably Roman, found in the peat [Hist, and Antiq. of 

 Newbury (1839), 147] and amphora [Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans, ii. 126]. 



THEALE. The variety of relics found in this village seems to indicate that it was a site occu- 

 pied successively by British, Romano-British and Saxon settlements. The early British 

 urns are followed by a fine hand-made pottery, containing grains of flint and partly covered 

 with strong black glaze, which probably belonged to a period of transition from the rude 

 unglazed hand-made kind to the glazed wheel-turned pottery. Of later date are speci- 

 mens of Upchurch, Castor, Samian and ordinary Romano-British red ware, besides a 

 drinking cup and bottle from the New Forest. These are exhibited in the Reading 

 Museum with tiles, loom weights, mealing stones and white tesserae from the same site, 

 a hammer with an iron haft from the hamlet of Calcot, and a second brass of Septimus 

 Severus (A.D. 193-211) from Sheffield Bridge. The discoveries made in this parish point 

 to a village settlement of the Romano-British period. 



TILEHURST. Roman bricks and tiles are said to have been found close to Pincent's Farm in 

 this parish. A second brass of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) found here is in the Reading Museum. 



TUBNEY. Two vases of late Roman manufacture found near the old church [Arch. Journ. 

 iii. 69]. In the British Museum a grey vase which contained ashes found at Tubney, 

 1772. 



UFFINGTON. Roman coins found in a conical mount called Dragon's Hill [Rev. H. Miller, 

 Some Account of Ashbury, 14]. 



Skeletons disinterred from a barrow near Uffington Castle and supposed to be Roman 

 as their teeth showed marks of verdigris [Blackwood, Sept. 1882, p. 319. ' The Berkshire 

 Ridgeway.'] 



A vase in the British Museum, 4^ inches high, of red ware, from a barrow, possibly 

 Saxon, on White Horse Hill. 



WALLINCFORD. From Leland onwards [Commentarii in Cygneam Cantionem] most of the 

 early antiquaries, including Camden and Gough [Brit. (ed. Gough) i. 148] ; and later 

 Mr. J. K. Hedges were agreed in identifying Wallingford with Calleva, now with little 

 doubt recognized to be at Silchester. The origin of this erroneous identification was 

 the misreading of Gallena for Galleva or Caleva ; hence was suggested Gallenford or 

 Wallingford. Pointer, an eighteenth century antiquary, even goes so far as to say that 

 Gallienus the Emperor was here in person and gave his name to the town [Brit. Romana, 

 Preface]. Gough states that the outer work of the castle of Wallingford is evidently Roman 

 and that ' in a fragment of the wall at the entrance the stones are laid herring-bone fashion 

 just as in the walls of Silchester.' An underground passage in the castle was also said 

 by Dr. Blackstone in 1820 to be Roman. There seems, however, to be no evidence that 

 any part of the masonry of the castle is earlier than the twelfth century. It is clear 

 that there was a large rectangular camp at Wallingford about half a mile from north 

 to south and about a third of a mile from east to west, bounded on the east by the Thames 

 and on the other sides by a high rampart and deep ditch. On the eastern part of the 

 north side these have been entirely obliterated by the earthen defences of the eleventh 

 century castle, but indications of the rampart and ditch can be seen from the road to 

 Shillingford westward to the north-west angle and so southward along the western em- 

 bankment up to the road to Sotwell, but owing to the spreading of the town beyond the 



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