54 SILBURY HILL 



or makes a sudden bend to get round it in a manner that no 



Roman road, in Britain at least, was ever known to do 



No one standing on Oldborough Down, and casting his eye 

 along its straight unbending line, can avoid seeing that it 

 runs straight at the centre of Silbury Hill. It is true, it may 

 have diverged just before hitting it, but nothing can be more 

 unlikely. It would have been just as easy for the Roman 

 engineer to have carried its arrow-like course a hundred 

 yards to the right. This, indeed, would have been a prefer- 

 able line, looked at from a Roman point of view, straight 

 for Marlborough, to which it was tending, and fitting better 

 to a fragment of the road, found beyond the village of 

 Kennet. But all this was disregarded, if the hill existed at 

 that time, and the road runs straight at its heart, as if on 

 purpose to make a sharp turn to avoid it, a thing as ab- 

 horrent to a Roman road-maker, as a vacuum is said to be to 

 nature. From a careful examination of all the circumstances 

 of the case, the conclusion seems inevitable, that Silbury Hill 

 stands on the Roman road, and consequently must have been 

 erected subsequently to the time of the Romans leaving the 

 country/' 



Startled by this argument, and yet satisfied that there must 

 be some error, I turned to the ordnance map, and found, to 

 my surprise, that the Roman road was distinctly laid down 

 as passing, not under, but .at the side of, Silbury Hill. Not 

 content with this, I persuaded Professor Tyndall to visit the 

 locality with me, and we convinced ourselves that upon this 

 point the map was quite correct. The impression on our 

 minds was, that the Roman engineer, in constructing the 

 road from Morgans Hill, had taken Silbury Hill as a point to 

 steer for, swerving only just before reaching it. Moreover, 

 the map will show that not only this Roman road, but some 

 others in the same part of England, are less straight than is 

 usually the case. 



