By J. U. Powell, M.A. 



111 



200 B.C. will be a round date for the second Belgic conquest, in 

 which they took South Wilts, and Dr. Guest 1 has traced their 

 boundary dykes, one running near Tilshead. The camps, too, are 

 of this early time, or even of an earlier ; not Koman. We must 

 not picture the Boman soldier pacing these ramparts, and as he 

 gazes over the featureless downs, thinking wistfully of the terraced 

 hills of Italy with the vineyards climbing " acclive solum collesque 

 supinos" as may be seen on the Bhine or the Lake of Geneva at 

 the present day. But down in the valley the Boman farmer in 

 the second century A.D., will have driven his ewes across the 

 Norton ford, and penned his lambs under the sunny slopes, just as 

 his successor does to-day, and taken the honey that his bees gathered 

 from the wild thyme on the hills. For in the meadows near 

 the water between Bishopstrow and Norton, are traces of two 

 Boman villas. From the fact that it was Somerset and Dorset, 

 not Wilts, that were thick with Boman settlements, it is probable 

 that the Boman advance came from that side, not from the 

 Salisbury side. For there are eighty places in Dorset where there 

 are traces of Boman occupation, and Mr. Moule 2 thinks that search 

 would reveal at least a hundred. 3 The site of one of the two can 

 just be traced, and bits of building stone, and tiles with incised 

 lines worn smooth by use may be found. But after their first 

 discovery in 1786 the place was ransacked more than once by " the 

 virtuosi of the neighbourhood," as the writer in Vetusta Monumenta, 

 ii., 43, says. The site of the second building is probably in the 

 fir plantation at the west end of Bitmead. The banks round it 

 contain a few pieces of rough black pottery and tile, and there is a 

 well-defined rise or heap in the plantation, measuring about thirty 

 paces by ten, under which is probably the debris. 4. Here and there 

 in the watercourses of the meadows lie bits of tile, brick, and 



1 Guest, Orig. Celt., ii., 201. 

 2 Old Dorset, p. 110. 

 3 1 do not know how many Roman sites there are in South Wilts. Why 

 does Kelly's Directory of Wilts (p. 3) say that there are Roman settlements 

 at Heytesbury and Codford ? 



4 For the account of the excavations, the pavements, and the human remains 

 under the wall, see Vetusta Monumenta, ii., 43, for the year 1777. 



I 2 



