96 The Place-Name Cricklade : a Suggestion. 



are tho outlines of evidence as to the condition, or even the existence, 

 of this little town in earlier centuries ? 



Briefly they are these. Its name is, I believe, Celtic. Its 

 situation was on the Eoman Road from Corinium, or Duro- 

 cornovium, near Cirencester, that branched at the Nythe Farm 

 (marked Nidum on the Ordnance Map), near Wanborough, one 

 fork leading to Silchester, the other to Cunetio (Mildenhall, near 

 Marlborough). Placed about half-way between these points, it 

 was at an appropriate spot for the first station out from Corinium. 

 It was surrounded by a rectangular mound or vallum, still traceable, 

 that once was, no doubt, surmounted by a palisade, and from its 

 form was presumably Roman. 



Its name, if Celtic, would imply a Pre-Roman existence as an 

 inhabited place. 



The Antonine Itinerary (Editio Wessling) gives in the thirteenth 

 iter from Isca (Usk) to Calleva (Silchester) only six intermediate 

 stations, and the total distance as cix m. p. (millia passuum, Roman 

 miles), whereas the distances recorded from station to station 

 amount to only ninety Roman miles. The length of a Roman 

 mile was about one thousand six hundred and eighteen of our 

 yards. It is evident that one or more stations must have slipped 

 out of the record of this iter. It gives the distance from Grlevum 

 (Gloucester) to Durocornovium (Cirencester) as xiv m. p. ; from 

 Durocornovium to Spinse (Speen, close to Newbury) xv m. p. ; and 

 from Spinae to Calleva xv m. p. Now the distance from Cirencester 

 to Speen, measured on the Roman road, would be about forty 

 Roman miles, instead of fifteen as given by the iter : evidently, 

 then, there is a hiatus in this part of the record. Possibly xv. 

 is a mistake for vl. or xlv. That. Cricklade was actually a 

 Roman station will be seen by the position of the circumvallated 

 town adjoining, but, as was not unusual, just off the Roman 

 road, being close to it on the south. It continued to be a 

 fortified place in Saxon and Danish and in Norman times, for it 

 was one of the towns in which money was coined from the reign 

 of Athelstan II. onward, i.e., from the latter part of the tenth into 

 the twelfth century ; and it was only in walled or fortified towns 



