stonehenge - English Heritage

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McKinley 1999; McOmish et al. 2002, figure 3.31).
A similar picture can be seen in other parts of Salisbury
Plain (Bowen and Fowler 1966), with the strongest evidence
coming from the Great Ridge – the Nadder/Wylye interfluve –
just to the southwest of the Stonehenge Landscape, with its
characteristic single and multi-ditched enclosures and villages
such as Ebbsbury, Hamshill Ditches, Hanging Langford, and
Stockton (Cunnington 1930, 194–5; Corney 1989).
The traditional view of Salisbury Plain in the second to
fourth centuries AD period is that it was an imperial estate,
or saltus, and for this reason contained rather few large
Roman settlements and villas of the kind found elsewhere
across southern Britain (Collingwood and Myers 1937, 224;
Branigan 1976, 123) but this view is being gradually eroded
by the accumulating evidence (Cunliffe 1973e; 1973f;
Graham and Newman 1993, 51–2). Within the Stonehenge
Landscape the Avon Valley is the focus of Roman occupation
of the second century and beyond, some of it fairly
substantial and involving a number of what appear to be
villa-based settlements (Map L).
Starting at the northern end, at Netheravon House just
outside the Stonehenge Landscape, a villa site with a
mosaic pavement and bath-house was uncovered in 1907
(Grinsell 1957, 90–1 for summary). Sample excavations were
carried out at the site in 1996 confirming most of the earlier
observations (Rawlings 2001). To the south, within the
Stonehenge Landscape at Figheldean, excavations along
pipeline routes in 1991 and 1995 revealed extensive
occupation and a cemetery of at least four graves within the
long narrow trenches. A T-shaped oven or corn-drying kiln
was also found, together with ceramic building materials
and stone slates suggesting the presence of a fairly
substantial structure in the vicinity (Graham and Newman
1993, 34–6). Good samples of animal bones and carbonized
plant remains were also found and this is clearly a site that
would repay further investigation (McKinley 1999 for
overview and the results of geophysical surveys).
About 4km south of Figheldean is another area of
Romano-British settlement of later third- and fourth-century
date sampled by excavation prior to tree-planting west of
Durrington Walls (Wainwright 1971; and see RCHM 1979,
24). Postholes, pits, gullies, and hollows were recorded in
Site II, while in Site I on the north side of Fargo Road two
small ditched enclosures, one containing a corn-drying kiln
and two infant burials, were examined. These features were
regarded as peripheral agricultural facilities with the main
focus of the settlement, perhaps a villa of some kind, lying
on the higher ground to the west. Pieces of roofing tile in
stone and ceramic from the excavations hint at a substantial
structure in the vicinity. The scale of the site is considerable
to judge from quantities of Samian ware and other pottery
recovered over many years from both sides of Fargo Road on
Durrington Down (Cunnington 1930, 186; and see Richards
1990, figure 17). An inhumation burial set within a ditched
enclosure was found at the Durrington Reservoir in 1991
(Cleal et al. 2004) and may be associated with this
settlement. About 1km south again, around Countess Farm
and to the northwest of the Countess Road roundabout a
scatter of Roman material found by metal-detector users
suggested another site (Darvill 1993b, 63–8) which has
since been confirmed by field evaluation for the proposed
Stonehenge Visitor Centre site on the east side of Countess
Road (WA 2003a; 2004).
On the east side of the River Avon on Butterfield Down,
Amesbury, an unenclosed settlement of about 6ha included
timber-framed buildings and a corn-drying oven very similar
to the example already noted from Durrington Walls. Cattle
and sheep were the most common farm animals
represented. An infant burial within the settlement and the
possibility that a ring-gully represents the remains of a
shrine indicate aspects of the religious side of life at the site
(Rawlings and Fitzpatrick 1996, 38–40). Nearby, excavations
in advance of development for a new school on the eastern
outskirts of Amesbury revealed an inhumation cemetery of
the third and fourth centuries AD. Set within what has been
interpreted as a garden of remembrance, there is some
suggestion that these may be early Christian burials
(Fitzpatrick 2003a, 147).
South of Amesbury evidence of Roman settlement
appears less abundant but this is probably a result of fewer
opportunities. Finds made over a long period of time at
Boscombe Road/New Covert in Amesbury suggest another
extensive site here. A pot containing a hoard of bronze and
silver coins and three silver finger-rings was found in c.1842
(Cunnington 1930, 172; Grinsell 1957, 30); more recently a
midden and pits were seen by Mr St John Booth.
Just outside the Stonehenge Landscape the small town
of Sorviodunum developed beside the Avon around Old
Sarum and modern-day Stratford-sub-Castle (James 2002).
Roman settlement was not confined to the Avon Valley.
East of the Avon occupation on Boscombe Down West
continued into the third and fourth centuries in Area S and its
associated cemetery in Area R (Richardson 1951). On Earl’s
Farm Down, Amesbury, pottery and foundations suggest a
substantial site (Cunnington 1930, 173; Grinsell 1957, 30).
On the high ground between the Avon and the Till there is
evidence for occupation at Wilsford Down which has yielded
a number of brooches, ornaments, and ironwork (Cunnington
1930, 208; Grinsell 1957, 122) and is revealed as a pottery
scatter in the fieldwalking undertaken for the Stonehenge
Environs Project (Richards 1990, figure 17). At Normanton
Ditch, Wilsford, a possible pewter hoard is recorded as having
been ploughed up about 1635 (Cunnington 1930, 208;
Grinsell 1957, 123). A second area of Roman settlement is
represented by two groups of finds, connected by a linear
ditch, one either side of the Amesbury to Shrewton road on
Winterbourne Stoke Down (Colt Hoare 1812, plan op. 170;
Cunnington 1930, 209; Illustration 55). Strangely, this pair of
sites is not represented in finds made during the Stonehenge
Environs Project fieldwalking, although the fieldwork would
have only touched the eastern edge.
A third area of settlement may lie on Rox Hill to judge
from a scatter of Roman pottery recorded during the
Stonehenge Environs Survey (Richards 1990, figure 17),
possibly the Romano-British village referred to by Colt
Hoare (1812, 227; Cunnington 1930, 208). West of the Till,
there are again substantial traces of occupation at
Maddington Farm, Shrewton, on the very far western side of
the Stonehenge Landscape. Here, two burials found during
the construction of a pipeline led to the excavation of a
wider area and the identification of a small farmstead of
third–fourth-century date together with an associated
inhumation cemetery (McKinley and Heaton 1996).
Cunnington (1930, 209) recorded another settlement on
High Down, Winterbourne Stoke, northwest of the Coniger,
confirmed as such by Colt Hoare (1812, 95). On Berwick
Down in the southwest corner of the Stonehenge Landscape
there is extensive evidence of Roman occupation tested ‘by
the spade’ by Colt Hoare in the nineteenth century
(Cunnington 1930, 174).
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