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Excavations on the Akeman Street, near Asthally,1 Oxon., Feb.–June, 1925

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

The following details of work done on the Akeman Street between Ramsden and Asthally, Oxon., may help to supplement the somewhat meagre account of this section of the road given by Codrington, who dismisses it as follows: ‘For two miles [southwest of Ramsden] a lane marks the course, and then for three miles across the Windrush Valley there are apparently few traces, but beyond Asthall a parish boundary takes up the line’…&c. In point of fact the road is very visible during the first of these three miles, and the ‘apparently few traces’ include one of the most remarkable features in the whole of its course, namely the causeway in Pool's Bottom, Asthally. The references throughout are to Ordnance Survey 25 in., Oxon., 1922, sheet xxv, 15 (cited as ‘O.S.’).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1926

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References

page 43 note 2 Roman Roads in Britain, 3rd ed., 200-1. Dr. Plot (Natural History of Oxfordshire (1676), 319) says less: ‘from Witty Green to Asthally it is scarce risible.’ The late Mr. P. Manning, F.S.A., went over the ground with some care, as his MS. notes on this section of Akeman Street (now in the Ashmolean Museum) show, but in Pool's Bottom he apparently mistook the northern holloway in Wisdom's Copse for the Roman Road–and he did not excavate.

page 43 note 3 See fig. 4.

page 44 note 1 See fig. 3, 1.

page 44 note 2 Proc. Soc. Ant., xvii, 333.

page 44 note 3 J.R.S., xii, 254.

page 44 note 4 Fig. 3 and section B. 2. infra.

page 46 note 1 See figs. 1 and 4.

page 52 note 1 Supra, section I.

page 52 note 2 Berks., Bucks., and Oxon. Arch. Journ., vol. iv, II and 10.

page 52 note 3 Ibid., iv, 26.

page 52 note 4 J.R.S., xii, 255.

page 52 note 5 J.R.S., xi. 215.

page 53 note 1 e. g., Gough's Camden (1806), ii, 15.

page 53 note 2 See fig. 4, where the course of the road is correctly shown. The O.S. by marking the road 12-15 yards too far north from east hedge of 230 (Minster) to west hedge of 195 (Asthall), a distance of 1,500 yards, misses the point that the forest wall and the parish boundary run along the bank of the road in the south-west corner of 206 (Asthall), again in 199 (Asthall), and for a few yards in 196 (Asthall). The ruined cottage and cowshed in the middle of the north side of 230 (Minster) are built actually on the camber of the road, no doubt originally to secure a dry paving.