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Transcript
· Intro
0:02 · [Music]
0:02 · this is Akeman Street beautiful bit of Agger there on the Roman Road that was traveled
0:08 · between Cirencester up across to bicester, we're not too far from biscester now all the way down
0:14 · to St Albans, not the Roman names, now we know there was a north south link here that came up
0:19 · from silchester past Oxford on its East and up to Bicester that's margary route 160 and
0:25 · well accepted but as this video will show it seems the story north of Oxford isn't quite that simple
0:31 · because antiquarians of old and academics of new keep finding Clues as to more routs North this
0:37 · video is about how King Ethelred will help us find those missing [Music] links hi I'm Mark Merrony,
0:47 · I'm a fellow at Woolston college and also the publisher and Editor in Chief of Antiqvvs
0:52 · magazine, now Mark is the proprietor of a cottage north-north eastish of oxford
· A coincidence
1:00 · and he' uh heard rumors about the the local fields and there was evidence of a,
1:05 · maybe a medieval floor, some kind of stonework perhaps even an Anglo-Saxon, it all started with
1:12 · this book John Buchan and "the blanket of the dark" set in the Tudor period and he mentions the
1:18 · protagonist Peter Pentecost found a floor Mosaic in a place not really far from here that led me to
1:25 · search for a long lost Roman villa, now if you've read any John Buchan books before you know they're
1:32 · fictional but you may also know that he researched these with significant detail and now we have a
1:39 · coincidence on our hands because this one chapter one is set on Mark's doorstep, all generally in
1:45 · this area and it's about a band of Outlaws that existed and uh it's it's a really interesting
1:51 · read so this is probably one of the best preserved bits of Rowan Road along this stretch at least I
1:59 · could find I'll put the camera down low so you can kind of see the level there I'm looking at
2:04 · and uh how well raised up that is that's the the main Ager of Akeman Street really good to
2:11 · see up here this is the middle you're down there in the ditch possibly the clay line ditch for
2:22 · the horses to be easy on their their um Hooves such was the The Coincidence of this um this re
2:30 · the book that Mark had read it was only maybe a couple of kilometers away from where he lived
2:35 · well Along came a global pandemic plenty of time on his hands Mark set about trying to
2:41 · read the landscape and see if he could put this into the landscape so a quick recap
· Roman Roads context
2:45 · of the known routs in this area because it will become important very shortly on Mark's Journey
2:51 · now we have Akeman Street the East West Route broadly and we also have our North South Route
2:56 · r160 the silchester to Bicester route to the east of Oxford now broadly where I stand with
3:02 · Mark now well we are between that route and Oxford itself and as I say as Mark's Journey
3:10 · continues here this becomes very important I think I was looking in too many places
3:15 · and not really following the obvious Clues the early the Early phase of this investigation is,
3:23 · I was given permission by the landowner to try and find this site and the difficulty was it was
· Research
3:29 · so over grown here Mark set about the research and he came across something quite staggering
3:34 · truly one area of research that I'm pretty poor at myself is Anglo-Saxon Charters they
3:40 · tend to provide some clues that really help us understand the landscape what Mark found
3:46 · was absolutely staggering Anglo Saxon Charter b670 and k304 a specific line read "fuan andand Rus hit
4:00 · cometh a Fagan Floren" yeah forgive the old English there so I was now on foot approaching
4:07 · sturdy's castle and I wanted to see how this North South Route interacted with Aman Street difficult
4:13 · to tell because now as quite a significant Road and a junction here the straight route through
4:19 · kiddlington is intriguing and we'll come back to that later south of here Margary mentions nothing
4:24 · but North he certainly does I think we have Route 162 the clue was walk along the streamlet
4:31 · until you reach the flagen Forum which is a paved floor which could be a paved as in stone Paving
4:39 · or Anglo-Saxon Scholars have suggested it's referring to a floor Mosaic that tantalizing
4:46 · clue uh where stood next to the streamlet which is now a ditch that was really what uh drew me to
4:53 · this another line in the charter and we have a tantalizing clue the next clue the charter
4:59 · mentions two small hills which are close to where we are stood are two prehistoric tumuli
5:07 · they date to the Bronze Age so anything between probably around between 2,000 BC and 1500 BC
5:15 · Now you might be wondering why that's so staggering well that Charter that Mark
5:21 · came across himself too well John buchan 100 or so maybe 130 years previous when he was
5:28 · writing this book this fiction book well he must have come across the same Anglo-Saxon
5:33 · Charter as well let's remind us how what the words were in his book and then on past the
5:41 · valley to the two hills and on to the painted [Music] floor now know that the uh the evidence
5:51 · suggested that this Charter was indeed...... the next thing was to look at the landscape
· The Landscape
5:59 · and try and map the charter into the landscape now after a bit of searching around Mark found
6:06 · exactly what he was looking for and it fitted perfectly well I found lots of broken Stones
6:13 · dress Stone the farmer did actually tell me that about 30 years ago he destroyed his tractor here
6:18 · when he was plowing he had hit a wall rote his tractor off and then in the ditch here
6:22 · the streamlet the original streamlet in the charter there was a very large dress Stone uh
6:27 · and then I also found uh an elongated hexagonal Roofing slab that was another tantalizing clue
6:36 · now Mark wanted to have a look at the area in Greater detail and managed to convince someone
6:40 · to get some geophysics done well we did some geophysics which was the key to identifying
6:46 · exactly what lay beneath there was a rectangular building so as we were processing the data there's
6:51 · always that moment as an archaeologist you think what if I'm not right so as we were processing
6:56 · the data in the back of the Land Rover Tony my colleague said "there's a building under here"
7:03 · there so that was that where does the road come into this because we have a Roman villa a nice
7:10 · little mystery at that but we don't have a formal road we don't need a formal Road for one single
· PortStrete
7:16 · Villa Mark found another Charter this time from 10:05 or 10:06 and it read "arist of Port stret
7:23 · onto trawell it is referring to King Elthered granting two hides of land and other lands to St
7:30 · Frideswade, Oxford so I felt that there must be a Roman Road in proximity to the villa and then
7:38 · I started looking further to the west of here lo and behold along the course of the banbury road
7:45 · is a Roman Road so this Charter highlighted that there was a formal route here PortStrete, Port
7:53 · potentially meaning Port way a route of safety and strete well almost certainly meaning Roman Road
8:00 · but where did this portway go from here did it go up to the West towards sturdy's Castle
8:06 · or did it go somewhere [Music] else the actual fact the route existed here in the first place
8:15 · just north of Oxford and maybe it would mean this Villa had some significance when we did
8:19 · the geophysics it became apparent there were two features that I couldn't explain
8:23 · initially and then I realized they were fish ponds because there's a villa about 20 mile away from
8:29 · here near North Le called Shaken Oak and it's a very similar Size Villa and that has two fish
8:35 · ponds the scenario is that um this was a Fish Production Villa so obviously if you have fish
8:41 · ponds you have a streamlet there must be a source and this is the trill spring that's mentioned in
8:46 · one of the charters now after some more research it turns out we are the first people here to
8:51 · search for the Portway near kidlington there's a scholar who used to be based in Ox Eberhard Sauer
8:58 · had justification to search for something and he was looking for the port way which was assumed
9:04 · to be the continuation of the road here further north but in fact it's probably a branch of it
9:12 · so he didn't find any evidence for it because he was looking for a paved you know logically
9:17 · a paved Street Okay so let's try and unpack this a little we have the charter from King e red with
9:24 · Portstrete mentioned on it just here so where does it head north of this well it's interesting
9:31 · when you come out of Oxford come up the banbury road there's a place name there stratfield road
· The Puzzle
9:36 · I believe it's called and then there is stratfield Break the clues are there so we have potential for
9:42 · the kidlington to sturdy Castle route but we have no other academic evidence from north of
9:49 · stratfield break and Starfield Farm where the port strete is mentioned but then we looked on the map
9:56 · and we found some more evidence of the portway in fact what I'm walking on right now there portway
10:02 · Farm just there in the distance this route is marked as the portway on the modern OS maps and
10:08 · the old OS Maps we have portway Cottages ahead of us there's much more evidence here but this
10:13 · isn't north of sturdy's Castle this one is much further east so do we actually have three routes
10:21 · rather than one or one 61 which Margary first said and then there's one more thing to consider
10:32 · [Music] you see when I'm looking for Roman roads I'm often just assuming it is a full-on ager a
10:39 · full-on Roman Road where I can show you uh like I did earlier with Akeman Street a a
10:44 · big hump in the ground where they would layer up upon layer and repair over the years and we
10:50 · have a formal proper route what was referred to as a via but rarely on this channel do I
10:54 · ever take into consideration the smaller routes the ITA for foot traffic the actus
11:00 · for the Beast of burden and the pack horse and such like that but this right now here looking
11:05 · at Anglo-Saxon Charters names in the landscape The portway Cottages Farm the portway all refer
11:13 · back to some of those Anglo-Saxon Charters we mentioned earlier Portstrete so when you find
11:19 · the word strete 99% of the time you have a Roman Road but it doesn't have to be that formal route
11:26 · that I was interpret as a Roman Road no matter what sometimes sometimes it could be something
11:33 · smaller so we may have free routes here serving various Industries and Villas each one went up to
11:45 · akeman Street in its own unique way 160 being the first formal via up to bicester and then
11:52 · two other routes perhaps repurposed relayed or just constructed and formalized in a nonmilitary
11:59 · way later in the Roman era the kidlington route the portway in the center and of course to the
12:05 · east route [Music] 160 so if you enjoyed today's little Adventure well you'll be
· The Publication
12:14 · pleased to know you can read a lot more about it in this magazine not a paid sponsorship I've
12:19 · genuinely subscribed to this magazine for the last year uh published by Mark who obviously
12:23 · featured in today's video I'll put the link in the description below well worth a read various
12:28 · different civilizations including obviously a lot about the Roman period thanks for watching
12:33 · if you enjoyed this video click on subscribe and we'll see you this time next week [Music]

Transcript
	·	Intro
0:02	·	[Music]
0:02	·	this is Akeman Street beautiful bit of Agger there on the Roman Road that was traveled
0:08	·	between Cirencester up across to bicester, we're not too far from biscester now all the way down
0:14	·	to St Albans, not the Roman names, now we know there was a north south link here that came up
0:19	·	from silchester past Oxford on its East and up to Bicester that's margary route 160 and
0:25	·	well accepted but as this video will show it seems the story north of Oxford isn't quite that simple
0:31	·	because antiquarians of old and academics of new keep finding Clues as to more routs North this
0:37	·	video is about how King Ethelred will help us find those missing [Music] links hi I'm Mark Merrony,
0:47	·	I'm a fellow at Woolston college and also the publisher and Editor in Chief of Antiqvvs
0:52	·	magazine, now Mark is the proprietor of a cottage north-north eastish of oxford
	·	A coincidence
1:00	·	and he' uh heard rumors about the the local fields and there was evidence of a,
1:05	·	maybe a medieval floor, some kind of stonework perhaps even an Anglo-Saxon, it all started with
1:12	·	this book John Buchan and "the blanket of the dark" set in the Tudor period and he mentions the
1:18	·	protagonist Peter Pentecost found a floor Mosaic in a place not really far from here that led me to
1:25	·	search for a long lost Roman villa, now if you've read any John Buchan books before you know they're
1:32	·	fictional but you may also know that he researched these with significant detail and now we have a
1:39	·	coincidence on our hands because this one chapter one is set on Mark's doorstep, all generally in
1:45	·	this area and it's about a band of Outlaws that existed and uh it's it's a really interesting
1:51	·	read so this is probably one of the best preserved bits of Rowan Road along this stretch at least I
1:59	·	could find I'll put the camera down low so you can kind of see the level there I'm looking at
2:04	·	and uh how well raised up that is that's the the main Ager of Akeman Street really good to
2:11	·	see up here this is the middle you're down there in the ditch possibly the clay line ditch for
2:22	·	the horses to be easy on their their um Hooves such was the The Coincidence of this um this re
2:30	·	the book that Mark had read it was only maybe a couple of kilometers away from where he lived
2:35	·	well Along came a global pandemic plenty of time on his hands Mark set about trying to
2:41	·	read the landscape and see if he could put this into the landscape so a quick recap
	·	Roman Roads context
2:45	·	of the known routs in this area because it will become important very shortly on Mark's Journey
2:51	·	now we have Akeman Street the East West Route broadly and we also have our North South Route
2:56	·	r160 the silchester to Bicester route to the east of Oxford now broadly where I stand with
3:02	·	Mark now well we are between that route and Oxford itself and as I say as Mark's Journey
3:10	·	continues here this becomes very important I think I was looking in too many places
3:15	·	and not really following the obvious Clues the early the Early phase of this investigation is,
3:23	·	I was given permission by the landowner to try and find this site and the difficulty was it was
	·	Research
3:29	·	so over grown here Mark set about the research and he came across something quite staggering
3:34	·	truly one area of research that I'm pretty poor at myself is Anglo-Saxon Charters they
3:40	·	tend to provide some clues that really help us understand the landscape what Mark found
3:46	·	was absolutely staggering Anglo Saxon Charter b670 and k304 a specific line read "fuan andand Rus hit
4:00	·	cometh a Fagan Floren" yeah forgive the old English there so I was now on foot approaching
4:07	·	sturdy's castle and I wanted to see how this North South Route interacted with Aman Street difficult
4:13	·	to tell because now as quite a significant Road and a junction here the straight route through
4:19	·	kiddlington is intriguing and we'll come back to that later south of here Margary mentions nothing
4:24	·	but North he certainly does I think we have Route 162 the clue was walk along the streamlet
4:31	·	until you reach the flagen Forum which is a paved floor which could be a paved as in stone Paving
4:39	·	or Anglo-Saxon Scholars have suggested it's referring to a floor Mosaic that tantalizing
4:46	·	clue uh where stood next to the streamlet which is now a ditch that was really what uh drew me to
4:53	·	this another line in the charter and we have a tantalizing clue the next clue the charter
4:59	·	mentions two small hills which are close to where we are stood are two prehistoric tumuli
5:07	·	they date to the Bronze Age so anything between probably around between 2,000 BC and 1500 BC
5:15	·	Now you might be wondering why that's so staggering well that Charter that Mark
5:21	·	came across himself too well John buchan 100 or so maybe 130 years previous when he was
5:28	·	writing this book this fiction book well he must have come across the same Anglo-Saxon
5:33	·	Charter as well let's remind us how what the words were in his book and then on past the
5:41	·	valley to the two hills and on to the painted [Music] floor now know that the uh the evidence
5:51	·	suggested that this Charter was indeed...... the next thing was to look at the landscape
	·	The Landscape
5:59	·	and try and map the charter into the landscape now after a bit of searching around Mark found
6:06	·	exactly what he was looking for and it fitted perfectly well I found lots of broken Stones
6:13	·	dress Stone the farmer did actually tell me that about 30 years ago he destroyed his tractor here
6:18	·	when he was plowing he had hit a wall rote his tractor off and then in the ditch here
6:22	·	the streamlet the original streamlet in the charter there was a very large dress Stone uh
6:27	·	and then I also found uh an elongated hexagonal Roofing slab that was another tantalizing clue
6:36	·	now Mark wanted to have a look at the area in Greater detail and managed to convince someone
6:40	·	to get some geophysics done well we did some geophysics which was the key to identifying
6:46	·	exactly what lay beneath there was a rectangular building so as we were processing the data there's
6:51	·	always that moment as an archaeologist you think what if I'm not right so as we were processing
6:56	·	the data in the back of the Land Rover Tony my colleague said "there's a building under here"
7:03	·	there so that was that where does the road come into this because we have a Roman villa a nice
7:10	·	little mystery at that but we don't have a formal road we don't need a formal Road for one single
	·	PortStrete
7:16	·	Villa Mark found another Charter this time from 10:05 or 10:06 and it read "arist of Port stret
7:23	·	onto trawell it is referring to King Elthered granting two hides of land and other lands to St
7:30	·	Frideswade, Oxford so I felt that there must be a Roman Road in proximity to the villa and then
7:38	·	I started looking further to the west of here lo and behold along the course of the banbury road
7:45	·	is a Roman Road so this Charter highlighted that there was a formal route here PortStrete, Port
7:53	·	potentially meaning Port way a route of safety and strete well almost certainly meaning Roman Road
8:00	·	but where did this portway go from here did it go up to the West towards sturdy's Castle
8:06	·	or did it go somewhere [Music] else the actual fact the route existed here in the first place
8:15	·	just north of Oxford and maybe it would mean this Villa had some significance when we did
8:19	·	the geophysics it became apparent there were two features that I couldn't explain
8:23	·	initially and then I realized they were fish ponds because there's a villa about 20 mile away from
8:29	·	here near North Le called Shaken Oak and it's a very similar Size Villa and that has two fish
8:35	·	ponds the scenario is that um this was a Fish Production Villa so obviously if you have fish
8:41	·	ponds you have a streamlet there must be a source and this is the trill spring that's mentioned in
8:46	·	one of the charters now after some more research it turns out we are the first people here to
8:51	·	search for the Portway near kidlington there's a scholar who used to be based in Ox Eberhard Sauer
8:58	·	had justification to search for something and he was looking for the port way which was assumed
9:04	·	to be the continuation of the road here further north but in fact it's probably a branch of it
9:12	·	so he didn't find any evidence for it because he was looking for a paved you know logically
9:17	·	a paved Street Okay so let's try and unpack this a little we have the charter from King e red with
9:24	·	Portstrete mentioned on it just here so where does it head north of this well it's interesting
9:31	·	when you come out of Oxford come up the banbury road there's a place name there stratfield road
	·	The Puzzle
9:36	·	I believe it's called and then there is stratfield Break the clues are there so we have potential for
9:42	·	the kidlington to sturdy Castle route but we have no other academic evidence from north of
9:49	·	stratfield break and Starfield Farm where the port strete is mentioned but then we looked on the map
9:56	·	and we found some more evidence of the portway in fact what I'm walking on right now there portway
10:02	·	Farm just there in the distance this route is marked as the portway on the modern OS maps and
10:08	·	the old OS Maps we have portway Cottages ahead of us there's much more evidence here but this
10:13	·	isn't north of sturdy's Castle this one is much further east so do we actually have three routes
10:21	·	rather than one or one 61 which Margary first said and then there's one more thing to consider
10:32	·	[Music] you see when I'm looking for Roman roads I'm often just assuming it is a full-on ager a
10:39	·	full-on Roman Road where I can show you uh like I did earlier with Akeman Street a a
10:44	·	big hump in the ground where they would layer up upon layer and repair over the years and we
10:50	·	have a formal proper route what was referred to as a via but rarely on this channel do I
10:54	·	ever take into consideration the smaller routes the ITA for foot traffic the actus
11:00	·	for the Beast of burden and the pack horse and such like that but this right now here looking
11:05	·	at Anglo-Saxon Charters names in the landscape The portway Cottages Farm the portway all refer
11:13	·	back to some of those Anglo-Saxon Charters we mentioned earlier Portstrete so when you find
11:19	·	the word strete 99% of the time you have a Roman Road but it doesn't have to be that formal route
11:26	·	that I was interpret as a Roman Road no matter what sometimes sometimes it could be something
11:33	·	smaller so we may have free routes here serving various Industries and Villas each one went up to
11:45	·	akeman Street in its own unique way 160 being the first formal via up to bicester and then
11:52	·	two other routes perhaps repurposed relayed or just constructed and formalized in a nonmilitary
11:59	·	way later in the Roman era the kidlington route the portway in the center and of course to the
12:05	·	east route [Music] 160 so if you enjoyed today's little Adventure well you'll be
	·	The Publication
12:14	·	pleased to know you can read a lot more about it in this magazine not a paid sponsorship I've
12:19	·	genuinely subscribed to this magazine for the last year uh published by Mark who obviously
12:23	·	featured in today's video I'll put the link in the description below well worth a read various
12:28	·	different civilizations including obviously a lot about the Roman period thanks for watching
12:33	·	if you enjoyed this video click on subscribe and we'll see you this time next week [Music]