King Aethelred's Lost Roman Road [12:43]

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]

Plus a transcript, because some people complain about not having one, and under different nicks complain about how bad the transcript is.

“Antiqvvs Magazine was founded in January 2019 by Dr Mark Merrony, former Editor-in-Chief of Minerva Magazine, founding Director of Mougins Museum of Classical Art, and a Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. In addition to Dr Merrony, Dr Jennifer Chi and Dr Michael Bennett, both specialists in Graeco-Roman art and culture and museology, complete Antiqvvs’ editorial committee.”

Ah! I’ve always loved Minerva, I wonder if it stopped publication, perhaps during the COVID fiasco, when I stopped going to the bookstores?

Oh, okay, email subscription only on this new mag, $12 a year, $29 for three years. Looks like Minerva is back-issues only.

Minerva was great.

I never subscribed because it was pricey, but when I bought an issue off the newsstand (when we had those) due to interest in one particular thing, I found dozens to hundreds of other things of interest. :^)

I got hand-me-down copies. It was easy to get lost in one.

.

If I wind up with a bunch of extra cash, I’d like to pick up all the back issues to enjoy in my declining (e.g., this one) years.

Is this Aethelred the Unready?

Aethelred

Probably one of David Axlerod’s ancestors.

5.56mm

You can get your kicks on Route XIVI.

The philosopher Kramercus adopted a section of the road, if I recall correctly.

If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch Dan Jones’ series on “Walking Britain’s Roman Roads” I’ve seen the 1st 3 episodes and it is an interesting way to kill an hour or so.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12632972/

Thanks! :^) I started watching that when it popped up. I got about three minutes into it, had an old folks moment, came back and the wireless router had developed a problem (wireless routers in my experience last about two years before they go haywire). After a few days of having to direct connect to the fiber my new router came...

:^)

I’ve had it on for an hour or more, just got to some “nothing new under the Sun” vignette about Roman transgenders, guess that was inevitable.

I snorted about the intro where the presenter repeats the ridiculous false claim that the Scots chased the Romans out of Britain. Hey, he’s a presenter, not an historian.

Oh, sorry, I wanted to say thank you again for the reminder, I am enjoying the show. When he visited that tattoo parlor with the surface of Watling Street in the basement, I was hooked. :^)

You are most welcome! And, I keep forgetting to thank you for ALL of the magnificent work you do for the history/archaeology thread here on Free Republic. I always have a grand time reading through the links/articles you so diligently research for us!

My pleasure, and thanks for the kind remarks!

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]