Blewburton Hill, near Blewbury
There are a few old earthworks in the Vale of White Horse district. One crowns Badbury Hill near Faringdon. Cherbury Camp is a large oval work on low ground near Buckland. Sinodun Hill to the north of Wallingford has evidently been fortified in early times, and Wallingford itself has the remains of an old and extensive earthwork round the town.
Passing to the Forest District we find many mounds and banks on the heaths, and there is one very fine earthwork known as Caesar’s Camp near Easthampstead. It was very likely used by the Romans, but is almost certainly of still older date. Finally it is highly probable that Windsor Castle stands on the site of an old fort.
16. Antiquities—(b) Roman and Saxon.
The Reading Museum contains one of the finest Anglo-Roman collections in England. It is the result of careful and systematic excavation, carried on for a series of years, on the site of the town of Silchester, and the collection is of the greatest interest to us as illustrating the life in an English country town in the days of the Romans. The locality is however in Hampshire, the Berkshire boundary making a detour so as to leave it in the neighbouring county.
According to the ordnance map, Speen House near Newbury was the site of the Roman Spinae, but no Roman remains have been found there, though there is evidence of a settlement of some importance at Newbury itself.
The foundations of houses of the Roman period have been found at several places in Berkshire; thus at Frilford near Marcham the remains of a small Romano-British house were found; and near by, in Frilford Field, a cemetery of the same period, which had subsequently been used by the Anglo-Saxons. Remains of a house with tessellated pavements were found on the Great Western Railway at Basildon, and other remains of Romano-British buildings have been discovered near Maidenhead and Waltham St Lawrence.
The words “Roman Villa” will be found marked on the ordnance map at two places to the south of Hampstead Norris, and remains of buildings have been discovered near Letcombe Regis, and at other places. The earthworks on Lowbury Hill to the west of Streatley are usually believed to be a Roman camp, and it is probable that the Roman soldiers occupied many of the old British forts at one time or another.
Roman coins and pottery of the Romano-British period have been found almost all over the county, though they may be said to be most common along the valley of the Thames and least so near Faringdon. In the Reading Museum there are a good many objects of Roman date which were found in Reading itself. Specimens are exhibited from two small hoards of coins dating from the Emperor Valentinian A.D. 364 to the Emperor Honorius A.D. 423. The coins are in very good preservation and were probably hidden when the Roman soldiers departed from England.