Vindoma.
TAB. LXI.
All the country hereabouts, and to Silchester, is clay, moor, sand, gravel by spots, much boggy, springy land, much good land, but more bad: the water is blackish every where. Silchester is a place that a lover of antiquity will visit with great delight: it stands upon the highest ground thereabouts, but hid with wood, which grows very plentifully all about it. Many were the Roman roads that met here, though now scarce any road; which is the reason it is so little known: it is likewise inconvenient for travellers, because no inns are near it; and it may be serviceable to tell the curious, that Aldermaston is the nearest town where lodging is to be found, three miles off; for at the place we may truly say,
Rarus & antiquis habitator in urbibus errat.
The walls of this city are standing, more or less perfect, quite round; perhaps the most intire of any in the Roman empire, especially the whole north side of the wall, which is a most agreeable sight. The composition is chiefly flint for the space of four foot high, then a binding of three layers of rag-stone laid flat: in many places five of these double intervals remain for a great length. There was a broad ditch quite round, and now for the most part impassable, and full of springs. Here and there Roman bricks are left in the walls. Though on the out-side they are of this considerable height, yet the ground within is so raised as nearly to be equal to the top, and that quite round crowned with oaks and other timber-trees of no mean bulk, and which Mr. Camden takes notice of in his time. Not long since, lady Blessington cut 500l. worth of timber from thence. Gildas says, Constantius the son of Constantine the Great built it, and sowed corn in the track of the walls, as an omen of their perpetuity:[135] indeed, now the whole city is arable; and among the fields Roman bricks, bits of pots, rubbish of buildings, are scattered every where, and coins are picked up every day. It is a parallelogram whose shortest side to the longest is as 3 to 4; its length about 2600 feet, its breadth 2000; standing conformable to the four cardinal points: it had two gates upon its length opposite. There is only one farm-house within it, and the church. To the east, by that house, the foundation of the gate is visible, and several Roman bricks thereabouts. All the yards here are like a solid rock, with rubbish, pavements and mortar, cemented together. The late Rev. Mr. Betham, minister of this place, a learned, curious and worthy person, had collected a vast number of coins and antiquities found here: he is buried under the north wall of the chancel without side: within is another monument of a person of quality: it is remarkable that a wall only divides them in their graves, who both met a sad and disastrous fate at different times in the same place, being drowned in Fleet-ditch. Onion-hole, in the middle of the southern wall, is a place much talked of here by the ignorant country people, which is only an arch in the foundation for the issue of a sewer: they have a like story here of this city being taken by sparrows. I saw a silver coin of Philippus, and a brass one of Constantine, and many more. A spring arises from under the wall at the church-yard. The streets are still visible in the corn. Rings with stones in them are often found, among inscriptions and all sorts of other antiquities.
Amphitheatre.
TAB. XLIII. 2d Vol.
Five hundred foot without the city, on the north-east corner I espied another great curiosity, which the people think was a castle: I presently discerned it to be an amphitheatre: it is in bulk, in shape, and all points, the same as that at Dorchester, but not built of so solid materials; for it is chiefly clay and gravel: it stands in a yard by the road side, near a ruinous house and barn, upon a sloping piece of ground: eastward toward the road there is a pit: there it is sixty foot high on the out-side. The whole area or arena within is now covered with water, but they say it is not much above three foot deep: the bottom of it, and the work, must certainly be exceeding solid, and well compared, to retain the water so many years without draining through: it is a most noble and beautiful concave, but intirely over-grown with thorn-bushes, briars, holly, broom, furze, oak and ash trees, &c. and has from times immemorial been a yard for cattle, and a watering-pond; so that it is a wonder their trampling has not defaced it much more. I examined this fine antiquity with all the exactness possible: the terrace at top, the circular walk, the whole form, is not obscure: it is posited exactly as that before described, with its longest diameter from north-east to south-west; its entrance north-east, though farthest from the city. There is an ascent to it from the entrance side, that being upon the lowest ground: at the upper end, the level of the ground is not much below the top of the terrace, and vastly above that of the arena; so that I conceive the better sort of the people went that way directly from the city into their seats: there is such a gap too in that part, from the ruin of the cave where the wild beasts were kept. An old house standing there with an orchard has forwarded its ruin from that quarter; and they have levelled some part of the terrace for their garden. Surveying the whole could not but put me in mind of that piece of Roman magnificence, when the emperors caused great trees to be taken up by the roots, and planted in the amphitheatres and circs, pro tempore, to imitate forests wherein they hunted beasts; which here is presented in pure nature.
Riding along the road on the north side of Silchester, I left it with this reflection: Now a person of a moderate fortune may buy a whole Roman city, which once half a kingdom could not do; and a gentleman may be lord of the soil where formerly princes and emperors commanded. To the west of the place, but at some distance, runs a high bank overgrown with trees seemingly north and south: they say there is another such, south of the city: which would make one suspect they were raised by some besiegers. Farther on I crossed a great Roman road coming from Winchester: they call it Long-bank and Grimesdike. I have very often found this name applied to a road, a wall, a ditch of antiquity; which would make one fancy it is a Saxon word signifying the witches work; for the vulgar generally think these extraordinary works made by help of the devil. They told me it goes through Burfield and Reading. Towards Winchester I could see it as far as the horizon, perfectly strait, ten miles off. We may say with the poet,
Tellus in longas est patefacta vias. Tibull.