Vol. I. p. 81
A Roman Camp near Bere Regis (Ibernium) Dorsr 9 Iun 1724.
Stukeley delin.
E. Kirkall sculp.
Blandford.
Blandford is a pretty town, pleasantly seated in a flexure of the river, before charming meadows, and rich lands. Wood thrives exceedingly here: indeed this country is a fine variety of downs, woods, lawns, arable, pasture, and rich valleys; and an excellent air: the dry easterly winds, the cold northern, and the western moisture, are tempered by the warm southern saline breezes from the ocean, and nearest the sun. The incredible number of barrows that over-spread this country from the sea-side to North Wiltshire, persuade me a great people inhabited here before the Belgæ, that came from Spain, which we may call the Albionites: but it is not a time to discourse of that. This year, wherever I travelled, I found the bloom of the hedge-rows, and indeed all trees whatever, excessively luxuriant beyond any thing I ever knew. In this part the buck-thorn, or rhamnus catharticus, is very plentiful; and a traveller, if he pleases, may swallow a dozen of the ripe berries, not without use. Near the passage of the Icening-street at Crayford is Badbury, a vast Roman camp, where antiquities have been found.
Wansdike.
About three mile beyond this I found another ditch and rampart, which I believe to be the first of the colony of the Belgæ; it has indeed a rude ancient look; so that they made four of these boundaries successively as their power enlarged, the last being Wansdike, between North and South Wiltshire. By what I could see or learn, in travelling over this intricate country, the Roman road passes upon a division between Pimpern and Bere hundred to Bere; and that I reckon a convenient distance for a station between Vindogladia and Dorchester, being near the middle: on one side it is about thirteen mile, on the other nine. Now in the last journey of Antoninus before mentioned, immediately after Ibernium.Vindogladia follows Durnovaria M. P. IX. Dorchester being very truly nine mile off this town Bere, and which is a market-town too, but far otherwise as to Wimbornminster; I doubt not but this is the true place designed in the Itinerary; but that a town is slipped out of the copies. I think I have fortunately discovered it in the famous Ravennas, by which we may have hopes of restoring this journey to its original purity. That author mentions a town next to Bindogladia, which he calls Ibernium: this verily is our Bere. Mr. Baxter corrects it into Ibelnium, and places it at Blandford, for no other reason, as I conceive, but because he imagined it must necessarily be hereabouts. I was not a little pleased when I found my notion highly confirmed by a great and elegant Ro. Camp.Roman camp upon a hill near Bere, I think it is called Woodbury, where a yearly fair is kept: TAB. XLV 2d Vol.this is between Bere and Milburn upon the river: it is doubly intrenched, or rather a double camp one within another. This town of Bere denominates the hundred too. In this case, where a Roman camp, a road, and all distances concur, which in the others are very abhorrent from reality, I imagine the reader will find little difficulty in passing over to my sentiments. The town is called Bere Regis, and the camp is the Æstiva to the town. Of Dorchester I have spoken already, beyond which is the original of the Icening-street: from thence I travelled along the southern coasts, in order to come to the beginning of this seventh journey.