TAB. XLIV. 2d Vol.
At Farnham is the bishop of Winchester’s palace, a magnificent ancient structure of the castle-form, deeply moted, and strongly walled about, with towers at proper distance: it stands upon the edge of a hill, where is a fine park. One large and broad street of the town, below hill, fronts the castle; the main of the rest of the town consists of a long strait street crossing it at right angles, which is the Roman road coming from Winchester: the river runs parallel to it on the south: this is a fine rich soil with much sand in it, and has an extraordinary propriety for the growth of hops. This place I take to be the Caleva Atrebatum;[140] which because it is a notion of my own advancing, it requires that I should a little enlarge upon it, and propose it to your discerning judgement. This has been hitherto matter of dispute among antiquaries, and I think cannot otherwise be settled than in fixing it at this place: it will make this VIIth journey of Antoninus and some more very clear, that otherwise labour under insuperable difficulties: therefore this I propose to be the true scheme of that journey.
ITER VII. a Regno Londinium M. P. XCVI. sic
| Regnum | Ringwood | |
| Trausantum | Southampton | XX |
| Venta Belgarum | Winchester | X |
| Caleva Atrebatum | Farnham | XXII |
| Pontes | Stanes | XXII |
| Londinium | London | XXII |
| ——— | ||
toto, | XCVI. | |
We have no difference in the copies, but in the sum total at top, which is owing only to a transposition of the letters C and X. therefore all we have to do is to find out the towns; the particular numbers being indisputably right, and rightly cast up in the Suritan edition; and all the places that admit any question, are only Calleva and Pontes, which in this manner mutually prove one another, as being absolutely conformable to geography, and the nearest way one should chuse to go at this day, and having from Southampton a Roman road accompanying all the way. This summer I rode through Winchester and Farnham, through Alresford and Alton, and observed in many places signs sufficient of that nature; though it is horridly out of repair, and even in the midst of summer very bad, notwithstanding such plenty of materials every where to mend it: this has obliged coaches and horsemen frequently to make excursions for their ease and safety. Mr. Aubury likewise pronounces it a Roman road long since in his manuscript collections. Between Farnham and Alton the bank is visible, in several places between Alresford and Alton: the right reverend author of the additions to Camden takes notice of it. The distance is twenty two miles, as in the Itinerary; but to Wallingford, where Mr. Camden places it, it is thirty; to Henley somewhat more: beside, from the one you must cross the Thames three times, from the other twice in the way to London; a thing the Romans would certainly avoid, if possible: but from Farnham by way of Stanes is the direct road, and distances correspondent as before.
44·2d.
Prospect of Farnham Sep: 16. 1723.
Caleva atrebatvm
Stukeley del.