Page:VCH Berkshire 1.djvu/281

ROMANO-BRITISH BERKSHIRE ASTON UPTHORPE. Site of a Roman camp on Lowbury Hill [O.S. (25 in.) xxi. 12]. Traces of the foundations of walls enclosing a rectangular space, 56 yards long by 43 yards wide, are said to have been observed here before the middle of the last century, and a great quantity of fragments of Roman pottery, bricks and tiles, many Roman coins and a vast amount of oyster shells were found within or near this area [Gent. Mag. 1838, i. 47, 48 ; Hewett, Hist, and Antiq. of Hundred, of Camp ton, 113 ; Arch. Journ. v. 279]. BASILDON. Early in 1839 some remains of a Roman villa {Arch, xxviii. 447, 448] were found on the line of the Great Western Railway at Basildon, a village on the Thames, two miles north of Pangbourne. The site was in a field called Church Field, lying between the village and the church and only 200 yards from the high road to Streatley, Moulsford and Wallingford [Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans, iv. 98-100]. Two tessellated pave- ments were first uncovered at a depth of only 12 or 14 inches below the surface. Both were destroyed by the workmen, not, however, before drawings had been made. One of these drawings was afterwards lost, but the other was preserved, and a chromo-lithograph of it appeared in Roach Smith's Collectanea Antiqua [i. 65] and shows a panel of mosaic which is set in a wide border of plain red tesserae with a narrow inner band of red and white triangles, and consists of a circle within two interlacing squares framed by an outer square, the space thus enclosed being made octagonal by bands set across the angles. The ground colour is white, and the bands forming the pattern are outlined in blue and ornamented with a guilloche in red, blue and white. In the angles of the outer square are red and white lotus flowers, and in the eight lozenge-shaped spaces enclosed between the octagon and the two inner squares are fylfots in red alternating with interlaced rings. The circle which forms the centre of the design has a red border with white rays surround- ing a band on which is a key pattern in red, white and blue. Within the band are two superimposed pentagons with concave sides outlined in blue, and containing a five-leaved flower similarly outlined with a large red centre. The second pavement was a parallelo- gram of red tesserae relieved by blue. There were no other remains with these pavements, but at a distance of about 50 yards the workmen found one perfect skeleton and the remains of another, a sword by the side of one of these, and a portion of a wall about 3 feet in length. Twenty of what are described as pavements from 6 to 8 feet long and made of large flints were uncovered at a depth of 18 inches and supposed by the workmen to be graves, though only a few small pieces of bone were found with them. Fragments of red pottery and tiles were turned up in great abundance, but apparently no coins except a large brass of Lucilla (A.D. 147-183). BEEDON. Old Street, supposed to be a Roman road, passes through this parish [Hewett, Hist, and Antiq. of Hundred of Campion, 118]. Fragments of Samian and other ware, animal bones and coins (undescribed) have been found here [Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans. ii. 93, 256]. BLEWBURY. A single fragment of pale burnt Roman ware found about 1848 in a British barrow near Ilsley Downs [Arch. Journ. v. 279]. Roman buckles and a key from Blewbury Fields Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass. iii. 328]. ' Roman Amphitheatre ' at Curknell Pit [O.S. (2Sin.) xxi. 7]. BOROUGH HILL CAMP. See Boxford. BOXFORD. At Wyfield Farm some foundations of ' a very large villa ' are said to have been discovered in 1871, a part of a bronze armilla, a spindle-whorl of Kimmeridge coal, the bottom of a vessel of Durobrivian pottery and some flanged roofing-tiles were also found [Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans, i. 207]. Traces of an encampment on Borough Hill, a quarter of a mile from Wyfield Farm [Ibid. ii. 61]. At Boxford Rectory fragments of Roman pottery and numerous coins [Cooper-King, Hist, of Berks, 47]. BRADFIELD. Roman terra-cotta lamp picked up in 1884 in a ploughed field not far from the workhouse. Some foundations pronounced ' too rough to be Roman ' were after- wards discovered near the same spot. Dr. Haverfield, who exhibited the lamp to the Society of Antiquaries, thought that the device between the central head and spout was just possibly the Chi-Rho, and that the two finds might indicate the existence of a Romano-British dwelling in the neighbourhood [Proc. Soc. Antiq. (ser. 2) xvi. 276]. BRAY AND MAIDENHEAD. As the modern town of Maidenhead was formerly in the parish of Bray and is only a mile distant from the old village, it will be convenient to consider 203