ROMANO-BRITISH WORCESTERSHIRE styled a Roman camp, but its shape is not that of an ordinary Roman fort or encampment, and no definite evidence really exists to assign it to any age. The unquestionably Roman remains of Kempsey indicate a dwelling or a village, and the earthwork, if Roman at all, may be the enclosure round the one or the other/ (3) Eckington. Here at a spot some 200 yards north of the village and three-quarters of a mile from the river Avon, the railway constructors met with foundations of buildings in stone, bricks, drains, three quoined wells or pits, many bones of men and animals, and much Roman pottery, including a pelvis (or mortarium) now in the Worcester Museum (fig. 6), and pieces of the red-earth ware noticed above. These remains seem to indicate a dwelling-house or ' villa ' of some sort. Fig. 6. Pelvis Found at Eckington. To this brief list we may perhaps add some fainter traces of habita- tion in the parishes of Aldington, Badsey and Littleton, a little east- north-east of Evesham. Here Roman pottery and coins may still be noticed in comparative abundance. The pottery is mostly very plain ; the coins are late ' third brass ' ; foundations and traces of buildings seem wholly unknown, and it would be rash to conjecture the existence of anything so elaborate as a ' villa.' But it is at least noteworthy that we meet in this district more distinct signs of Romano-British man than in most parts of Worcestershire, and the comparative abundance of his remains suggests that further search might not be unprofitable.^ The same may possibly be true of the south slopes of Bredon Hill. There is lastly one settlement which we shall not seek in Worces- tershire nor indeed anywhere at all. ' Richard of Cirencester ' mentions a station 'Ad Antonam,' as fifteen miles from Gloucester and fifteen from Alauna. Various sites have been selected for it in Worcestershire — Eckington, Evesham, Blackbank near Aldington, Overbury, Bengeworth and so forth. But it is now well recognized that the treatise ascribed to Richard of Cirencester is really an eighteenth-century forgery by one 1 Allies, pp. 54-59 ; Dunkin's Report of the British Archaol. Association Meeting at Worcester, p. 261 ; E. M. Rudd, British Archaological Association Joumal, iv. 312 ; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vii. 1157 ; inscription and pottery in Worcester Museum. Mr. H. H. Lines (Berrow's Worcester Joumal, Oct. 25, 1890) challenges Mr. Allies' measurements, but his own do not inspire confidence. As a matter of fact the earthworks seem to have been faint as long ago as Aubrey's day (MS. 14, p. 180, in the Bodleian). At present little is visible, except perhaps the north-east corner in an orchard north of the church, and that is practically all that Prattinton saw (MS. vol. xxi.)
- References in the Index : information from Mr. R. F. Tomes and the Rev. F. S. Taylor, who
were kind enough to show me the chief sites. 211
