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Roman Roads with Small Side Ditches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Ivan D. Margary
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Extract

Roman roads are frequently described as having ditches beside them, but these are usually large hollows of varying depth and width from which material has been scooped to form the agger of the roadway. The ditches discussed here are of quite a different type, and so far only four instances of them are known, though it is very probable that others exist. They are quite small, usually 3–7 ft. wide and a few inches deep; are cut in accurately straight lines parallel with the road and distant from it on each side by a space roughly equal to the width of the actual roadway; and are apparently found only in places where the road is crossing high and fairly level ground.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 1939, pp. 53 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1939

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References

page 53 note 1 Excavations in Cranborne Chase, iii, 74, and pl. CLXIII.

page 53 note 2 Sussex Arch. Coll. lvii, 136, 141.

page 54 note 1 Margary, Sussex Arch. Coll. lxxiii, 33, 74, figs. 3, 4.

page 54 note 2 The peculiarity had. been observed by Bishop Bennet, and is quoted in a note supplied by him to Lysons's Magna Britannia, i, 201, thus: ‘Traces of it appear for some miles on Bagshot heath, not far from Wickham Bushes where it is called the Devil's Causeway, being raised with a trench on each side of it, and not less than 90 ft. wide.’ It is also quoted by Codrington, but the bishop's wording masked its true meaning, and the ditches were only rediscovered by me on a chance visit recently.

page 55 note 1 Loc. cit., p. 141.

page 55 note 2 Silvae, iv, 3, 4.

page 56 note 1 Archaeology of Sussex, p. 293.