Listed 17 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "HAMPSHIRE County ENGLAND" .
PORTCHESTER (Town) ENGLAND
BITTERNE (Town) ENGLAND
Clausentum (Bitterne) Hampshire, England.
The Roman site lies on a promontory surrounded on three sides by the river Itchen
on the edge of Southampton Water. Occupation began soon after the Claudian invasion
in A.D. 43 and continued until the 5th c. or later. Initially the site may have
been occupied by a fort of the invasion period. From the mid 1st until the late
4th c. timber and masonry buildings spread over the site, but soon after A.D.
367 an area at the tip of the promontory was enclosed by a masonry wall ca. 2.7m
thick which followed the coastline on three sides and cut across the neck of land
on the E. Earlier accounts record the presence of bastions on this E wall. It
is possible that a garrison was moved to Clausentum from Portchester under the
reorganization carried out by Count Theodosius. The promontory was further defended
by an earthwork of late or post-Roman date.
Archaeological discoveries have been made sporadically over the last
200 years. The collection, now housed in the Gods House Tower Museum, Southampton,
includes several inscriptions. The site is now largely covered by modern houses,
but a small section of wall can be seen on the N side with part of an adjacent
bath building.
B.W. Cunliffe, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
PORTCHESTER (Town) ENGLAND
Portus Adurni(Portchester) Hampshire, England.
The castle stands on a low promontory projecting into the upper reaches of Portsmouth
harbor. Limited occupation of the mid-1st c. A.D. has been found, but the main
phase of use began in the late 3d c. with the construction of the Saxon Shore
Fort. Excavations show that occupation continued throughout the Saxon period.
In mediaeval times the Roman walls served as an outer bailey for a castle which,
after a series of modifications, was eventually used as a prison during the wars
between Britain and France in the late 18th and early 19th c.
The Roman fort consists of a regularly planned rectangle enclosing
ca. 3.6 ha. The walls were built of coursed flint rubble with the occasional use
of chalk blocks, and with bonding courses of stone and tiles at intervals. Originally
20 hollow D-shaped bastions projected from the wall, one at each corner and four
regularly spaced along each side. They were floored with timber at the level of
the rampart walk to form fighting platforms for men and artillery. The two main
gates were in the centers of the E and W sides. In both the full width of the
wall was turned into the fort, creating a courtyard, at the inner end of which
the gate was erected (two guard chambers flanking a 3.3 m roadway). Simple postern
gates, 3 m wide, pierced the centers of the N and S walls. Outside, enclosing
the fort, were two V-shaped ditches.
Extensive excavations began in 1961 in the enclosed area. Buildings
were of timber, arranged along graveled streets; between them were cesspits and
wells. Several phases of occupation can be defined. The first represents the use
of the fort under Carausius and Allectus (A.D. 285-296), during which time Britain
was self-governed and the shore forts were probably defenses against the threat
of Roman attack. After the reconquest of Britain by Constantius Chlorus in 296
the garrison at Portchester was removed and some, at least, of the internal buildings
were deliberately demolished, but the interior continued to be occupied by civilians.
Early in the 340s renewed building activity can be recognized. It was probably
at this time that the fort was regarrisoned, perhaps by the Numerus exploratorum
listed in the Notitia Dignitatum. Intensive occupation ended about 370 during
the reorganization carried out by Count Theodosius; the force may have been transferred
to Clausentum, but occupation of a less organized kind continued into the Saxon
period. Several sunken huts (Grubenhauser) of Germanic type have been found, dating
from the early 5th c.; they suggest the presence of mercenaries among the population
of late Roman times.
The walls of the fort and the foundations of part of the W gate can
be seen, but no interior features are visible. While excavations are proceeding
the excavated material is not on display.
B.W. Cunliffe, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
WINCHESTER (Town) ENGLAND
Venta Belgarum (Winchester) Hampshire, England.
Situated 20.8 km N of Southampton Water, at a natural focus of communications
reflected in the network of Roman roads approaching the city from all directions.
The capital of the civitas of the Belgae, by the 2d c. A.D. Venta was the fifth
largest city of Roman Britain, with a walled area of 58.2 ha.
The Roman town lay on a sloping site W of the river Itchen. The higher
W area was occupied in the 1st c. B.C. by an extensive defended settlement of
the pre-Roman Iron Age, which was abandoned perhaps a century before Romano-British
occupation began on the lower slopes and on the valley floor. Despite the name
Venta Belgarum, there is no evidence that the site was occupied in the immediate
pre-Roman period by a Belgic oppidum, and the town seems to have been entirely
a Roman creation.
There is no evidence as yet for a military origin of the Roman town,
and little trace of Romano-British occupation of any kind before A.D. 55. The
earliest structures recorded are timber buildings on the lower slope of the W
hill, considerably W of the center of the later walled area; they were burnt down
about A.D. 60. Settlement of the valley bottom became much more intense during
the Flavian period, but was apparently quite unplanned, and probably not of urban
character.
The town was founded at the end of the 1st c. A.D., when the laying
out of the streets, the construction of the first defenses, and the building of
the forum followed in quick succession. The street plan was a regular grid pattern,
with evidence for insulae of 400 Roman feet square. The initial plan may have
been confined to the valley bottom and the lower slopes of the hill, but the first
defenses enclosed a larger area to the W, although their course to N and S is
not yet established. The forum was built in the central insula, on a previously
domestic site. Its structure is imperfectly known, but it may have measured ca.
123 by 93 m, with its longer axis E-W.
Urban development along the new streets was rapid; the houses were
mostly timber-framed, and remodeled on stone ground-walls in the second half of
the 2d c. Sometime after A.D. 150-160, and perhaps as late as the end of the century,
the defenses were reconstructed in earth and timber, enclosing an area of over
57 ha. The new defenses followed the earlier line on the W, but to N, E, and S
followed a new course which was to remain the line of the city's defenses for
more than 1500 years. The early street plan may at this time have been extended
W to fill the defended area, although occupation of the W part remained slight.
These defenses were again remodeled in the first half of the 3d c. by the addition
of a stone wall pierced by perhaps five gates, all presumably, like the excavated
S gate, on the site of earlier timber gateways.
Development within the walls continued throughout the 3d c., but at
the end there were great changes, perhaps associated with reorganization after
Constantius I's suppression of the British revolt. The nature of 4th c. Winchester
is uncertain. Occupation seems to have been denser than before, and to have spread
for the first time over the whole walled area. There is evidence for suburban
development, and the extramural cemeteries to N and E spread far from the walls.
The town was perhaps changing from its role as the cantonal capital of the civitas
of the Belgae to a more complex function in which an imperial weaving works, known
from the Notitia Dignitatum to have existed in Britain at a town called Venta,
played a major part.
Some houses were now suppressed and part of the forum abandoned, but
elsewhere houses continued to be remodeled and were clearly occupied into the
5th c. Soon after the middle of the 4th c. A.D. there is evidence of alien elements
in the population which grave goods and burial rites suggest were of S German
origin; they may have been laeti, barbarians settled in the Winchester area for
defense of the 4th c. civitas. At about this time bastions were added to the town
wall. In the first half of the 5th c. there was a second implantation of barbarians,
laeti or foederati, but this time from N Germany. These people, whose pottery
in Winchester antedates by nearly a century the arrival there of the English,
according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, were established within the framework
of a still functioning Romano-British community. By the middle of the century
the economic basis for this community had disappeared, urban population dwindled
and only the barbarian mercenaries remained to become in course of time the foundation
from which the Old English captital emerged into a new urban life at the end of
the 9th c.
The Winchester City Museums hold the finds and records up to 1960.
Those of later excavations by the Winchester Excavations Committee are maintained
by the Winchester Research Unit, 13 Parchment Street.
M. Biddle, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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