A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE III. Route from Regnum (Chichester) through Venta Belgarum (Winchester), Calleva and Pontes (Staines) to Londinium. Calleva to Pontes 22 miles, Pontes to Londinium 22 miles. Besides these three, for which we have the evidence of the Antonine Itinerary, there are several other roads, Icknield Street, Old Street, and one or two more, for which a Roman origin has been claimed. We will first describe the course of the great military ways, with their branches and continuations, and then discuss those for which we have less certain authority. I. The route from Cirencester to Silchester , sometimes called Ermine Street, the most marked Roman road in the county, enters Berkshire from Baydon, passes through the south of Lambourn parish, crossing the turnpike road from Wantage to Hungerford between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth milestones. Thence it continues in a straight course to Wickham without passing through any village. From Wickham it crosses Wickham Heath and falls into the modern high road from Bath to London about a mile from Speen. 1 The Ordnance Maps mark its site in the parishes of Lambourn, East Garston, the ShefFords, and Welford. It coincides in parts with the present highway and is traced elsewhere as running in a straight line at its side. Roman remains have been found in its neighbourhood at Wyfield Farm, in the parish of Boxford," and at Wickham. There are hardly any traces of its course between Speen and Silchester. We have, however, the evidence of the Itinerary to prove the existence of a Roman road here and the distance which it gives, 15 Roman miles, agrees fairly with the distance between their modern representatives. Sections of a road supposed to be Roman have been found in digging the foundations of some houses in Shaw Crescent, Newbury, 3 near Round Oak, Greenham, and at Pigeon's Farm in the same parish.* It probably started from the west gate at Silchester and went in the same direction as the present county boundary by the ' Imp Stone ' which is marked in the Ordnance Map as a ' Supposed Roman milestone,' B close to what is entered as the ' Supposed Course of Roman Road from Silchester to Speen.' II. The route from Marlborougb to Speen and Silchester by Froxfield and Charnham Street to Hungerford, was surveyed between Hungerford and Speen by the students of the Sandhurst Royal Military College in 1836 and reported on in the United Service Journal, September 1837. They found portions of the substratum of a road consisting of close pavement of large flints, near Hoe Benham and Elcot, and some few traces of it elsewhere. Mr. Money, writing in 1892, says that part of a 1 Walter Money, Hist, of Speen, 4, 5 ; Bishop of Cloyne. Lysons, Magna Brit. i. pt. 2, 200, 204. 2 Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans, i. 207. 3 Hist, of Newbury (1839), 157. W. Money, Hist, of Speen, 6. This stone has lately been carefully examined and shows no evidence of having been a Roman milestone. Its name however, IMP (NIMP) Stone, is old and may well have been taken from the letters IMP or DNIMP with which a miliary inscription would naturally commence. Its shape also is not unlike that of a fragment of a Roman milestone [F. Haverfield]. 20O
