Offa's Dyke is a large linear earthwork that roughly follows the border between England and Wales. The structure is named after Offa, the Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia from AD 757 until 796, who is traditionally believed to have ordered its construction. Although its precise original purpose is debated, it delineated the border between Anglian Mercia and the Welsh kingdom of Powys.
The Battle of Deorham is claimed as a decisive military encounter between the West Saxons and the Britons of the West Country in 577. The battle, which was a major victory for Wessex's forces led by Ceawlin and his son, Cuthwine, resulted in the capture of the Brythonic cities of Glevum (Gloucester), Corinium Dobunnorum (Cirencester), and Aquae Sulis (Bath). It also led to the permanent cultural and ethnic separation of Dumnonia from Wales.
Calleva Atrebatum was an Iron Age settlement, as capital of the Atrebates tribe. It then became a walled town in the Roman province of Britannia at a major crossroads in the Roman roads of Britain.
Cirencester is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, 80 miles (130 km) west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural University, the oldest agricultural college in the English-speaking world, founded in 1840.
Speen is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England. Centred 2 miles (3 km) north west of the largest town in the district, Newbury, Speen has clustered settlements, the largest of which is Speen village and the others are buffered from the town by the A34 road and named Bagnor, Stockcross, Woodspeen and Marsh Benham. Its other land is an approximately even mixture of woodland and agricultural fields and varies greatly in elevation, having the Reading to Taunton Line alongside the north bank of the River Kennet as its southern boundary and both banks of the River Lambourn in its north with elevated ground in between. Benham Park in the south-west of the area is a listed landscape garden and house.
Akeman Street is a Roman road in southern England between the modern counties of Hertfordshire and Gloucestershire. It is approximately 117 kilometres (73 mi) long and runs roughly east–west.
The Corinium Museum in the Cotswold town of Cirencester in England has a large collection of objects found in and around the locality. The bulk of the exhibits are from the Roman town of Corinium Dobunnorum, but the museum includes material from as early as the Neolithic and all the way up to Victorian times.
Maumbury Rings is a Neolithic henge in the south of Dorchester town in Dorset, England. It is a large circular earthwork, 85 metres in diameter, with a single bank and an entrance to the north east. It was modified during the Roman period when it was adapted for use as an amphitheatre, and the site was remodelled again during the English Civil War when it was used as an artillery fort guarding the southern approach to Dorchester. The monument is now a public open space, and used for open-air concerts, festivals and re-enactments.
Silchester is a village and civil parish about 5 miles (8 km) north of Basingstoke in Hampshire. It is adjacent to the county boundary with Berkshire and about 9 miles (14 km) south-west of Reading.
Foudry Brook is a small stream in southern England. It rises from a number of springs near the Hampshire village of Baughurst, and flows to the east and then the north, to join the River Kennet to the south of Reading. The upper section is called Silchester Brook, and beyond that, Bishop's Wood Stream. The underlying geology is chalk, covered by a layer of clay, and so it has the characteristics of a clay stream, experiencing rapid increases in level after heavy rain due to run-off from the surrounding land. It passes a number of listed buildings and scheduled monuments, including the site of the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum or Silchester.
Boxford is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of West Berkshire, part of Berkshire in England. The village is on the east bank of the River Lambourn, about 4 miles (6.4 km) northwest of Newbury but south of the M4 motorway. The hamlet of Westbrook is on the opposite bank of the Berkshire Downs tributary.
Richborough Castle is a Roman Saxon Shore fort better known as Richborough Roman Fort. It is situated in Richborough near Sandwich, Kent. Substantial remains of the massive fort walls still stand to a height of several metres.
Michael Gordon Fulford, is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in the British Iron Age, Roman Britain and landscape archaeology. He has been Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading since 1993.
Chester Amphitheatre is a Roman amphitheatre in Chester, Cheshire. The site is managed by English Heritage; it is designated as a Grade I listed building, and a scheduled monument. The ruins currently exposed are those of a large stone amphitheatre, similar to those found in Continental Europe, and although it was long believed that a smaller wooden amphitheatre existed on the site beforehand, excavations since 1999 have shown that the wooden grillage is the base of the seating. Today, only the northern half of the structure is exposed; the southern half is covered by buildings, some of which are themselves listed.
Port Way is an ancient road in southern England which ran from Calleva Atrebatum in a south-westerly direction to Sorbiodunum. Often associated with the Roman Empire, the road may have predated the Roman occupation of Britain.
Cirencester Abbey or St Mary's Abbey, Cirencester in Gloucestershire was founded as an Augustinian monastery in 1117 on the site of an earlier church, the oldest-known Saxon church in England, which had itself been built on the site of a Roman structure. The church was greatly enlarged in the 14th century with addition of an ambulatory to the east end. The abbot became mitred 1416. The monastery was suppressed in 1539 and presented to Roger Bassinge.
Corinium Dobunnorum was the Romano-British settlement at Cirencester in the present-day English county of Gloucestershire. Its 2nd-century walls enclosed the second-largest area of a city in Roman Britain. It was the tribal capital of the Dobunni and is usually thought to have been the capital of the Diocletian-era province of First Britain.
Siddington is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is located immediately south of Cirencester. At the 2011 United Kingdom Census, the parish had a population of 1,249.
Regulbium was the name of an ancient Roman fort of the Saxon Shore in the vicinity of the modern English resort of Reculver in Kent. Its name derives from the local Brythonic language, meaning "great headland" (*Rogulbion).
The Silchester Ogham stone is a pillar stone discovered at the Roman town on Calleva Atrebatum in Silchester, Hampshire during excavations in 1893. Thus far it remains the only one of its kind found in England, and the only ogham inscription in England east of Cornwall and Devon. The stone is held in a storage facility of Reading Museum in Reading, Berkshire.
