Cunetio was a large walled town in a valley of the River Kennet in modern-day Wiltshire, England. Occupied from the 2nd century AD by Romano-British people, the settlement was abandoned in the early 5th century, the emerging post-Roman period. It lay near what is now the village of Mildenhall, about 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) east of the market town of Marlborough. Scholars were unaware of the site until it was rediscovered by aerial photos in the 1940s. Archaeological excavations subsequently revealed a substantial urban area defended by large masonry walls. Artefacts recovered from Cunetio have included kitchenware, personal effects, and two hoards of Roman coinage.
The Cunetio site has been known since the 19th century, when local antiquarians conducted sporadic excavations. The full scale and importance of the site, however, was identified from aerial photos of crop marks taken in 1940, and the site has been sporadically excavated since the 1950s alongside the continuation of aerial photography to further map the site. In the 1960s, a small coin hoard was found, followed in 1978 by the much larger Cunetio Hoard of over 55,000 coins. The site was dug and geophysically surveyed in 2009 by Channel 4's archaeological television programme Time Team, which found many more coins and other objects.
The town grew around a mansio that had been built near the crossing of two Roman roads: the east–west road (Margary 53) from Speen in Berkshire to Aquae Sulis (Bath), and the south-east to north road (43) from Winchester to Wanborough. As the town grew, it developed a regular grid of streets and stone buildings on its eastern side but retained less regular and substantial structures in the west part. The settlement's original defences were earthworks and an outer ditch; in the 4th century AD, these were replaced by massive stone walls 4 m (13 ft) wide, a large western gateway, and 17 semi-octagonal, external wall-towers.
The masonry walls ran inside and parallel with the original defences on the east side but outside of them on the south and west sides. The stone towers were approximately every 36.7 m (120 ft) apart. Excavations of the west gate show it was flanked by two towers and possibly had a set of iron-gates similar to a portcullis, because grooves were found in the remains of the towers' footings.
Archaeological examinations of the site do not show why Cunetio deserved so much expenditure on improving its defences, an act that was a rare occurrence for inland Britannia at the time, when most Roman military engineering projects were focused on the Saxon Shore forts. Two theories have been suggested: first that the town was being converted into a Legionary fortress to re-establish Roman authority in this part of the province of Britannia. Second, that the improvement work was being orchestrated by an ambitious local British governor – the type of man who would, within a generation or so, be setting himself up as a war-lord or regional chieftain. Interpretation therefore swings between the Roman Empire re-establishing its authority after various rebellions and uprisings, or Roman authority breaking down.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Cunetio was a large walled town in a valley of the River Kennet in modern-day Wiltshire, England. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Cunetio is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Romano-British kilns, Column Ride, Savernake Forest (4.5 km), Roman site 450yds (410m) E of Pentico Farm (6.1 km), Romano-British kilns 150yds (135m) SSW of Tottenham House (6.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
Aubrey Research generates detailed historical reports for any location in Britain, incorporating Roman heritage, Domesday Book records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and much more. Enter a nearby address to begin.
This page covers the Roman site at Cunetio. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this site alongside scheduled monuments and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any address in Britain, drawing on Roman heritage, Domesday records, scheduled monument data and medieval history to reveal the complete story of a landscape.
Research the area around Cunetio