This is a surviving length of Roman road on the chalk downland near King Down Farm, north-east of Badbury Rings in Dorset. It forms part of the route running between the major nodal point at Badbury (Vindocladia) and the regional centre at Old Sarum (Sorviodunum), active from the mid-1st century AD through the later Roman period.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Badbury Rings was one of the most important road junctions in south-west Britain, where routes from Dorchester (Durnovaria), Hamworthy/Poole Harbour, Bath, Old Sarum and the Mendips converged. This stretch is part of the Badbury–Old Sarum link, a key artery connecting the Durotrigan civitas with the Wiltshire chalk and ultimately the Winchester–Silchester network.
The road survives here as a visible agger (raised causeway) crossing open downland, identifiable on the ground and in aerial and LiDAR survey, with the characteristic cambered profile and flanking ditches typical of military-engineered roads in Wessex. No major excavation has been published for this specific length, and finds from the verges are not individually recorded in the standard literature.
This is a surviving length of Roman road on the chalk downland near King Down Farm, north-east of Badbury Rings in Dorset. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Length of Roman road near King Down Farm is classified as a Roman site — 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 Roman building SE of Abbeycroft Coppice (1.4 km), Section of Roman road near Badbury Rings (1.7 km), Vindocladia (2 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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