The Romano-British enclosure on Twyford Down, immediately southeast of Roman Venta Belgarum (Winchester), formed part of a dense rural landscape of small farmsteads and field systems active broadly from the late Iron Age through the 4th century AD. The associated hollow ways are later trackways worn into the chalk downland, representing routes used to access fields, pasture and the Roman town. The enclosure was modest in scale, likely a single farmstead serving the suburban hinterland of Winchester.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site illustrates the intensively farmed chalkland periphery around Venta Belgarum, where small native-style enclosed settlements supplied the civitas capital of the Belgae. Its location near the Roman road south from Winchester (toward Clausentum/Bitterne) underscores Twyford Down's integration into regional communication and agricultural networks.
Excavations and survey, notably during the controversial M3 motorway works in the early 1990s, recorded ditched enclosures, field boundaries, Iron Age and Romano-British pottery, and prehistoric features including a long barrow and Bronze Age barrows, alongside multiple hollow ways descending the chalk scarp. The Roman-period evidence points to mixed agricultural use rather than high-status occupation, with no villa structures identified on the Down itself.
The Romano-British enclosure on Twyford Down, immediately southeast of Roman Venta Belgarum (Winchester), formed part of a dense rural landscape of small farmsteads and field systems active broadly from the late Iron Age through the 4th century AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Romano-British enclosure and later hollow ways on Twyford Down 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 road E of St Catherine's Hill (1.1 km), Twyford (2.5 km), Venta (2.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Romano-British enclosure and later hollow ways on Twyford Down