Itinerarium curiosum (centuria I) : $b or, an account of the antiquities, and remarkable curiosities in nature or art, observed in travels through Great BritainStukeley, William
History
Itinerarium curiosum (centuria I) : $b or, an account of the antiquities, and remarkable curiosities in nature or art, observed in travels through Great Britain
Stukeley, William
Great Britain -- Antiquities -- Early works to 1800; Great Britain -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
We crossed a foss called Grimesditch, the _vallum_ eastward: it goes by
Ditchley wood and house, which takes its name from it. Dr. Plot does
not sufficiently distinguish this from a Roman road: it was doubtless
some division of the ancient Britons: the country is all a rock of
rag-stone. Many good seats of the nobility hereabouts; Cornbury lord
Clarendon’s, Ditchley lord Litchfield’s, duke of Shrewsbury’s at
Hathorp, new built of stone very beautiful. Juniper grows plentifully
hereabouts. At Chadlington is a square Roman camp. At Enston is a
pretty curiosity in water-works, cascades falling down artificial rocks
overgrown with waterplants, chirping of birds imitated, many pipes of
water, secretly to dash the spectators, and fancies of that kind.
[Sidenote: +Chipping-norton.+]
Chipping-Norton must have been a great trading town by the number of
merchants, as they are there called, buried in the church under brasses
and inscriptions: others of alabaster: and the name of the place
signifies it, as our Cheapside, equivalent to market, to buying or
cheapening. There are marks of a castle by the church, which probably
was demolished in the time of king Stephen. Lord Arundel, beheaded in
the barons wars, lived in it: a place called the Vineyards near it.
Roman coins are frequently found here. The church is a good building of
a curious model, the south porch hexagonal, and a little roof over it
supported by a stone arch: under the choir is a charnel-house full of
the ruined rafters of mortality. A priory was here near Chapel on the
heath: the Talbot inn was religious: stories of subterraneous passages
thence to the priory. A well lately found in the ploughed fields at
Woodstock hill, a mile south of this place, and more such like in the
fields. Hereabouts they call camps _barrows_, meaning boroughs.
[Sidenote: +Rowldrich.+ Br. _temple_.]
Hence we rode to see Rowldrich stones, a very noble monument; the first
antiquity of this sort that I had seen, and from which I concluded
these works to be temples of the ancient Britons. I crave leave to
reserve its description for another work. In the clay upon these hills
they dig out _cornua ammonis_, small, but very prettily notched: they
are nothing but clay hardened in the shell. Further on, in Tadmerton
parish, we rode through a large round camp on the top of a hill doubly
intrenched, able to contain a great army. Bloxham has a very fine
church, the steeple of an odd make, but pretty enough. At Broughton
near Banbury is the seat of the lord Say and Seal.
[Sidenote: +Branavis.+]
[Sidenote: TAB. VIII. 2d Vol.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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