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The Nature of Wansdyke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Anthony Clark
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Extract

The middest of this shire [Wiltshire] which for the most part lieth plain and even, is divided athwart from East to West, with a dyke of wonderful1 work, cast up for many miles together in length: the people dwelling thereabout call it Wansdyke, which upon an error generally received, they talk and tell to have been made by the Divell upon a Wednesday.’ So wrote John Aubrey in 1663 in his Monumenta Britannica and, since his day, Wansdyke, one of the two mightiest linear earthworks of ancient Britain—the other is Offa’s Dyke—has rightly attracted the admiration and speculation of innumerable antiquaries (PLATE X (a) ).

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 32 , Issue 126 , June 1958 , pp. 89 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1958

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References

1 Ancient History of Wiltshire, n, pp. 16-33, where he quotes the views of Aubrey and Stukeley (from Itinerarium Curiosum) at some length.

2 Excavations in Bokerly Dyke and Wansdyke. See also Crawford, ANTIQUITY, VI, 1932, pp. 349-50.

3 Leeds, Ant.Journ., XIII, 1933, pp. 249-51.

4 E.g. Sir Charles Oman’s essay on Wansdyke in Arch.Journ., LXXXVII, pp. 60-70.

5 I later found that Colt Hoare (ibid., p. 28) had been similarly dubious about this part of Wansdyke. Regarding the Morgan’s Hill junction he wrote: ‘This junction of two works so dissimilar in their construction and course, has always appeared to me so very unnatural, that I have used my utmost endeavours, both by repeated enquiry, and personal investigation, to rectify this apparent contradiction, but I have never been successful in procuring any tidings or even hint, of a continuation of Wansdyke after its well known junction on Calston [Morgan’s] Hill.’

6 I hope to publish the results of my work in this area more fully in the Wilts. Arch. Mag.

7 B.M. No. Add. 33, 654.

8 Unless we accept Leeds’s suggestion (ibid., p. 233), based on some statements of Gildas, that the battle of Mons Badonis (A.D. 490-516) was at Bath, in which case the Somerset Wansdyke could well belong to this period. But many places contend etymologically for the honour of being the site of this devastating defeat of the Saxons by Arthur : perhaps as good a case as any can be made for Liddington Castle (once Badbury) on the Berkshire Ridgeway. See Brentnall, ANTIQUITY, XV, 1941, pp. 43-4.

9 Roman Britain and the English Settlements (1945), p. 403.