More information : [Area SU 6329 6259]. The Annexe or Western Extension of the Outer Earthwork. An enclosure appears on the aerial photographs W. of the Outer Earthwork [4.3.], and an entrance through it is visible a short distance to the S. of the Silchester - Speen Roman road. The enclosure was examined in 1956 and it soon became clear that the road ignored the entrance because this was of later construction - made it seems for convenience of access to a large gravel pit just beyond, the site of which can still be seen today. The ditch was already half-filled and the earthwork obsolete at the time. It has been suggested that an original Outer Earthwork embodying 'the annexe' may not have been a defence but a boundary of the town area. Soil samples examined by Dr. I.W. Cornwall also suggest that the earthwork is of two distinct periods of build. The 'annexe' is triangular. Its eastern side is formed by the straight N.-S. run of the Outer Earthwork across the neck of the Silchester promontory, and the other sides by prolonging the Rampier Copse and Wall Lane alignments of the Outer Earthwork. These lines meet in a wide, rounded right-angled corner. The bank was all pushed back into the ditch by about 200 A.D. or else has been ploughed off in recent centuries, and the only superficial indication of the enclosure is the long, straight hollow of its ditch near the junction of the Silchester-Reading road and Wall Lane. The ditch is about 20ft. wide and 7ft. deep, V-shaped like that of the Outer Earthwork, but smaller. No positive evidence of the date of construction was obtained in the 1956 digging season. The 'annexe' is reminiscent of the reduction carried in the enceinte of Verulamium. (1)
Visible as crop and soil marks. (2)
The earthwork - a single bank and ditch - has been supplied from the evidence of excavations and the slight, insurveyable traces of the ground. The earthwork was excavated in 1956. (3)
There is no evidence to support the view, expounded by Boon (1)(7) that the outer earthwork annexe formed part of a huge pre-Roman outer earthwork of some 235 acres (4)(6). The annexe cannot be dated with any certainty, but although its origins may be pre-Roman (5), a later 1st century date is more probable (6). (4-7)
The earthwork bank and ditch described above in (1-7) is visible as an earthwork on aerial photographs of 1946 and 1976 but no longer appears to survive above ground. The bank could be traced from the junction of Kings Road and Wall Road to the south west for a distance of 375 m, when it then turns to the south for a distance of 160 m. Cropmarks of field systems and settlement along the road leading from the west gate of Calleva have been identified around the area of the earthwork but do not appear to be defined or limited by it. The earthwork may originate in the later 1st century as suggested above in (6) but whether it predates or postdates the settlement is unclear. This feature was recorded during the Silchester Iron Age Environs mapping project. It was previously recorded as part of the Aggregate Landscape of Hampshire NMP project. (8-9)
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