|
|
Others are better qualified to write about Roman Alcester than I am. My own impression is that when the Romans left the outskirts of Alcester ('the camp on the Alne') they were in the position of explorers in almost impenetrable forest. If there was a track leading to the place we now call 'Great Alne', it naturally followed the river more closely than the present Alcester to Henley highway does.
Arriving at Great Alne they found an old British road already there, crossing the river by a ford, where is now the 1912 bridge. Just there a small settlement was made. I well remember the late E.W.Jephcott using the expression 'to keep an eye on the ford' and hesitating over the word 'outflanked' as he drew a diagram of the various roads (Roman & British) in the area. Still, we ought to remind ourselves that even if it were like that in the beginning, such a military purpose would not continue for several hundred years.
We may envisage a far happier scene at Great Alne, a small farming community, peacefully at work in the fertile valley. A 'villa' does not mean a house belonging to rich Romans, but such a community, consisting of quite a variety of buildings. One thing we may be certain of; the Romans and Britons throughout Britain soon settled down happily together. They intermarried and legionaries for abroad were often recruited locally. Excavation and aerial photography will no doubt, one day, reveal this kind of community at Great Alne.
There, also, the general lie of the land was not so much impenetrable forest as pleasant woodland and a few cultivated fields at least in the valley. All we can say of Kinwarton, on the way up from Alcester, is that it most probably did not exist. The very name is Saxon. The Saxons wanted another site for a mill, and where they put a mill, they would have to put houses. (Edit. Which came first, the hen or the egg?)
Certain fragments of pottery were found at Great Alne when the house now called 'Shawford' was built on the rising ground near the former ford. These were of local Romano-British manufacture; three fragments
1) a vessel of white clay
2) part of a vessel of red clay; the large size suggests that it may have had two
handles. There is one deeply fluted handle, sufficient for easy insertion of two fingers,
fluted perhaps to give a better grip.
3) A small fragment of light brown clay.
These fragments are at Warwick , Museum. Two coins of great interest have also been found at Great Alne both Roman and one of the end of the first century but this will be dealt with in some detail in the next issue.
Alcester & District Local History Society