Site: Silchester

Name:Silchester CISP No:SILCH
Place:Silchester Grid Ref:SU 6430 6250 (GB)   Map
Parish:Silchester Stones:1
County:Hampshire , England Saint(s):none
Site Type:settlement

Site Notes

Major Roman settlement with extant town walls and amphitheatre.

Exact findspot is in the south corridor of House 1, Insula IX -- see Fox/1895, Plate XLV for map, and Fulford and Clarke/1999, 176--180, for the context.

Fox/1895, 441, notes that the stone was found during excavation in 1893 and describes the find-spot: `At the west end of the southern corridor, and beneath the line of its external wall, was found a shallow well of the usual construction, about 8 feet deep. In it, about 5 or 6 feet from the surface, lay, point downwards, the fragment of the sandstone pillar with Ogam inscription treated by Prof. Rhys in his remarks appended to our report for 1893...Beneath the stone, and completely flattened by it, lay a vessel of peculiar form, of white metal or of pewter; but no other objects of interest were brought up, and it was evident that the well was disused and partly filled up when the vessel, and the stele which crushed it, had been flung into it. The well could only have been sunk when the portion of the house in which it occurred was in a ruinous condition, and probably somewhat late in the Roman period'.

References

Stones