THE ROMANS WERE HERE 

Writing about Witnesham in ‘The Kings England’ (1941) Arthur Mee mentions a Roman find: ‘Its treasures are the Tudor Hall, the vicarage, and a clerestoried church 700 years old’. There were lilies growing in the moat of the old vicarage, which burned down… The chestnuts in the garden of the new vicarage were a marvellous spectacle. Sycamores shade the path of the churchyard, which has also pines and cedars. Here is the oldest relic, a stone said to be Roman, converted into a tombstone, and carved in 18th.C with a skull and crossbones’.

Just a few isolated finds, listed below, indicate that the Roman conquerors roamed the woods and tracks near to and along the river valley that became known as Witnesham, or the oak forests on the high ground of Swilland.

The Roman road which borders Swilland runs from Coddenham to Hatcheston, and probably to Snape, to the west of Aldeburgh on the coast, where there have been a considerable number of Roman finds including salt pans. (Snape from Snaep - Saxon for ‘boggy place) The road skirts Otley and Burgh, where there forts or wooden watchtower palisades. The Anglo-Saxon ‘Burgh’ means something like ‘stronghold’, so we can guess at an Anglo-Saxon fort dating from the Viking wars of the ninth and tenth centuries, whose builders often used Roman remains, erecting large wooden palisades backed with earth.  

The Romans imported cattle to feed their armies. The continental ‘bos longifrons’, the shape of the skull and the manner in which the horns grow out from it   quite different from the ‘bos primogenius’ of the original ox which roamed these islands before the dawn of history.

Roman bread was an improvement on the hard native loaves. Wheat was ground by pouring wheat through the hole in the centre of a large flat grindstone, which was set on a slightly conical , equal sized round stone beneath. Slaves pushed the upper stone round, the grain became a coarse flour which trickled out of one or more runnels in the lower stone. Leavened with yeast, left to rise slowly by the warm stove, kneaded again, rising again before being baked in a hot oven, this was bread very similar to that which we know today as ‘whole wheat’.The climate was temperate two thousand years ago, and the Romans could grow grapes here successfully, to make the wine the Romans enjoyed. The main meal of a wealthy Roman might be dormice, sucking pig, sheep, lobster brought by fast horse from the coast, trout and of course a staple of Roman diet, oysters. There were several oyster beds in the rivers around here, maybe even the Fynn itself. Special feasts could include stuffed thrushes, baked hams, chicken, eggs, barley dumplings boiled in broth with celery and pepper, snails. The slaves ate fairly well, the broth including pigs insides, scraps of fish, herbs flour, even onions. All this fine food could be finished of with dishes made of nuts, ginger, aniseed and honey, or a pudding made with rose petals and a pastry of flour and oil, pears, plums and walnuts brought from what is now Italy. 

The soldiers who hunted wild pig – or women – in Swilland forests, dropping a coin here and there like a calling card for us to find nearly two millennia later, were given a less exotic diet, but a good broth to keep them fit to police the conquered land. 

The end of Roman military occupation of Britain was complete by.AD 410. In  5th. C  Britain there were large cities full of elegant women, fussy bureaucrats, with street lighting, mains drainage, traffic regulations. The Roman Empire had disintegrated completely by AD 476 when the last Emperor, a curly headed boy called Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the Gothic warlord Odoacer, after the way had been cleared by Attila the Hun. By AD500 almost all trace is gone. Once grand buildings are rubble, the local populace keeps out of the way while Viking warlords preside over Mead halls in dark English forests.

SWILLAND 

Silver Iceni "Bury Tribe" type A coin  (Van Arsdell `Diadem type' 80-1) of C1 BC.

49 AD   Philip 2        Roman AE4

Near crossroads, silver Iceni “Bury Tribe” type A coin C1 BC 

Near crossroads Brooch, probably from Camulonunum, rear hook type, missing spring, hook and pin. 

Near crossroadsSilver denarius of ? Augustus. 

Complete dragonesque brooch, missing some enamel and badly cleaned. Roman - 43 AD to 409 AD (Possibly from Gosbeck, not Swilland).  

WITNESHAM. 

Samian sherds were said to have been found in the most easterly of the two sandpits owned by Mrs Addison when originally being worked and Basil Brown notes that the two pits are probably associated as he found the same material, ie Rom and IA, in the W pit in 1949 (S1). See also IA. 

Coin of Allectus, AD 293-296. 

Coin        247-249 AD   Philip 2        Roman AE4

Enamelled bronze plate brooch, flat disc with projections and raised central knob;  also fragment of Colchester derivative. Two Late Iron aAge coins found in the same area

Gold quarter stater of Trinovantian type attributed to Addedomarus.  Found

in an area of mainly Rom material (S1).  

Iceni Face-Horse B type coin, silver.  (See ‘Prehistoric’)

Scatter of metalwork - brooches including:  dolphin brooch, circular enamelled brooch, gilt bronze belt mount, coin - ? Roman - 43 AD to 409 AD – Emperor Constantine

Silver denarius of ?Augustus  

Brooch, probably Colchester derivative rear hook type, missing spring, hook & pin. 

6 coins - Severus Alexander (222-235), two illegible C1/C2, C3 radiate and two C4 (330-337). 

Coin, Trajan Decius (249-251). 

“Much charcoal, pottery sherds and a silver coin found during work at the aerodrome site" (Probably Debach, found by a workman based in Witnesham.) Roman - 43 AD to 409 AD