The Reading Museum contains one of the finest Anglo-Roman collections
in England. It is the result of careful and systematic excavation,
carried on for a series of years, on the site of the town of
Silchester, and the collection is of the greatest interest to us as
illustrating the life in an English country town in the days of the
Romans. The locality is however in Hampshire, the Berkshire boundary
making a detour so as to leave it in the neighbouring county.
According to the ordnance map, Speen House near Newbury was the site
of the Roman Spinae, but no Roman remains have been found there, though
there is evidence of a settlement of some importance at Newbury itself.
The foundations of houses of the Roman period have been found at
several places in Berkshire; thus at Frilford near Marcham the
remains of a small Romano-British house were found; and near by, in
Frilford Field, a cemetery of the same period, which had subsequently
been used by the Anglo-Saxons. Remains of a house with tessellated
pavements were found on the Great Western Railway at Basildon, and
other remains of Romano-British buildings have been discovered near
Maidenhead and Waltham St Lawrence.
The words "Roman Villa" will be found marked on the ordnance map
at two places to the south of Hampstead Norris, and remains of
buildings have been discovered near Letcombe Regis, and at other
places. The earthworks on Lowbury Hill to the west of Streatley are
usually believed to be a Roman camp, and it is probable that the Roman
soldiers occupied many of the old British forts at one time or another.
Roman coins and pottery of the Romano-British period have been found
almost all over the county, though they may be said to be most common
along the valley of the Thames and least so near Faringdon. In the
Reading Museum there are a good many objects of Roman date which were
found in Reading itself. Specimens are exhibited from two small hoards
of coins dating from the Emperor Valentinian A.D. 364 to the Emperor
Honorius A.D. 423. The coins are in very good preservation and were
probably hidden when the Roman soldiers departed from England.
There are signs of Roman settlements along the Devil's Highway,
the road from Silchester to London. Thus there was evidently a
Romano-British village at Wickham Bushes close to Caesar's Camp
on Easthampstead Plain. A collection from this locality exists at
Wellington College.
A number of objects of the Anglo-Saxon period found in Berkshire will
be seen in the Anglo-Saxon room at the British Museum. There is a very
fine sword-blade from Ashdown, and a variety of objects--shield-bosses,
knives, etc.--from Long Wittenham, where a Saxon burial-place has been
explored. In some cases the body had been burnt, whilst in others the
skeletons remained, and were found to be of a large-sized and robust
race. Another Anglo-Saxon cemetery was discovered at Arne Hill near
Lockinge, and a number of Anglo-Saxon interments in the Lambourn valley
near East Shefford. Two burial-places of this period have been found
at Reading. One contained spear-heads, knives, and bronze ornaments,
and was probably of pagan date, whilst the other is believed to have
been to some extent a Christian burial-place. In it a pewter chalice
was found which may have been buried with a priest. The objects from
these two localities are in the Reading Museum. Numbers of Anglo-Saxon
coins have been dug up in Berkshire, more especially in the Cholsey
and Wallingford district. They are of silver about the diameter of
a sixpence but much thinner and are called pennies.