The base of the medieval market cross on the Green at Cuddesdon in Oxfordshire
Additional to work on my conjectured Roman and medieval South-North route. The summary of findings to date can be found in an earlier post published on the 26th December 2022.
I have found further evidence to support my theory in the Victoria County History of Oxford that there was a Roman route called the Portway, that runs South to North from Calleva Atrebatvm (Silchester) to join the Watling Street at what is now Norton, but in Roman times was Bannaventa. The route, far from straight by any standards, let alone Roman, was likely made up of former tracks that pre-dated the Roman invasion. After the Romans departed Britain, the route continued as a trade route into the Middle Ages.
I stated that I believed the route ran through either Cuddesdon or Garsington in Oxfordshire.
G.
B. Grundy believed the road from Garsington to Coombe Wood corner was a
straete in Saxon times. He also thought that this was the Roman road
from Dorchester to Alchester. I believe he was partially correct, in
that this might well have been the Roman road between Dorchester-on
Thames and Alchester, either before the crossing of Otmoor was
successfully engineered, or during periods of wet weather when crossing
Otmoor was impossible, or both.
However, I still think the
Cuddesdon route has the better claim, given the dry ridgeway to
Cuddesdom from the river crossing at Chislehampton.
Also the road
dictated the layout of Cuddesdon somewhat as evidenced by the fact that
it was an Anglo-Saxon linear village along what is now the High Street.
The
straight sections of road from Cuddesdon to Coombe Wood and from there
to Wheatley still appear on the map to be a possible straete in Saxon
times, one on which the Portway and the Dorchester-Alchester Roman road
both ran at this point, before separating at Islip.
In the Middle
Ages Cuddesdon was the dominant parish centre of the locality, and the
market cross at Cuddesdon is evidence for some degree of trade on what
was still a South-North packhorse route.
The base of the medieval cross used as a war memorial
The
village cross, moved to the churchyard in 1857, once stood near the
point where the road forks to the church. The medieval stone base to the
cross remains in its original position.
© John Dunn.