Roman Road 44, Mildenhall to Old Sarum

[@pwhitewick]

David, wonderful and thank you. 1. You found that route 43 continues straight on its alignment after meeting 44 at northern savernake. I assumed it must have taken the old lane, however this now becomes very clear! 2. I noticed the square feature on route 44 too. Seems very close to Cunetio. 3. I think this route remains somewhat of a puzzle. Heavily aggered at the Cunetio end and then... an old trackway? Thanks again for covering this with you brilliant Lidar skills.

[@mcbishopuk]

I'm afraid that, for me, pretty much everything from Savernake Forest to Everleigh remains problematic. The lidar does seem to show that a length of the road within the forest has been quarried out, presumably for material for the turnpike which crosses it (a good comparison is the agger just north of Corbridge, where Dere Street suddenly vanishes before the Cor Burn, at the point where the turnpike branches off for post-medieval Corbridge).

[@davidratledge3530]

You are very welcome. It is normal for aggers to survive where no ploughing has taken place ie woodland but then disappear once mechanical ploughing has taken place. I am pretty sure this is the route. If you look closely in the army ranges most tracks are hollow-ways but the Roman line does survive - in several places - as an agger. Regarding old boundary charters I have come across two cases where having found the road first then the charter descriptions made sense. Never done it the other way around.

[@pj4990]

Love it, this is the Roman road which really got me into Roman roads! Your route seems to match mine from maps and exploration, but I'm probably looking at the obvious bit. A word to the wise: technically you can drive along the bit which follows the perimeter of Boscombe Down, but that doesn't mean you should! The MOD won't care, your suspension will.

[@davidratledge3530]

Needs a tank does it to drive that section? Lidar is much safer and uses no petrol.

[@peterfreeman6677]

That was really good. The line of the road was remarkably clear along some parts of the route, and as a bonus there was a nice collection of (Bronze Age?) barrows just past Bulford Camp.

[@davidratledge3530]

I think I lost count of the number of pre-Roman round features. The odd one is the one I marked with "?" - that is not round and is similar to Roman temple sites.

[@buckynick]

Wizardry map making. Strangely complimentary music flying around historic Briton. Make a great flying sim. 🌍🌏🌎

[@simonmcowan6874]

Where do you get your LIDAR from please, I'm trying to do our local Welsh one, all I can get is the silver versions.

[@davidratledge3530]

Not sure what the "silver version" lidar means. For England I just download the Defra zip files which contain tif files. These are what I need to build a model. The key is in the software to turn the data in 3D. I use bespoke software - a super sort of Minecraft without the zombies - written by a Dutch programming wizard!