EWX384 - Badbury to Dorchester Roman Road; excavation 1949

A section two feet wide was cut across the Roman road at a point slightly west of Bagwood where the agger was interrupted by old quarrying. The metalling was 20 feet wide but consisted only of a thin layer of ungrouted flints and small stones on a base of sandy clay laid on chalk rock. There were two wide but shallow side ditches, 59 feet apart from centre to centre at the point excavated. It was shown that the larger-scale Ordnance Survey maps were incorrect in depicting the course of the road as swinging away from a straight alignment to run north of the old workings (previously mis-interpreted as a British settlement); the alignment was quite straight.