A ramble into the past

DID you know that there was once a Roman town and probably also a Roman fort in what is now Swinley Forest?

 Neither of them were at Caesar’s Camp, which was, of course, and Iron Age hill fort which had fallen out of use almost a century before the Roman invasion of AD43.

 These were just some of the subjects covered on Saturday during a historical ramble around the woods, led by local historian and environment campaigner David Young.

 The walk was one of 13 free Heritage Open Day events to take place between Thursday and Sunday organised by Bracknell Forest Council.

David had expected six or seven people to come along, maybe a dozen if it was a nice day. In fact there were 55, including David’s wife Pauline, who walked with a bag for collecting any rubbish found along the way.

Part of the walk was along the Devil’s Highway, which may or may not be a Roman road, no one is quite sure. It is named, one of the group said, because it is very straight, and anything straight was believed at one time to be of the Devil!

David showed the group a site where he believes there may once have been a Roman fort – midway between Staines and Silchester – and pointed out an area where the Roman town of Wickham Bushes had once been. There is nothing to see there now, but it was once a base for iron works using iron ore from Bagshot. 
He also pointed out the site of Gorrick Well, which had been there since Medieval times but was deemed too dangerous for modern ramblers and was duly filled in in 2003.

The party was also shown the site of five redoubts – manmade trenches and ramparts used for practising manoeuvres at the time when Napoleonic France was beginning to flex its muscles. A military exercise went on for two weeks there in July 1792, watched by a crowd of 200,000, including King George the Third.

Other open days in the series were:

An exhibition at St Michael the Archangel Church, Warfield: a talk on the Benedictines at Warfield; a historical stroll around Warfield; a rural craft and folk day at Lily Hill Park, Bracknell; a tour of Pope’s Manor grounds, Binfield; a tour of the Berkshire Record Office in Reading; a Bracknell Stitching Society exhibition in Bracknell town centre library; tours of the church and churchyard at St Michael and St Mary Magdalene, Easthampstead; tours of the house and grounds at South Hill Park, Bracknell; tours of Wellington College, Crowthorne; a stroll round Newbold College Gardens in Binfield; and a tour of St Michaels and All Angels’ Church in Sandhurst.