Photos from walk on Thursday 29th August from Dorchester-on-Thames to Brightwell-cum-Sotwell

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Approaching Wittenham Clumps

 

Wittenham Clumps are a pair of wooded chalk hills in the Thames Valley, in the civil parish of Little Wittenham, in the historic county of Berkshire, although since 1974 administered as part of South Oxfordshire district.

 

The higher of the two, Round Hill, is 390 feet (120 m) above sea-level. The 350-foot (110 m) Castle Hill is about 380 yards (350 m) south-east and was the site of an Iron Age hill fort. A third hill, not normally considered one of The Clumps, is Brightwell Barrow, further to the south-east.

 

The grassed slopes of The Clumps lead up to summits wooded by the oldest beech tree plantings in England, dating to the 1740s. Standing over 70 metres above their surroundings, the Clumps have a prominent appearance and panoramic views, with the north slopes overlooking villages and towns whose sites mark some of the first settlements of the English. The view from The Clumps was described by the artist Paul Nash, who first saw them in 1911, as “a beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten”….

 

… The overall chronology … is of the site being occupied since the Bronze Age around 1000 BC, the hillfort and surrounding farms dating from around 600 BC, followed by a move down towards the southern part of the site around 300 BC. The area was then abandoned, until the construction of the Roman villa.

 

[source]

 

Little Wittenham from Round Hill

 

Brightwell Barrow from Castle Hill

 

Dorchester Abbey from Castle Hill

 

Round the fields

 

Brightwell Barrow

 

Castle Hill

 

Brightwell Barrow

 

Brightwell Barrow from the Thames Path

 

While “inspecting the hedge” at the bottom of the hill, saw this tiny (2mm) Leaf Beetle

 

Harvestman inspecting my bag at lunch time. Probably Harvestman Opilio canestrinii “An invasive species which colonises areas very rapidly. It is becoming more widespread and common in Britain, and may potentially displace other species as it already has in other parts of Europe. It is believed to have colonised northwestern Europe from Italy and is quickly spreading throughout Great Britain. It was first seen in October 1999 beside a reservoir in the Lea Valley, Essex.”

 

Ignore the name. Just admire the black and white patterns and the red eyes. Flesh-fly (Sarcophagidae)-and a lady bird.

 

Common Darter (Sympetrm striolatum)

 

Good light on this Burdock (Arctium). The inspiration for Velcro.

 

 

After taking his dog for a walk one day in the late 1940s (1948), George de Mestral, a Swiss inventor, became curious about the seeds of the burdock plant that had attached themselves to his clothes and to the dog’s fur. Under a microscope, he looked closely at the hook system that the seeds use to hitchhike on passing animals aiding seed dispersal, and he realized that the same approach could be used to join other things together. His work led to the development of the hook and loop fastener, which was initially sold under the Velcro brand name.

 

Serbo-Croatian uses the same word, čičak, for burdock and velcro; Turkish does the same with the name pitrak, while in the Polish language rzep means both “burr” and “velcro”. The German word for burdock is Klette and velcro is Klettverschluss (= burdock fastener). In Norwegian burdock is borre and velcro borrelås, which translates to “burdock lock”. [source]

 

Bedeguar Gall Wasp – Diplolepis rosae aka Robin’s Pincushion.

 

“The female insects are about 4 mm long; parts of their abdomens and legs are an amber/chestnut colour, while the rest of the body is black. The male (length of about 3 mm) is very rare. It is black and its legs are bi-coloured. The gall is more likely to be seen than the adult wasp. This develops on a bud, into a large mass of long stiff branched hairs, green at first then red, and can be very numerous. There are usually several chambers inside, and there are usually inquilines or parasitoids. Occasionally small galls develop on leaves or hips.”

 

The Roman Road

 

This was posted outside the phone box outside the Red Lion, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell

 

‘OUR’ ROMAN ROAD

 

Generations of Brightwellians and Sotwellians have known an ancient Roman road once ran through the village, but no-one has ever been sure exactly where. Until now. Excavations in the summer of 2024 have confirmed the course of the road through the grounds of Brightwell cum Sotwell primary school. Extending that course north and south, it seems the road entered the village through Greenmere to the north, passed through the school grounds, and continued under The Red Lion pub before going south down Mackney Lane, (likely beneath the houses to the Lane’s west), before leaving the village over what’s now open field toward Cholsey. Most people think Roman roads were relentlessly straight and made up of mile after Roman mile of huge, perfectly cut slabs of stone. In fact, only high-profile roads near Rome itself were constructed that way.

 

Most, for reasons of practicality and cost, were much simpler affairs. Firstly, the Romans constructed a raised embankment of compacted soil, three to five feet high. Then, on top, they laid a surface of gravel or stone broken small. That is definitely how ‘our’ road would have been made. It’s very likely ‘our’ road was one of the first routes used by the Romans when they arrived on these shores in 43CE. The Romans came to defeat a British Celtic tribe called the Catuyellauni, whose heartlands lay on the other side of the Thames just northeast of Brightwell cum Sotwell, so this area was highly important militarily and the cream of the Roman army came through here. In fact, the commander of one Roman legion that used ‘our’ road, a man called Vespasian, later went on to become Emperor of Rome. How many other Oxfordshire villages can say they have been visited by a Roman Emperor?

 

‘It’s not every day you find a Roman road in your school field‘ BBC news 24 July 2024.

 

If you really want to get stuck in to the history of local roman roads and where they might have crossed the Thames, there’s a learned article from 1987 by F.J.Malpas in Oxoniensa: “Roman Roads South and East of Dorchester-on-Thames“. Figure 1, on page 2, shows the Brightwell Road (marked A) and where it might have crossed the river, and where it might have gone afterwards.

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