a hole in the centre 1/4 inch across; the edges are rounded, and it is similar to those I have seen in museums, called spindle whorls.  The quern and the ring I imagine to be British.  This field and the fields adjacent on the north side of the stream formed, I think, primarily a British settlement and area of cultivation, afterwards appropriated by the Romans in the earliest days of the Roman occupation of Britain, and inhabited by them as a military station until they left the country.

Among other relics found in Blackbanks and in the fields to the north, called Blackminster, between Blackbanks and the present line of the Great Western Railway, aggregating about a hundred acres, there were found large quantities of fragments of pottery of several kinds, including black, grey, and red, and among the latter the smoothly glazed Samian.  Many pieces are ornamented with patterns, some very primitive, others geometrical; others are in texture like Wedgwood basalt ware, and similar in colour and decoration.  The Samian is mostly plain, but a few pieces have patterns and representations of human figures.

The fields, but especially Blackbanks, contained quantities of bones, the horns of sheep or goats, pieces of stags, horns, iron spear and arrow-heads, horses’ molar teeth, and flint pebbles worn flat on one side by the passage of innumerable feet for many years.  A millstone showing marks of rotation on the surface, a bronze clasp or brooch with fragments of enamel inlay, the ornamental bronze handle of an important key, a glass lacrymatory (tear-bottle), numerous coins—­referred to below—­and other objects in bronze and iron, were also found.

Only centuries of habitation and cultivation could have changed the three feet of surface soil in Blackbanks from a stiff unworkable clay to a black friable garden mould, and it is probable that the British occupation had lasted for a very long period before the Romans took possession.  The settlement must have been a place of importance, because it was approached from the north by a track, still existing though practically disused, probably British, from a ford over the Avon, near the present Fish and Anchor Inn.  This track passes to the west of South Littleton, on through the middle of the Blackminster land, and immediately to the east of Blackbanks, joining what I believe to be the Ryknield Street at the bridge over the stream on the South Littleton road.  Near the present Royal Oak Inn it formerly crossed the present Evesham-Bretforton road, and became what is still called Salter Street.  It appears to have given access to two more sites on which Roman coins and relics are found—­Foxhill about 9-1/2 acres, and Blackground about 4 acres—­and passing east of the present Badsey church, proceeded through Wickhamford, and by a well-defined track to Hinton-on-the-Green, and on to Tewkesbury and Gloucester.

The occurrence of the name Salter Street gives a clue to one of the original uses of the road, at any rate in Roman times, for salt was an absolute necessity in those days, as may be gathered from a passage in The Natural History of Selborne, written in 1778: