, Dorset
A fortified town was founded on the site by the Romans shortly after they captured the Iron-Age hill fort at
Maiden Castle a mile and a half to the south-west of the town in about AD43. It became their chief town in the
south west.
The Roman town was established at the centre of the modern town. It was surrounded by a defensive wall, six feet wide and twelve feet high which enclosed anarea of some eighty acres. A considerable amount of information has come to light about the Roman town over the years, particularly as Roman remains are periodically uncovered by building works.
Although a river flows only some 25 metres (seventy-five feet) below the town, rather than build next to it, the Romans built an aquaduct consisting of an open channel twelve miles in length to supply water to Durnivaria from the River Frome at Notton.
During building works, a horde of 22,000 coins was discovered in South Street, most dating from the third century AD.
The Romans called the town Durnovaria whose derivation is uncertain. It may have been derived from Dwr y Triges, the name of the Iron Age Celtic tribe which the Romans called Durotriges who were settled in Dorset. It might also be derived from the Latin durno, a fist, which Maiden Castle where they defeated the Durotriges resembles from certain angles.
A short distance to the south of the town lies Maumbury Rings, a Neolithic henge which was ancient at the time of the Roman conquest. The Romans altered the site and used it as an ampitheatre, one of the largest in Britain. The site was used through the centuries, the last witch to be burnt in England being executed there and Mary Channing's execution attracting a crowd of nealry 13,000 spectators.
The Town Walls
| The only remaining fragment of Dorchester's Roman town wall in Cornwall Road near its junction with High Street West | |  |
Only a tiny fragment of the town walls of Roman Durnovaria remain at the northern end of Cornwall Road near its junction with High Street West. It consists of only the rubble core as the masonry which faced the wall has disappeared. The Roman masonry was too ready a source of building stone for the medieval inhabitants of the town and documentary evidence indicates that most of the Roman walls had disappeared by the 16th century although significant sections were destroyed in later times.
Eleven metres (36 feet) of the walls were destroyed at Colliton Park (now the grounds of County Hall) in 1668 and another twenty six metres (85 feet) in 1764. 23.5 metre (77 feet) remained but another 14.6 metres (48 feet) were pulled down in about 1840.
The remaining fragment was preserved in 1886 at the insitgation of the antiquary Edward Cunnington and by the generosity of Mrs Lucia Catharine Stone - a tablet near the section of Roman wall records her gift to her native town.
Only to the north-east is the course of the Roman walls uncertain - in other directions their course enclosing the town is marked by the tree-lined walks which were laid out in the 18th century.
