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Neolithic Period (c. 4,700 BC – c. 2,000 BC)

The area around Marlborough contains some of the richest prehistoric archaeology in Britain.  Neolithic monuments include the Avebury henge and its associated sites: the Avenue, the Sanctuary, Silbury Hill, and West Kennett long barrow.  The causewayed enclosure at Windmill Hill near Avebury was in existence as early as 3,350 BC.  So important was the site that the pottery found there was named after it.  Marlborough’s primordial site was a mini “Silbury Hill” known as “The Mount”, an 18m high chalk and earth mound in the grounds of Marlborough College.  Parts of red deer antlers were uncovered in 1912: antler picks were tools in the Neolithic and would place the monument in that period.

Bronze Age Period (c. 2,000 BC – c. 900 BC)

The Bronze Age was marked by incursions from Europe of the Wessex Culture or beaker people named after their habit of accompanying their dead with the tools, weapons and adornments of their lives which included a clay pot of a distinctive decorated style.  Individual inhumations beneath round barrows marked a major change from the collective inhumations of the Neolithic long barrows.  Archaeologists have classified round barrows into different types: the bowl barrow, bell barrow, disc barrow, pond barrow and saucer barrow refer to their sectional shape.  Barrow cemeteries, where combinations of type sometimes occur, are prolific in the Stonehenge area but also appear elsewhere.  The Lambourn seven barrows and the Overton Hill cemetery near Avebury are good examples.  There are many individual barrows on the Marlborough Downs.

Iron Age Period (c. 900 BC – 43 AD)

The Iron Age site on Forest Hill above Marlborough has been identified as a possible oppida or tribal centre.  Parts of the earthworks are visible from the Mildenhall road out of Marlborough: looking across the Kennet valley they appear above Chopping Knife Lane near St John’s lower school. West of the site in what is now Barrow Close, the Marlborough Bucket, a funerary receptacle, was found in 1807.  Now in Devizes museum the artefact is a fine example of Celtic art.  The receptacle is richly decorated with bronze bands ornamented with running horses and human heads.  What is reasonably certain is that the Forest Hill site, marked today by extensive earthworks, represents the first intensively settled Marlborough site. 

Roman Period (43 – 410)

Forest Hill was a civic settlement of late Iron Age people.  As such it represents the first Marlborough.  The Romans, reflecting their pattern elsewhere, built an important town below this site and named it Cunetio after the River Kennet.  Interpretation of the archaeological and historical evidence regarding Cunetio and the Forest Hill site reveals that very soon after the Claudian invasion of 43 AD a Roman Army contingent seems to have established a temporary camp on Forest Hill.  The evidence suggests the local people welcomed them.  The camp was later moved down the valley to what is now the Black Field.  Aerial photographs and resistivity surveys have revealed a town that seems to have served as an administrative centre for the surrounding area.  A major court-yarded building described as a mansio, which served as an administrative centre as well as a kind of hotel, seems to have been the only major public building.  There was neither basilica nor amphitheatre.  Cunetio was never a provincial capital, or civitas, like Cirencester or Winchester, yet it lay on the junction of five Roman Roads.  Cunetio was an important administrative and tax-collecting centre evidenced by the vast quantity of coinage unearthed, the largest number from any single Roman site in Britain.  Of the 50,000 or so uncovered, the vast majority are base coins of low value metals and probably the result of the calling in of old currency.  The number and scale of villa sites can attest that this was a very wealthy farming centre locally.  Littlecote is the best-known example but others of equal status include one at Castle Copse, Great Bedwyn and, through aerial photography, next to Brown's Farm on the edge of the forest.  Roman Kilns in the Forest supplied Savernake ware pottery over a wide area, particularly west and north towards the Severn Estuary.  Ponds, which supplied the water and the clay outcrops, remain in the area west of the Ailesbury Monument.

The most remarkable feature at Cunetio was excavated during 1959 when the footings of a massive wall and a tower were discovered,

“Here excavation has demonstrated the existence of a massive stone wall 5m wide built of a dry stone core between mortared faces.  Close to the south-eastern corner a bastion was discovered which could be shown to be integral with the wall.  The discovery of a coin of c.360 in a small ditch predating the wall suggests that a Theodosian date is likely”.  (Cunliffe, B “Wessex To AD 1000” Longman 1993 p270) 

Sub-Roman Period (410 – c. 600)

Roman rule in Britain ended in 410 when the legions left.  There was much fighting in this area during the so-called “Dark Ages” as the pagan Saxon invaders fought with the Christian Romano-British.  The British won the Battle of Mount Badon around the year 500 arresting any further Saxon encroachment for two generations.  It is not known for certain where this battle took place but the nearby Iron Age Hill-fort of Liddington Castle, at the edge of the Marlborough Downs overlooking Swindon, seems to be the most likely location.  It commands a strategic gap in the Downs through which a Roman road ran.  Any Saxons advancing south into Wiltshire from the Thames Valley would probably have come this way.  The nearby villages of Baydon and Badbury add to the likelihood that this was the site. Mount Badon, or Mons Badonicus, was, according to legend, King Arthur’s first battle.  According to the monk Gildas, Aurelianus was the British leader.  He could be the real King Arthur. 

The Wansdyke linear earthwork was probably built at this time defending the region from the north.  It consists of a bank and ditch with the ditch on the northern side.  Wiltshire was not conquered by the Saxons until the second half of the 6th century.  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recounts the defeats of the British at the battles at Searoburh, or Salisbury, in 552 and Berenburh, or Barbury Castle, in 556: Cynric and Ceawlin are associated as the victors,

“In 552 Cynric fought with the Britons in a place called Seaoburh and drove them into flight . . in 556 Cynric and Ceawlin fought with the Britons at Beranburh.”

Cynric and Ceawlin, possibly father and son, seem to have been the founders of the West Saxon royal dynasty, which emerged as the lineage of the later kings of Wessex and the early English kings.  The journey was not an easy one as Ceawlin later suffered defeat at the Battle of Wodnesburh in 592.  Named after the long barrow overlooking the Pewsey Vale above Alton Barnes, Wodnesburh, or “Woden’s barrow”, demonstrated that the Britons could still put up a fight.  Wodnesburh was later Christianised to its present name of Adam’s Grave.

Anglo-Saxon Period (c. 600 – 1066)

Many battles took place in this area fought between the Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex.  Wulfhere of Mercia fought Aescwin of Wessex at the Battle of Bedwyn in 675 and King Ine of Wessex fought King Ceolred of Mercia at a second battle of Wodnesburh in 715.  The defeat of Mercia and the ascendancy of Wessex came in a great victory for King Egbert of Wessex over King Beornwulf of Mercia in 825 at Ellandun near Wroughton. In the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,

“Egbert had the victory and a great slaughter was made there.”

A later Viking victory in 1006 over King Aethelred’s army and the Wiltshire militia at Cynete (East Kennett) effectively depopulated the upper Kennet valley.  It is no surprise that William the Conqueror later chose to build a castle in Marlborough as this area had a well-deserved “wild west”-like reputation for fighting.

The Saxon settlement pattern in this area concentrated on the ecclesiastical site at Ramsbury, 9 km to the east, and the town of Bedwyn, 10 km to the south-east.  Ramsbury was the centre of a bishopric comprising Wiltshire and Berkshire from 909 to 1058.  By the early 9th century it had become an important iron-smelting site: 17 flats off the High Street today commemorate this in the name “Saxon Forge”.  Bedwyn was an important royal estate with a mint.  The proximity of an Iron Age hill-fort at Chisbury gave the people of Bedwyn a refuge in times of trouble: it must have been an important factor in the siting of Bedwyn.  During the days of King Alfred, the hill-fort became part of a defensive system directed against the Vikings.  It is listed in the Burghal Hidage, a Royal memorandum of this time containing the names of fortified sites, or burghs, in Wessex.  Chisbury ranks alongside significant Saxon towns like Malmesbury, Cricklade, Wallingford, Wilton and Wareham in this respect.  The difference was that these places were fortified towns whereas Chisbury was solely a fortification for the Saxon town of Bedwyn. 

Savernake Forest, to the south-east, is first mentioned in a 933 King Athelstan charter.  The Anglo-Saxon tenant before 1066 was Aelfric the Hunter.

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