Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The Welsh in Dorset / by Thomas Kerslake. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
29/34 page 27
![of the Ptolemaic name “Alaunus” for the group of rivers whose outlet is Christchxxrch harbour, as the Salisbuiy [Al-] Avon is another. An English alias, “ Wimbourn,” must have prevailed long enough to name these places, but the ancient name has reasserted itself. The Stour, however, retains its still older Celtic alias. This district may be rather distant, from our Welsh one, for the neighbourship of the Wentssete implied in the Code : and without other links the hold of relationship of Win-” and Went-” would be somewhat infirm. The Stour also which divides them is here a considerable stream.” Another view may be presented by the fight at Beandun,” A.D. 614, already noticed. This makes it almost certain that the invaders had landed at Wareham, and already possessed themselves of the lower country between our hiU-district and BindonHih, through which the Frome runs to Wareham. Was this disti’ict, and the Isle of Purbeck south of it, the land of the Wentsaete which had been already annexed by the West-Saxons when the Code was enacted ? and was the Frome the stream which divided them ? This view has also some slightly possible philological support. The labial convertibility of W and £ is well known, and this would give us Win-” in Bindon”; also repeated farther west in the district in the name of Bin- combe.” What if the slaughter of the Britons at Bindon was a victory; and the occasion upon which the Wentssete which had formerly belonged to the Dunseete began to “ belong to the West Saxons ” ? The great ditch,” mentioned by Hutchins, as near PokesweU quarries,” and thought by Dr. Guest to have been a Belgic ditch,” may have been a part of this international arrangement. It probably extended from the weU known ravine* of Osmington Mill, across the Frome, and perhaps the Piddle; and would account for the siu’vival into Saxon Christian times, of the Celtic St. German’s dedication to the west of it. This *About half-a-mile west of the Osmington outlet, is a fragment of a fortress, unnoticed in Mr. Warne’s Ancient Dorset. The largest part appears to have gone over the cliff into the sea. The rampart seems to have been formed of chalk brought from a spot adjoining, but the cliff itself does not appear to be chalk.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22473191_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
