The Reading Museum contains one of the finest Anglo-Roman collections in England. It is the result of careful and systematic excavation, carried on for a series of years, on the site of the town of Silchester, and the collection is of the greatest interest to us as illustrating the life in an English country town in the days of the Romans. The locality is however in Hampshire, the Berkshire boundary making a detour so as to leave it in the neighbouring county.

According to the ordnance map, Speen House near Newbury was the site of the Roman Spinae, but no Roman remains have been found there, though there is evidence of a settlement of some importance at Newbury itself.

The foundations of houses of the Roman period have been found at several places in Berkshire; thus at Frilford near Marcham the remains of a small Romano-British house were found; and near by, in Frilford Field, a cemetery of the same period, which had subsequently been used by the Anglo-Saxons. Remains of a house with tessellated pavements were found on the Great Western Railway at Basildon, and other remains of Romano-British buildings have been discovered near Maidenhead and Waltham St Lawrence.

The words “Roman Villa” will be found marked on the ordnance map at two places to the south of Hampstead Norris, and remains of buildings have been discovered near Letcombe Regis, and at other places. The earthworks on Lowbury Hill to the west of Streatley are usually believed to be a Roman camp, and it is probable that the Roman soldiers occupied many of the old British forts at one time or another.

Roman coins and pottery of the Romano-British period have been found almost all over the county, though they may be said to be most common along the valley of the Thames and least so near Faringdon. In the Reading Museum there are a good many objects of Roman date which were found in Reading itself. Specimens are exhibited from two small hoards of coins dating from the Emperor Valentinian A.D. 364 to the Emperor Honorius A.D. 423. The coins are in very good preservation and were probably hidden when the Roman soldiers departed from England.

There are signs of Roman settlements along the Devil’s Highway, the road from Silchester to London. Thus there was evidently a Romano-British village at Wickham Bushes close to Caesar’s Camp on Easthampstead Plain. A collection from this locality exists at Wellington College.

A number of objects of the Anglo-Saxon period found in Berkshire will be seen in the Anglo-Saxon room at the British Museum. There is a very fine sword-blade from Ashdown, and a variety of objects—shield-bosses, knives, etc.—from Long Wittenham, where a Saxon burial-place has been explored. In some cases the body had been burnt, whilst in others the skeletons remained, and were found to be of a large-sized and robust race. Another Anglo-Saxon cemetery was discovered at Arne Hill near Lockinge, and a number of Anglo-Saxon interments in the Lambourn valley near East Shefford. Two burial-places of this period have been found at Reading. One contained spear-heads, knives, and bronze ornaments, and was probably of pagan date, whilst the other is believed to have been to some extent a Christian burial-place. In it a pewter chalice was found which may have been buried with a priest. The objects from these two localities are in the Reading Museum. Numbers of Anglo-Saxon coins have been dug up in Berkshire, more especially in the Cholsey and Wallingford district. They are of silver about the diameter of a sixpence but much thinner and are called pennies.