Roman roads in Dorset
Ackling Dyke crosses Cranborne Chase toward Durnovaria at Dorchester, and preserves one of the finest Roman road earthworks in Britain: an agger up to fifteen metres wide, standing nearly two metres above the fields and walkable for several kilometres near Badbury Rings. Dorset was hard-won country — Vespasian, then a legionary legate, reduced its hillforts in the campaigns after AD 43, Maiden Castle among them.
- Mapped segments
- 27
- Surveyed length
- 170 km
- Named roads
- 1
Measured from the Itiner-e survey within the modern county boundary, which for Yorkshire, Cheshire and the other counties broken up in 1974 means the traditional area reassembled from its present-day parts. The survey maps far more road than it attributes to a named route, so the segment count counts everything, and the named roads below are only those with a history recorded here.
Where to see it
Dorchester keeps the only fully exposed Roman town house in Britain, behind County Hall, with mosaics and a hypocaust under cover and free access. Maiden Castle, the largest hillfort in the country, is a short walk from the town, and the Roman aqueduct that fed Durnovaria can be traced as a terrace along the Frome valley.
Named roads through Dorset
Ackling Dyke
Sorviodunum to Durnovaria