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Correction to Manley et al. (2024) A Source of Confusion: New Archaeological Evidence for the Dorchester Aqueduct, Britannia 55, 83–97

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2025

Harry Manley*
Affiliation:
Bournemouth University
Paul Cheetham
Affiliation:
Bournemouth University
Miles Russell
Affiliation:
Bournemouth University
Dave Stewart
Affiliation:
Bournemouth University
*
Corresponding author: Harry Manley; Email: hmanley@bournemouth.ac.uk
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Abstract

This brief note corrects an aspect of our 2024 paper looking at the evidence for the route of the Dorchester aqueduct in which we attributed a previously hypothesised route for the aqueduct to Christopher Sparey-Green.

Information

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Shorter Contributions
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

In our 2024 paper on the Dorchester aqueduct (Manley et al. Reference Manley, Cheetham, Stewart and Russell2024), Fig. 3, depicting the routes for the Dorchester aqueduct previously suggested by other scholars, shows a route that we termed the Sparey-Green route (also discussed on p. 89 of the paper). This was based on Sparey-Green’s identification of a spring near the Frampton villa as lying ‘at approximately 84m OD, on the right level to have fed the confirmed channel nearer Dorchester, if falling at a gentle gradient’ (Sparey-Green Reference Sparey-Green1995, 135). However, we recognise that Sparey-Green did not explicitly suggest a route by which this water source could supply the aqueduct as depicted on our Fig. 3. We are happy to publish a revised image reflecting this (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Detail of Steppes Bottom re-entrant showing conjectured routes of aqueduct by Coates (dashed line), Foster and Farrar (dotted line) and LiDAR-derived hydrological model (solid line). Putnam’s excavation trench from 1992 shown at the top of Steppes Bottom.

References

Manley, H., Cheetham, P., Stewart, D. and Russell, M. 2024: ‘A source of confusion: new archaeological evidence for the Dorchester aqueduct’, Britannia 55, 8397.10.1017/S0068113X24000254CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparey-Green, C. 1995: ‘The “Frampton villa”, Maiden Newton: a note on the monument and its context’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 116, .Google Scholar
Figure 0

Fig. 1. Detail of Steppes Bottom re-entrant showing conjectured routes of aqueduct by Coates (dashed line), Foster and Farrar (dotted line) and LiDAR-derived hydrological model (solid line). Putnam’s excavation trench from 1992 shown at the top of Steppes Bottom.