Old Hampshire Mapped
Cox's Hampshire
Transcription (14)Southampton
Test, River
Anton, River
Alre, River
Itchen, River
Clausentum
Port Entum
Romans
coin
roman coin
Southampton, the chief Town of this County, from which it takes its Name. It is situated between two Rivers, which run, the one on the West Side, which is the Tese or Anton, and the other on the East, which is the Alre or Itching. Near it, if it be not the same, stood once another Town, called Clausentum, by Antoninus, as seems probable from the Distance of it, from Regnum on the one Side, and Venta on the other. And as Trisanton signifies the Bay of Anton, so Clausentum signifies in the British Language, the Port Entum, for Claudh among the Britons immediately implied the same, as [ ] did among the Greeks, viz. An Haven made by casting up Banks of Earth. From this ancient Name it came to be called for shortness Hanton or Henton, and the whole County Hantshire or Hentshire, as will be beyond question, when we come to set down the Words of the Conqueror's Survey.
It is not improbable that this Town was an ancient Colony of the Romans, and tho' the old Clausentum be demolished, as may appear from the Rubbish and pieces of old Walls, and the Trenches of an ancient Castle, half a Mile in Compass, which are discovered in the Field of St Maries, and reached as far as the Haven on the one Side, and beyond the River on the other; yet what remains, if it were not the Castle of the old Clausentum, was of those Forts, which the Romans erected on the South Coasts (as Gildas tells us) to hinder the ravenous Depredations of the Saxons. This may be sufficiently attested by the divers Roman Coins that are digged up here.
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