page_title: Cirencester
section_title: Post-Roman and Saxon
hierarchical_section_title: Cirencester / History / Post-Roman and Saxon
caption_attribution_description: English: Roman amphitheatre in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England.
context_page_description: Cirencester is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, 80 miles west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural University, the oldest agricultural college in the English-speaking world, founded in 1840.
  The Roman name for the town was Corinium, which is thought to have been associated with the ancient British tribe of the Dobunni, having the same root word as the River Churn. The earliest known reference to the town was by Ptolemy in AD 150. The town's Corinium Museum has an extensive Roman collection.
  Cirencester is twinned with the town of Itzehoe, in the Steinburg region of Germany.
context_section_description: The Roman amphitheatre still exists in an area known as the Querns to the south-west of the town, but has only been partially excavated. Investigations in the town show that it was fortified in the 5th or 6th centuries. Andrew Breeze argued that Gildas received his later education in Cirencester in the early 6th century, showing that it was still able to provide an education in Latin rhetoric and law at that time. Possibly this was the palace of one of the British kings defeated by Ceawlin in 577. It was later the scene of the Battle of Cirencester, this time between the Mercian king Penda and the West Saxon kings Cynegils and Cwichelm in 628.
  The minster church of Cirencester, founded in the 9th or 10th century, was probably a royal foundation. It was made over to Augustinian canons in the 12th century and replaced by the great abbey church.
caption: The Roman amphitheatre
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