Part 8

Gloucester

(12) The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society (vol. xxxvi) refers to excavations at Sea Mills, on the King's Weston estate, in February 1913; the finds appear not to have been extensive. They also record the transfer of the Roman 'villa' at Witcombe to the care of H.M. Office of Works by the owner, Mr. W. F. Hicks-Beach.

Hants

(13) Mr. Heywood Sumner's pamphlet Excavations on Rockbourne Down (London, 1914, p. 43) is a readable, scholarly, and well-illustrated account of a Romano-British farm-site five miles south-west of Salisbury on the edge of Cranborne Chase. Mr. Sumner excavated parts of it in 1911-13; his account appeared so early in 1914 that it found a place in my Report for 1913 (pp. 23-5).

(14) Some Roman roads in Hampshire are treated in the Papers and Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society (vii, part 1). Capt. G. A. Kempthorne writes on the road east and west of Silchester and Mr. Karslake adds a word as to the line outside the west gate of that town, which he puts north of the generally assumed line (p. 25). Mr. O. G. S. Crawford and Mr. J. P. Freeman-Williams deal with very much more uncertain roads in the New Forest--one across Beaulieu Heath, another from Otterbourn to Ringwood (pp. 34-42).

(15) Mr. Karslake also (ibid., p. 43) notes that the outer entrenchment at Silchester, which is thought to be pre-Roman, does not coincide with the south-eastern front of the Roman town-walls, as we have all supposed, but runs as much as 300 yards outside them.

Herefordshire

See p. 62, below.

Herts

(16) Mr. Urban A. Smith, the Herts County Surveyor, submitted in 1912 to his County Council a Report on the Roman roads of the county, which is now printed in the Transactions of the East Herts Archaeological Society (v. 117-31). It deals mainly with the surviving traces of these roads and the question of preserving them in public use. The roads selected as Roman are by no means all certain or probable Roman roads. The article is furnished with a map, which however omits several names used in the text.

Kent

(17) A few notes on the Roman Pharos at Dover and on some unexplained pits near it, by Lieut. Peck, R.E., are given in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (xx. 248 foll.).

(18) In the Transactions of the Greenwich Antiquarian Society (vol. i, parts 3, 4) Mr. J. M. Stone and Mr. J. E. de Montmorency write on the line which the Roman road from Dover and Canterbury to London followed near Greenwich. Its course is quite clear as far west as the outskirts of Greenwich; thence it is doubtful all the way to London. In these papers evidence is advanced that a piece of road was closed in the lower part of Greenwich Park in 1434 and it is suggested that this was a bit of the lost Roman line. If so, the road ran straight on from Shooter's Hill, across Greenwich Park and the site of the Hospital School, towards the mouth of Deptford Creek. It is, however, hard to see how it crossed that obstacle, or why it should have run so near the Thames at this point, where the shore must have been very marshy.

Lancashire

(19) In the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society (xxxi. 69-87) Mr. W. Harrison discusses the Roman road which runs from Ribchester to Overborough for twenty-seven lonely miles through the hills of north-east Lancashire. He does not profess to add to our knowledge of the line of the road; he directs attention rather to the reasons for the course which the road pursues, its diversions from the straight line, and its gradients. He notes also, as others have noted, the absence of any intermediate fort half-way along the twenty-seven miles. Probably there was such a fort; but it must have stood in the wildest part of the road, almost in the heart of the Forest of Bowland and perhaps somewhere in Croasdale, and it has never been detected. The greater ease of the lowland route from Ribchester by Lancaster to Overborough may have led to the early abandonment of the shorter mountain track and of any post which guarded its central portion. That, at any rate, is the suggestion which I would offer to Lancashire antiquaries as a working hypothesis.

(20) In the same journal Mr. J. W. Jackson lists some animal remains found among the Roman remains of Manchester (pp. 113-18).

Lincolnshire

(21) Samian fragments, mostly of the second century but including shape '29', found in making new streets and sewers in Lincoln, are noted in Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, xiii. 1-4.

(22) In south Lincolnshire, between Ulceby and Dexthorpe, chance excavation has revealed tiles, potsherds, iron nails, and a few late coins (Victorinus-Constantine junior, nob. caes.) on a site which has previously yielded Roman scraps (ibid., p. 34). The tiles point to some sort of farm or other dwelling.

London

(23) In his new volume London (London, 1914) Sir L. Gomme continues his efforts to prove that English London can trace direct and uninterrupted descent from Roman Londinium. Though, he says (p. 9), 'Roman civilization certainly ceased in Britain with the Anglo-Saxon conquest, ... amidst the wreckage London was able to continue its use of the Roman city constitution in its new position as an English city'. I can only record my conviction that not all his generous enthusiasm provides proof that Roman London survived the coming of the English. The root-error in his arguments is perhaps a failure to realize the Roman side of the argument. He says, for instance, that, though not a 'colonia', Londinium had the rank of 'municipium civium Romanorum'. There is not the least reason to think that it was a 'municipium'. So again, his references to a 'botontinus' on Hampstead Heath (p. 86), to the 'jurisdictional terminus' of Roman London at Mile End (p. 95), to its 'pomerium' (p. 98), its right of forming commercial alliances with other cities, which 'lasted into the Middle Ages and is a direct survival of the system adopted in Roman towns' (p. 101), its position as a 'city-state' and its relation to the choice of Emperors (pp. 105, 130)--all this has nothing to do with the real Londinium; these things did not exist in the Roman town. When Sir Laurence goes on to assert that 'the ritual of St. Paul's down to the seventeenth century preserved the actual rites of the worship of Diana', he again falls short of proof. What part of the ritual and what rites of Diana?

(24) In the December number of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (xx. 307) Mr. F. Lambert, of the Guildhall Museum, prints pertinent criticisms of Sir L. Gomme's volume, much in the direction of my preceding paragraphs. He also makes useful observations on Roman London. In particular, he attacks the difficult problem of the date when its town-walls were built. Here he agrees with those who ascribe them to the second century, and for two main reasons. First, he thinks that the occurrence of early Roman potsherds at certain points near the walls proves the town to have grown to its full extent by about A.D. 100. Secondly, he points to the foundations of the Roman gate at Newgate; as they are shallower than those of the adjacent town-walls, he dates the gate after the walls and thus obtains (as he hopes) an early date for the walls. Both points were worth raising, but I doubt if either proves Mr. Lambert's case. For (a) the potsherds come mostly from groups of rubbish-pits--such as those which Mr. Lambert himself has lately done good work in helping to explore--and rubbish-pits, especially in groups, lie rather outside the inhabited areas of towns. Those of London itself suggest to me that the place had not reached its full area by A.D. 100 (see above, p. 23). (b) The Newgate foundations are harder to unravel. As a rule, Roman town-gates had large super-structures and needed stronger foundations than the town-walls. At Newgate, where the superstructure must have been comparatively slender, the published plans show that under a part, at least, of the gate-towers the undisturbed subsoil rises higher than beneath the adjacent town-walls. According to the elevation published by Dr. Norman and Mr. F. W. Reader in Archaeologia lxiii, plate lvii, the wall-builders at this point stopped their deep foundation trenches for the full width of the gateway (98 feet), or at least dug them shallower there. No motive for such action could be conceived except the wish to leave a passage for a gate. There would seem, therefore, to have been an entrance into Roman London at Newgate as early as the building of the walls, and there may have been such an entrance even before the erection of these walls. Dr. Norman has, however, warned me that plate lvii goes much beyond the actual evidence (see plate lvi); practically, we do not know enough to form conjectures of any value on this point.

(25) In the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects for April 11, 1914 (xxi. 333), Mr. W. R. Davidge prints a lecture on the Development of London which deals mostly with present and future London but also contains a new theory as to the Roman town. Hitherto, most writers have agreed that, while Londinium may have been laid out on a regular town-plan, no discoverable trace of such plan survived, nor could any existing street be said to run to any serious extent on Roman lines. Mr. Davidge devises a rectangular plan of oblong blocks, and finds vestiges of Roman streets in the present Cheapside, Cannon Street, Gracechurch Street, and Birchin Lane. In a later number of the same journal (Aug. 29, p. 52) I have given some reasons for not accepting this view. First, Mr. Davidge's list of four survivals would be too brief to prove much if the survivals were proved. Secondly, Roman structural remains seem to have been found under all the streets in question, and it is, therefore, plain that they do not run on the lines of Roman thoroughfares. Thirdly, his suggested plan brings none of his conjectured Roman streets (except one) to any of the various known gates of Londinium; it requires us to assume a number of other gates for which there is neither probability nor proof.

(26) In the Post Office Magazine, St. Martin's-le-Grand (Jan. and July 1914), Mr. Thos. Wilson, then Clerk of the Works, gives details, with illustrations, of the Roman rubbish-pits lately excavated at the General Post Office (see above, p. 23).

Norfolk

(27) In the earlier pages (1-45) of his Roman Camp at Burgh Castle (London, 1913) Mr. L. H. Dahl deals with the Roman fort at Burgh Castle (Gariannonum), near Yarmouth, which formed part of the fourth-century Litus Saxonicum. His account, which is not very technical, seems based on previous writers, Ives, Harrod, Fox. I note a list of thirty coins which, save for an uncertain specimen of Domitian and one of Marcus, belong entirely to the late third and the fourth centuries, and end with two silver of Honorius (Virtus Romanorum, Cohen 59). He detects a Roman road running east from Burgh Castle towards Gorleston, preserved (he thinks) in an old road sometimes called the Jews' Way; this, however, seems unlikely. He also maintains the view, which others have held, that the fort had no defences towards the water. This again seems unlikely. Burgh Castle, like Richborough, Stutfall, and other forts of the Litus, may well have had different arrangements on its water-front from the walls on its other three faces. But it cannot have lacked defences, and excavations prove, here as elsewhere, that walls did actually exist on this side.

Northumberland: Corbridge

(28) A paper by the present writer and Prof. P. Gardner, entitled 'Roman silver in Northumberland' (Journal of Roman Studies, iv. 1-12), discusses the relics of what was seemingly a hoard--or perhaps a service--of Roman silver plate, lost in the Tyne or on its banks near Corbridge in the fourth century. Of five pieces, four were picked up between 1731 and 1736, about 100-150 yards below the present bridge at Corbridge; a fifth was found in 1760 floating in the stream four miles lower down. One was a silver 'basin', of which no more is recorded. Another was a small two-handled cup with figures of men and beasts round it. A third was a round flat-bottomed bowl, with a decorated rim bearing the Chi-Rho amidst its other ornament. A fourth was a small ovoid cup, 4 inches high, with the inscription Desideri vivas. Last, not least, is the Corbridge Lanx, the only surviving piece of the five, and probably the finest piece of Roman engraved silver found in these islands, an oblong dish measuring 15 x 19 inches, weighing 148 ounces, and ornamented with figures of deities from classical mythology. That all five pieces belonged together can hardly be doubted, though it cannot be proved outright. That they all belong to the later Roman period, and probably to the fourth century, seems highly probable. Whether they were buried in the river-bank to conceal them from raiders or were lost from a boat or otherwise, is not now discoverable. But the occurrence of such silver close to the Roman Wall is in itself notable. It is to be attributed rather to a Roman officer residing in or passing through Corbridge than to either a Romanized Briton or a Pictish looter.