F. Haverfield

“ No foundations in situ have yet come to light, but that is doubtless to follow; only a tiny part of the whole area has, as yet, been touched. Margidunum may have begun as a fort coeval with the Fosse-way, which (if I am right) dates from the earliest years of the Roman Conquest. Whether any of the first-century potsherds as yet found there can be assigned to these years (say A.D. 45-75) is not clear. But the excavations plainly deserve to be continued. ”

“ The widening of Duke Street, which fronts the eastern half of the south side of Cardiff Castle, has revealed the south-east angle of the Roman fort, on the top of which the castle stands, and has revealed it in good preservation. Nothing, however, has come to light which seems to increase or alter our previous knowledge of the fort. Many small Roman objects are stated to have been found, Samian ware, coins, brooches, beads, in the course of the work ”

“ Villy actually excavates for his roads, in very praiseworthy fashion. But I do not feel sure that he has actually proved a Roman road on the line which he has here examined; he has found interesting and indubitable traces of an old road, but not decisive evidence of its date. ”

“ Plainly, the later Roman layer in the cave belongs to the end of the fourth century. The date of the other layer is harder to fix, since we are not told how the coins and potsherds were distributed between the layers. Probably the cave was long inhabited casually but in the troubled time of the latest Empire became a place of refuge or otherwise attracted more numerous occupants. That, if true, is a more interesting result that Mr. Balch realizes. For in general the cave-life of Roman Britain belonged to the first two or three centuries of our era ”

“ 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 × 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. ”

“ The wood-ashes seem to be mainly oak, which abounds in the neighbourhood of Holt. The kilns themselves are exceptionally well-preserved. They must have been in actual working order, when abandoned, and so they illustrate—perhaps better than any kilns as yet uncovered and recorded in any Roman province—the actual mechanism of a Roman tile- or pottery-kiln. The construction of a kiln floor, which shall work effectively and accurately, is less simple than it looks ”

“ At Tassie's Holm there was only a corner of a perhaps quite small earthwork—not necessarily Roman—and the distance to Torwood Moor is nearer twenty than fourteen Roman miles. At Torwood Moor only one side, 1,780 feet long with two gates, was clear in Roy's time; the width of the camp is unknown. Cleghorn seems to have been fairly complete, but modern measurers give its size as 1,000 × 1,700 feet. Dr. Schulten builds on imaginary foundations when he calls these four camps coeval. He has not even proof that there were four camps. ”

“ It is believed to be the artist's die, from which the potters' sunk dies would be cast; from such sunk dies little casts would be made and 'applied' in relief to the outsides of the bowls, to the handles of jugs, &c. It does not seem to have been intended for any sort of ware made from a mould; indeed, moulded ware rarely occurs among the products of Holt. It is far finer work than most Samian ornamentation; probably, however, it has never been damaged by use. It was found, with one or two less remarkable dies, in the waste round kiln 3. ”

“ Two Roman roads led from the Tyne and the Solway to Caledonia, an eastern road by Corbridge and Newstead, and a western one by Annandale and Upper Clydesdale. On the eastern road, a little north of Newstead, is the camp of Channelkirk; on the western are the three camps of Torwood Moor (near Lockerbie) , Tassie's Holm (north of Moffat) , and Cleghorn in Clydesdale, near Carstairs. These four camps are—so far as preserved—of the same size, 1,250 × 1,800 feet; they all have six gates (two in each of the longer sides) ; they all have traverses in front of the gates ”

“ By these hoards we should be able to date the catastrophe. Now the latest coin in one hoard was minted in or before 377, and the latest in the other in or before 383. But newer finds show that Wroxeter was not destroyed at earliest till after 390. Again, as Mr. Craster himself says, the coining of Roman copper practically stopped in 395; after that year the older copper [40] issues appear to have remained in use for many a long day. That is clear in Gaul, where coins later than 395 seem to be rare, although Roman armies and influences were present for another fifty years. ”

“ Newstead describes and illustrates fully the thirty-five graves found in 1912-3 in the Infirmary Field, Chester, of which I gave a brief account in my Report for 1913 (p. 14) . Save for a few first-century remains in one corner, the graveyard seems to be an inhumation cemetery, used during the second half of the second century—rather an early date for such a cemetery. I do not myself feel much doubt that some at least of the tombstones extracted in 1890-2 from the western half of the North City Wall were taken from this area. ”

“ T. Ashby once told me, a deep rubbish-pit yielded a coin of about A.D. 85 at a third of the way down, and at the very bottom a coin of about 315. That is, the pit was in use about or after 315; some one then shovelled into it debris of much earlier date. The London pits now in question are, however, fairly uniform in their contents, and their evidence may be utilized at least as a base for further inquiries.
(xix-xxii) Rural dwellings. Three Roman 'villas'—that is, country-houses or farms—have been explored in 1914. All are small. ”

“ 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 [46] 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 ”

“ Notions of or prayers for the long life of the Empire, the stability of the reigning house, the long reign of the current emperor, may have jostled with notions of the immortality of the emperors and their deification, and with the eastern ideas which poured into Rome as the second century ended and the third century began.9 The hardening despotism of the imperial constitution, growing more and more autocratic every decade, also helped. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if it did exist, the sites most obviously connected with it are the second-century sites of Birrens, Lyne, and Carstairs; at Birrenswark itself the only definitely datable finds, four coins, include two issues of Trajan.15
The truth is that the question is more complex than Dr. Schulten has realized. Possibly it is not ripe for solution. I have myself ventured, in previous publications, to date Birrenswark to Agricola—for reasons quite different from those of Dr. Schulten. But I would emphasize that we need, both there and at many earth-camps, full [63] archaeological use of the spade. ”

“ More details have been secured of the fort at Mumrills—fully 4-1/2 acres in area and walled with earth, not with the turf or stone employed in the ramparts of the other forts of the Wall. The line of the Wall from Falkirk to Inveravon, a distance of four miles, has also been traced; it proved to be built of earth and clay, not of the turf used in the Wall westwards. Dr. Macdonald suggests that the eastern section of the Wall lay through heavily wooded country, where turf was naturally awanting. ”

“ Without more excavation, it is rash to pronounce positively, and perhaps even a minute search might be fruitless. Analogies somewhat favour the first theory, but there will always be room for difference of opinion in explaining these excrescences (so to speak) of permanent forts, which are slight in themselves and slightly explored. ”

“ The absence of a ditch on the southern two-thirds of the east side may be connected with some paving outside the east gate and also with a bath-house, partly explored in 1824 and 1865, outside the south-east (east) corner; we may think that here was an annexe. The central buildings, so far as uncovered, are of stone; the Principia (III) perhaps had some wooden partitions. They are all ill-preserved and call for no further comment. ”

“ Late in the second century such phrases become commoner. With Severus Alexander (A.D. 221-35) coins begin to show the legend Perpetuitas Aug., and before very long the indirect and abstract language changes into direct epithets which are incorporated in the emperors' titulature. The first case which I can find of this is that before us, of Philip (A.D. 244-9) ; a little later, Aurelian (A.D. 270-5) is styled semper Augustus and, from Diocletian onwards, aeternus, perpetuus, and semper Augustus belong to the customary titulature. ”

“ The lowest and earliest yielded small objects of native work and Roman potsherds of the late first century: higher up, Roman coins and pottery of the second century appeared, and in the top level, Roman potsherds assigned to the fourth century. ”

“ Interest attaches to a water-channel along the main (north and south) street. This was found to have at intervals slits in each side which were plainly meant for sluice-gates to be let down; Mr. Bushe-Fox thinks that the channel was a water-supply, and not an outfall, and that by the sluice-gates the water was dammed up so as, when needed, to flow along certain smaller channels into the private houses which stood beside the road. If so, the discovery has much interest ”

“ Beyond that are fainter traces of the Inner Court which, however, lies mostly underneath a churchyard: the only fairly clear feature is a room (A on plan) which seems to have stood on the right side of the Inner Court, as at Chesters and Ambleside (fig. 2, above) . Behind this, probably, stood the usual five office rooms. If we carry the Principia about 20 feet further back, which would be a full allowance for these rooms with their walling, the end of the whole structure will line with the ends of the granaries found some years ago. ”

“ In Chessils and in adjoining fields called Cornwell, just 525 feet above sea-level, he has, further, actually found Roman potsherds, tiles, and rough tesserae. This, as he says (Notes and Queries, xiv. 5, and in a letter to me) will be the site of Skinner's 'villa.' (b) In the same publication (p. 122) I have pointed out that the Parish Award (1798) of Chedzoy, near Bridgwater, contains a field-name Chesters. This, as the Rector of Chedzoy attests, is still in use there, as the name of an orchard on the Manor Farm, just west of Chedzoy village. ”

“ North of the Wall, at Featherwood near High Rochester (the fort Bremenium) an altar has been found, dedicated to Victory (see p. 30) .
(v) Corbridge. The exploration of Corbridge was carried through its ninth season by Mr. R. H. Forster. As in 1913, the results were somewhat scanty. The area examined, which lay on the north-east of the site, adjacent to the areas examined in 1910 and 1913, seems, like them, to have been thinly occupied in Roman times; at any rate the structures actually unearthed consisted only of a roughly built foundation (25 feet diam.) ”

“ No doubt a temple in a Celtic land might have been built on a classical plan, though without a classical podium. But it is not what one would most expect. Nor do I feel sure that it was actually done at Wroxeter in this case. The walls which Mr. Bushe-Fox explains as the foundations of the temple are quite needlessly good masonry for foundations never meant to be seen ”

“ On the other side of the row of buildings I-III remains were traced of stone structures; one of these (F) had the L-shape characteristic of barracks, and indications point to two others (G, H) of the same shape. This implies six barrack buildings in this portion of the fort and ten barrack buildings in all, that is, a cohort 1,000 strong. But the [15] whole fort is only just 3 acres, and one would expect a smaller garrison; when excavations have advanced, we may perhaps find that the garrison was really a cohors quingenaria with six barracks, as at Gellygaer. ”