Chapter 6

Chapter 63,115 wordsPublic domain

(45) The same _Proceedings_ (xxvi. 206) contain an account by Dr. G. B. Grundy of two sections which he dug lately across the line of Rycknield Street on the high ground south-east of Broadway, thereby helping to fix the road at this point. A sketch-map is added.

_Yorkshire_

(46) In the _Bradford Antiquary_ for October 1914 (iv. 117-34) Dr. F. Villy continues his inquiries into a supposed Roman road running past Harden, a little north-west of Bradford. Dr. 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. The same volume includes a note of eight Roman coins of the 'Thirty Tyrants', from Yew Bank, Utley.

_Wales_

(47) _Archaeologia Cambrensis_ for 1914 (series vi, vol. xiv) contains useful papers on Roman remains. Mr. H. G. Evelyn White describes in detail his excavations carried out at Castell Collen in 1913--see my Report for that year, pp. 1-58. One must regret that they have not been continued in 1914. Mr. F. N. Pryce describes his work at Cae Gaer, near Llangurig (pp. 205-20), also noted in that Report. The Rev. J. Fisher quotes place-names possibly indicative of a Roman road near St. Asaph, and quotes a suggestion by Mr. Egerton Phillimore that the township name Wigfair, once Wicware, stands for Gwig-wair, and that the second half of this represents the name Varis which the Antonine Itinerary places on the Roman road from Chester to Carnarvon at a point which cannot be far from St. Asaph and the Clwydd river (see my _Military Aspects of Roman Wales_, pp. 26-8, and Owen's forthcoming _Pembrokeshire_, ii. 524). Lastly, Mr. J. Ward reports on further finds of the fort wall at Cardiff Castle (pp. 407-10): see above, p. 21.

(48) The excavation of the Roman fort at Gellygaer, thirteen miles north of Cardiff, was brought in 1913 to a point at which (as I learn) it is considered to be for the present finished. I referred to it in my Report for 1913; Mr. John Ward's full description of the results obtained in 1913 is now issued in the _Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists' Society_ (vol. xlvi). The principal finds were a supposed 'drill-ground' on the north-east of the fort, a bit of another inscription of Trajan, a kiln in the churchyard, and a largish earthwork on the north-west of the fort. This last is a regular oblong of not quite five acres internal area, fortified by an earthen mound and a ditch; trenching across the interior showed no trace of buildings or indeed of any occupation, but the search was not carried very far. Several explanations have been offered of it--that it was a temporary affair, thrown up while the actual fort was abuilding; that it was intended for troops marching past and needing to camp for a night at the spot; that it was an earlier fort, begun when the first invasion of the Silures was made, about A.D. 50-2, but never finished. This third view is Mr. Ward's own. 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.

As the exploration of this site appears to be closed for the present, and indeed is nearly complete, it may be convenient to give a conspectus of the whole in a small plan (fig. 29).

(49) The fourth volume issued by the Welsh Monuments Commission (_Inventory of Ancient Monuments in the County of Denbigh_, H.M. Stationery Office, 1914) enumerates the few Roman remains of Denbighshire. The one important item is the group of tile and pottery kilns lately excavated by Mr. A. Acton at Holt, eight miles south of Chester, which I have described above (p. 15); the Commissioners' plan of the site seems to have an incorrect scale. Chance finds, important if not yet fully understood, have been found in British camps at Pen-y-corddin, Moel Fenlli, Moel y Gaer, and especially at Parc-y-Meirch or Dinorben (above, p. 28). Isolated coins have been found scantily--a hoard of perhaps 6,000 Constantinian copper at Moel Fenlli, a gold coin of Nero from the same hill, another coin of Nero at Llanarmon, 200-300 Constantinian at Llanelidan. A parcel of bronze 'cooking vessels' was found near Abergele (Eph. Epigr. iii. 130) but has unfortunately disappeared. The index also mentions coins under 'No. 458', which does not appear in the volume itself. A Roman road probably ran across the county from St. Asaph to Caerhyn (Canovium); its east end is pretty certain, as far as Glascoed, though the 'Inventory' hardly makes this clear.

(50) A partial plan and some views of the west gate of the Roman fort at the Gaer, near Brecon, are given in the _Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club_ for 1908-11.

_Scotland_

(51) The fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Scotland, _Inventory of Monuments in Galloway. II. Stewartry of Kirkcudbright_ (Edinburgh, 1914) shows that the eastern half of Galloway, like the western half described in the fourth Report in 1912, contains nothing that can be called a 'Roman site' and very few Roman remains of any sort. Indeed this eastern half, the land between Dumfries and Newton Stewart, seems even poorer in such remains than the district between Newton Stewart and the Irish Sea. Its only items are some trifles of Samian, &c., found in the Borness Cave, and some iron implements found in a bronze caldron in Carlingwark Loch. This result is, of course, contrary to the views of older Scottish writers like Skene, who talked of 'numerous Roman camps and stations' in Galloway, but it will surprise no recent student. Probably the Romans never got far west of a line roughly coinciding with that of the Caledonian Railway from Carlisle by Carstairs to Glasgow. Their failure or omission to hold the south-west weakened the left flank and rear of their position on the Wall of Pius and helped materially to shorten their dominion in Scotland in the second century.

(52) In the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_ for 1913-4 (vol. xlviii) Mr. J. M. Corrie describes some polishers and other small objects found casually at Newstead (p. 338), and Dr. Macdonald expands (p. 395) the account of the Balcreggan hoard which he had contributed to the _Scotsman_ (my Report for 1913, p. 11). Mr. A. O. Curle (p. 161) records the discovery and exploration of a vitrified fort at the Mote of Mark near Dalbeattie (Kirkcudbright), and the discovery in it of two clearly Roman potsherds. The main body of the finds made here seem to belong to the ninth century; whether any of them can be earlier than has been thought, I am not competent to decide.

(53) The well-known and remarkable earthworks at Birrenswark, near Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire, have long been explained as a Roman circumvallation[13] or at least as siege-works round a native hill-fort. In 1913 they were visited by Prof. Schulten, of Erlangen, the excavator of a Roman circumvallation round the Spanish fortress of Numantia; they naturally interested him, and he has now described them for German readers (_Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum_, xxxiii, 1914, pp. 607-17) and added some remarks on their date. His description is clear and readable; his chronological arguments are less satisfactory. He adopts[14] the view generally adopted by English archaeologists (except Roy) for the last two centuries, that these camps date from Agricola; he supports this old conclusion by reasons which are in part novel. I may summarize his position thus: 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; lastly, Torwood Moor is fourteen Roman miles, a day's march, from Tassie's Holm, and that is twenty-eight miles from Cleghorn. Plainly they belong to the same date. Further, Agricola is the only Roman general who used both eastern and western routes together; accordingly, these camps date from him. Finally, as Birrenswark is near Torwood Moor, it too must be Agricolan.

[Footnote 13: It is proper to add a warning that the traces of the 'circumvallation' are dim, and high authorities like Dr. Macdonald are sceptical about them. The two camps are, however, certain, and there must have been communication between them of some sort, if they were occupied at the same time.]

[Footnote 14: No doubt it is by oversight that Dr. Schulten omits to state that the view which he is supporting is the ordinary view and not his own.]

Dr. Schulten has not advanced matters by this speculation. His first point, that the four camps are coeval, and his reasons for that idea, are mainly taken from Roy--he does not make this clear in his paper. But he has not heeded Roy's warnings that the reasons are not cogent. Actually, they are very weak. At Channelkirk, only two sides of a camp remained in Roy's time; they measured not 1,250 × 1,800 feet but 1,330 × 1,660 feet, and the longer side had one gate in the middle, not two; to-day, next to nothing is visible. 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.

Nor is his reason any more convincing for assigning these camps, and Birrenswark with them, to Agricola. Here he parts company from Roy and adduces an argument of his own--that Agricola was the only general who used both eastern and western routes. That is a mere assertion, unproven and improbable. Roman generals were operating in Scotland in the reigns of Pius and Marcus (A.D. 140-80) and Septimius Severus; if there were two routes, it is merely arbitrary to limit these men to the eastern route. As a matter of fact, the history of the western route is rather obscure; doubts have been thrown on its very existence north of Birrens. 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]

[Footnote 15: Gordon, p. 184, _Minutes of the Soc. Antiq._ i. 183 (2 February, 1725). It has been suggested that Gordon mixed up Birrens and Birrenswark. But though the Soc. Antiq. Minutes only describe the coins as 'found in a Roman camp in Annandale, ... the first Roman camp to be seen in Scotland', Gordon obviously knew more than the Minutes contain--he gives, e.g. the name of a local antiquary who noted the find--and the distinction between the 'town' (as it was then thought) of Middelby (as it was then called) and the camp of Burnswork, was well recognized in his time.]

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 archaeological use of the spade. The circumstances of the hour are unfavourable to that altogether.

POSTSCRIPT

_Herefordshire_

(54) As I go to press, I receive the _Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club_ for 1908-11 (Hereford, 1914), a volume which, despite the date on its title-page, does not appear to have been actually issued till April 1915. It contains on pp. 68-73 and 105-9 two illustrated papers on three Roman roads of Herefordshire--Stone Street, the puzzling road near Leominster, and Blackwardine, the itinerary route between Gloucester and Monmouth. The find made at Donnington in 1906, which is explained on p. 69 as a 'villa' and on p. 109 as an agrimensorial pit--this latter an impossibility--was, I think, really a kiln, though there may have been a dwelling-house near. The most interesting of the Roman finds made lately in Herefordshire, those of Kenchester, do not come into this volume, but belong in point of date to the volume which will succeed it.

APPENDIX: LIST OF PERIODICALS

The following list enumerates the archaeological and other periodicals published in these islands which sometimes or often contain noteworthy articles relating to Roman Britain. Those which contained such articles in 1914 are marked by an asterisk, and references are given in square brackets to the numbered paragraphs in the preceding section (pp. 38-63).

1. PERIODICALS NOT CONNECTED WITH SPECIAL DISTRICTS

_Archaeologia_ (Society of Antiquaries of London).

*_Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London_ [see 30, 37, 44, 45].

_English Historical Review_ (London).

_Scottish Historical Review_ (Glasgow).

*_Numismatic Chronicle_ (London) [see 8].

_British Numismatic Journal_ (London).

*_Journal of Roman Studies_ (London) [see 28].

*_Archaeological Journal_ (Royal Archaeological Institute, London) [see 2].

*_Journal of the British Archaeological Association_ (London) [see 17, 24, 30].

*_Antiquary_ (London) [see 3, 32].

_Athenaeum_ (London).

_Architectural Review_ (London).

2. PERIODICALS DEALING PRIMARILY WITH SPECIAL DISTRICTS

BERKSHIRE.

*_Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Archaeological Journal_ (Reading) [see 5].

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

_Records of Buckinghamshire_ (Aylesbury). See also Berks.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE.

_Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society_ (Cambridge).

_Proceedings of the Cambridge and Huntingdonshire Archaeological Society_ (Ely).

CHESHIRE.

_Journal of the Architectural, Archaeological, and Historic Society of Chester and North Wales_ (Chester).