Part 2

“When King William approached the hills and valleys of Wales he saw a very large town, formerly enclosed with high walls, which was all burnt and ruined, and in a plain below the town he caused his tents to be raised, and there he said he would remain that night. Then the king inquired of a Briton what was the name of the town, and how it came to be so ruined. ‘Sire,’ said the Briton, ‘I will tell you. The Castle was formerly called Castle Bran, but now it is called the Old March. Formerly there came into this country Brutus, a very valiant knight, and Corineus, from whom Cornwall still retains its name, and many others derived from the lineage of Troy, and none inhabited these parts except very foul people, great giants, whose king was called Geomagog. These heard of the arrival of Brutus, and sent out to encounter him, and at last all the giants were killed except Geomagog, who was marvellously great. Corineus, the valiant, said that he would willingly wrestle with Geomagog, to try Geomagog’s strength. The giant, on the first onset, embraced Corineus so tightly, that he broke three of his ribs. Corineus became angry, and struck Geomagog with his foot that he fell from a great rock into the sea, and Geomagog was drowned. And a spirit of the devil now entered into the body of Geomagog, and came into these parts, and held possession of the country long, that never Briton dared to inhabit it. And long afterwards, King Bran the son of Donwal, caused the city to be rebuilt, repaired the walls, and strengthened the great fosses, and he made Burgh and Great March. And the devil came by night and took away every thing that was therein, since which time nobody has ever inhabited there.’ The king marvelled much at this story, and Payn Peverel, the proud and courageous knight, the king’s cousin, heard it all, and declared that that night he would essay the marvel. Payn Peverel armed himself very richly, and took his shield, shining with gold, with a cross of azure indented, and fifteen knights and other attendants, and went into the highest palace, and took up his lodging there. And when it was night the weather became so foul, black, dark, and such a tempest of lightning and thunder, that all those who were there became so terrified that they could not for fear move hand or foot, but lay on the ground like dead men. The proud Payn was very much frightened but he put his trust in God, whose sign of the cross he carried with him, and saw that he could have no help but from God. He lay upon the ground, and with good devotion prayed God and his mother Mary that they would defend him that night from the power of the devil. Hardly had he finished his prayer, when the fiend came in the semblance of Geomagog, and he carried a great club in his hand, and from his mouth cast fire and smoke, with which the whole town was illuminated. Payn had a good hope in God, and signed himself with a cross, and boldly attacked the fiend. The fiend raised his club and would have struck Payn, but he avoided the blow. The devil, by virtue of the cross, was all struck with fear, and lost his strength, for he could not approach the cross. Payn pursued him till he struck him with his sword; then he began to cry out, and fell flat on the ground, and yielded himself vanquished. ‘Knight,’ said he, ‘you have conquered me, not by your own strength, but by virtue of the cross which you carry.’ ‘Tell me,’ said Payn, ‘you foul creature, who you are and what you do in this town, I conjure you, in the name of God and of the Holy Cross.’ The fiend began to relate from word to word as the Briton had said before; and told how, when Geomagog was dead, he immediately rendered his soul to Beelzebub, their prince, and he entered the body of Geomagog, and came in his semblance into these parts, and kept the great treasure which Geomagog had collected and put into a house he had made underground in that town. Payn demanded of him, ‘What kind of creature he was?’ and he said, ‘He was formerly an angel, but now is, by his forfeit, a diabolical spirit.’ ‘What treasure,’ said Payn, ‘had Geomagog?’ ‘Oxen, cows, swans, peacocks, horses, and all other animals, made of fine gold; and there was a golden bull, which, through me, was his prophet, and in him was all his belief; and he told him the events that were to come; and twice a year the giants used to honour their god, the golden bull, whereby so much gold is collected that all this country was called ‘The White Land.’ And I and my companion inclosed the land with a high wall and deep fosse, so that there was no entrance except through this town, which was full of evil spirits.’ ‘Now, you shall tell me,’ said Payn, ‘where is the treasure of which you have spoken?’ ‘Vassal,’ said he, ‘speak no more of that, for it is destined for others; but you shall be lord of all this honour.’”

And so the vanquished fiend goes on to tell him the future fortunes of his house; and after King William had been duly informed of this adventure, and they had thrown the body of Geomagog into a great pit, they proceeded on their way to Oswestry.

In my edition of this history of the Fitz-Warines I have offered some conjectures on the spot to which this legend refers; but on comparing all the circumstances connected with it, I have since been led to the conclusion that the “burnt and ruined” city which had thus been taken possession of by the evil spirits was no other than the ruins of the ancient Uriconium. This story implies that the walls of the town and houses of Uriconium were still standing above ground as late as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and very likely a great portion of them remained thus standing at the time when the author of the History of the Fitz-Warines wrote. But during the centuries which had passed since the city of the Romans became a ruin, it had been undergoing a gradual but continual change from the accumulation of earth. This rising of the level of the ground is always found to have taken place under such circumstances, and may be explained by several causes. In the first place, the floors must have been covered by a mass of rubbish formed by the falling in of the roofs and more perishable parts of the buildings. Vegetation, too, would in the course of years arise, and the walls would stop and cause to be deposited the dust and earthy particles carried about in the atmosphere. This deposit we know by experience to be considerable. It is now little more than three centuries since the dissolution of the monasteries, and we have all had opportunities of observing the depth of earth under which the floors of the monastic ruins now lie, sometimes amounting to as much as three or four feet. What, then, must it have been on an extensive ruin like that of Uriconium, which had stood in that ruined and deserted condition from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the twelfth?

It was at this latter period that the Roman buildings began to be systematically destroyed. It appears that still in the twelfth century, England was covered with the remains of Roman ruined towns and villas standing above ground, as they are still seen, though on a larger scale, in the countries which formed the Roman province in Northern Africa. We have seen the superstitious feelings which prevented people approaching these ruins in our island, and it required nothing less than the hand of the Church to interfere and break the charm which kept the rest of society aloof. We learn from the history of the abbots of St Alban’s, written in the thirteenth century by Matthew Paris, that already in the eleventh century the abbots of that great religious house had begun to break the ruins of the Roman city of Verulamium, in order to use them as building materials. This practice became very general in the twelfth century, and from that time the Roman ruins were pillaged on an extensive scale whenever a monastery or a church was to be built. The ancient city at Wroxeter was probably one of the great quarries from which the builders of Haughmond Abbey were supplied, and no doubt it contributed materials to other monastic houses in this part of the country. The church of Atcham, the adjoining parish, and that of Wroxeter itself, bear evidence to this appropriation of building materials taken from ancient Uriconium. At the time when this inroad was made upon the ruins, the ground, as explained before, was already raised several feet above the Roman floors; and the mediæval builders, finding plenty of material above ground, cleared away the walls down to the surface of the ground as it then existed, and sought them no further. This accounts for the condition in which we now find these walls, that is, remaining tolerably perfect just up to the height of what was the level of the ground, at the time the rest was destroyed. The difference between the tops of the walls as they now exist under ground, and the present surface of the ground, is the accumulation of earth which has taken place since this destruction. It was the destruction of the buildings which first caused this accumulation, by scattering about the fragments of the plaster of the walls and the broken tiles and stones which were not worth carrying away. After the walls above ground disappeared, and the ground was levelled and cleared, such accumulation went on much more slowly.

The sites of the ancient towns, thus cleared, and the spell which held their invaders at bay having been broken by the ecclesiastics, became exposed to a new class of depredators. Coins and objects of some value were no doubt discovered from time to time by accident, and were greatly exaggerated by common report, during ages when the existence of hidden treasure formed a prominent article in the popular belief. Many a Salopian, doubtless, longed for the hidden treasures of the city of Geomagog, and many an attempt no doubt was made to discover and obtain them. Treasure-hunting of this description was a great pursuit with our mediæval forefathers, and the same superstitious feelings were connected with it that were attached to all the remains of more ancient peoples. The treasure-hunter rarely ventured on his search without having first secured the aid of a magician for his protection as well as for his guidance, for the same evil spirits were believed still to haunt the ruins underground, and it was hoped that by the power of the conjuror they might not only be rendered harmless, but be made to give information as to the exact spot where the treasure lay. Numerous examples might be quoted of such mediæval treasure-hunting on the Welsh border, but it will be sufficient to give one which appears to belong to the very site on which we are now seeking treasures of another description. An old manuscript chronicle of the monks of Worcester, which is printed in Warton’s Anglia Sacra, and has preserved numerous notices of events which occurred on this border, informs us that in the year 1287, at a place by Wroxeter, (that is near the village), called “Bilebury,” the fiend was compelled by a certain enchanter to appear to a certain lad and show him where lay buried “urns, and a ship, and a house, with an immense quantity of gold.” We easily recognize in the objects described by the false Geomagog, though not the material, the numerous figures in bronze which are from time to time found on Roman sites; and the arms and ship may perhaps admit of as easy an explanation. The treasure-digger had to encounter sometimes a worse opponent even than the fiend himself! Treasure-trove belonged to the feudal lord, and it was a right which he was inclined to enforce with the utmost severity; and the unfortunate individual who was caught in the act of trespassing against it found his way immediately into a feudal dungeon, from which escape was not always easy or quick. The learned historian of this county, Mr. Eyton, has met with a record from which we learn that some individuals towards the close of the thirteenth century were thus caught “digging” for a treasure at Wroxeter, and that they were thrown into prison. On their examination or trial, however, it appeared that, though they had dug for a treasure, they had not found one, and on this plea they had the good fortune to be set at liberty. This process of treasure-hunting had an effect injurious to the object of our researches. The mediæval excavator cared very little about antiquities as monuments of the past, and when, in digging a hole into the ground, he came upon a pavement, he broke it up without any scruple. It is to this cause, perhaps, that we must ascribe in many cases the damaged state in which we find the floors of the Roman houses, even when they lie at a considerable depth.

I have thus endeavoured to explain the manner in which a Roman town like Uriconium was ruined; how its ruin remained several centuries untouched, while a depth of earth was accumulating on the floors; how at a later period the ruins themselves began to be cleared away, and a new accumulation of earth was formed over the lower part of the walls which had been left, until these could no longer be traced on the surface, except by the appearance of the crops in long periods of dry weather. This double accumulation of the debris of buildings has often led people to form erroneous conclusions, and in the account of a former partial excavation at Wroxeter, published by the Society of Antiquaries, the writer has fallen upon the rather odd notion that the Roman town had been burnt twice,—that he saw the layers of burnt materials from two successive burnings.

The effects of all these causes may be seen in the excavations at Wroxeter,—the floor sometimes perfect and sometimes broken up; the walls of the houses remaining to the height of two or three feet or more, as they were left by the mediæval builders, when they carried away the upper part of these walls for material; the original level of the Roman town on which its inhabitants trod, strewed with roof-tiles and slates and other material which had fallen in during the conflagration under which the town sank into ruin, and the upper part of the soil mixed up with fragments of plaster and cement, bricks and mortar, which had been scattered about when the walls were broken up.

The site of Uriconium presents one great advantage to the antiquarian explorer, that only a small and not very important portion of the area has been exposed to the most destructive of all encroachments on its sanctity, modern buildings; while the situation and nature of the ground has not required the deep draining which would have cut through the ancient floors, and these lie too far beneath the surface to be touched by the plough. It will be easily understood that the preservation of such remains depends much on the depth of soil which covers them. The Rev. T. F. More has discovered and made considerable excavations in a very extensive and most interesting Roman villa, which occupies part of his beautiful park at Linley Hall, near Bishop’s Castle, but there the position of the site, and perhaps other circumstances, have caused the earth to accumulate much less rapidly, and the floors lay so near to the surface that they have all been destroyed. Where a fragment of the concrete of the floor remained, it was hardly six inches under the ground.

Our means of observation have hitherto been so imperfect, that we can only form vague conjectures as to the internal aspect and distribution of the buildings of a Roman town in Britain. At the close of the Roman period the towns were usually, if not always, surrounded with defensive walls; but there are several reasons for believing that the Roman towns in this island were not walled until a comparatively late date, perhaps not till the domestic dissensions and foreign invasions of the fourth century. These town walls, when closely examined into, are often found to contain materials taken from older buildings of another kind, which older materials themselves present the debased style of architecture which belonged to the declining age of the Roman power. The long straggling line of wall which surrounded Uriconium as we may conclude from its very irregularity, can only have been built at a late date, after the city had gone on for ages increasing in its extent. We are naturally led to suppose that the public buildings would occupy the central, or at least the more elevated part of the town, and this has in several instances proved to be the case. The discoveries made by Sir Christopher Wren, seem to leave no doubt that a Roman temple occupied the site of the modern cathedral of St. Paul’s, in London. But buildings of all sorts would seem to have been mixed very confusedly together; for we believe that in London, more recent excavations have brought to light remains of potter’s kilns in close proximity to this temple. In one or two instances, as at Aldborough, in Yorkshire, (the Roman Isurium), and in some of the small towns on the line of Hadrian’s Wall, in Northumberland, masses of the small houses have been uncovered, and their appearance leads us to believe that the houses of a Roman town in Britain were grouped thickly together, that they were mostly separated by narrow alleys, and that there were in general few streets of any magnitude.

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WE will now return to the spot where the visitor has halted in view of the imposing mass of Roman masonry, called the Old Wall, situated, as has been stated, in a large triangular field formed by the divergence of the two roads. The Old Wall stands not quite east and west, but sufficiently near it to allow us for sake of convenience to call it east and west. Its northern side is evidently the outside of a building, while there could be no doubt that the southern side, on which the springings of transverse walls and vaulted ceilings are visible, was the interior. The excavations were begun on the 3rd of February, 1859, on the northern side, or outside, of this wall, partly with the object of ascertaining the depth at which the floors and the foundations of the buildings lay under the present surface of the ground, which, as we have said before, was an important fact to ascertain. The bottom of the Old Wall was found at a depth of fourteen feet, the last ten feet of which were sunk in the natural substratum of sand, so that the walls of the buildings in this spot must have had originally very deep foundations. It was found that this wall was continued underground to the west, and excavations directed towards the north brought to light successively three walls running parallel, or nearly parallel, to this first wall, the first of these parallel walls being at a uniform distance of fourteen feet from the Old Wall, the next at a distance, also uniform, of thirty feet from this wall, and the third at a distance from the second of fourteen feet at the western and sixteen at the eastern end, so that, as the transverse wall at the eastern end of these walls was not quite at right angles to them, this large building was a little out of square. This building, therefore, consisted of three divisions, of which the central enclosure was 226 feet long by 30 feet wide, and appears to have been paved in its whole extent with small bricks, three inches long by one inch broad, set in zig-zags, or, as it is more technically called, herring-bone fashion. This description of pavement appears generally to have been used in passages and in open courts, and it seems probable, even from the magnitude of this enclosure, that it was not roofed. Nothing was discovered in it to throw any light on the object of so extensive a paved enclosure, but there could be little doubt that it must have been a public building of some importance. Portions of the capitals, bases, and shafts of columns were found scattered about in different parts of the area, which show that it was not wanting in architectural decoration, and on one of the pieces of wall-stucco, picked up in this part of the excavations, where three letters of what had been an inscription in large characters. Among other objects found here were a fragment of a very strong iron chain, the head of an axe, and an iron implement which appears to have been a trident, and to have been originally placed on a staff, perhaps an ensign of office. The appearance of the face of the Old Wall, which formed part of one side of the long narrow enclosure on the south of this central apartment, would lead us to suppose that this was an open alley, and this is confirmed by the other circumstances connected with it. In the continuation of the Old Wall to the westward, the lower parts of two doorways were found, which were approached from this alley each by a step formed of a single squared stone, which, therefore, may have been supposed to have led from an exterior into an interior. The corresponding long passage to the north of the central apartment presented characteristics of another kind. At the eastern end were found pavements of rather fine mosaic, of which specimens and admirable drawings, by Mr. George Maw, of Broseley, are preserved in the Museum. Mosaic of this description was not made to be exposed to the air, and the building here must not only have been roofed, but we have reason to suppose that there must have been a room or rooms of a character on which elegant ornamentation would be bestowed.