Itinerarium Curiosum

IN the year 1725, I travelled over the western and northern parts of England, in company of Mr. Roger Gale, a gentleman well known to the learned world; as his father, Dr. Thomas Gale, dean of York. I was requested, by some lovers of antiquity, to transcribe those notes which I wrote day by day during our journey; and though I had visited several of the places, through which we passed, in my former journeys, yet a second view (especially in company of a person so well versed in antiquities) gave me an opportunity of making some farther remarks, which I flatter myself may be of use to those who are fond of studying the antiquities of our own country.

I shall begin with Dunstable, the MAGIOVINIVM of the Romans. Many large brass coins, and many silver, are found in ploughing the fields here, and when digging in the ruins of the old priory by the church: I got a Nero of Corinthian brass, and a Faustina. The downs here are but a rib or narrow ridge of chalk; or northward is sand or clay.

Madan castle is circular, perhaps oval: the space within is a fine plain: the vallum is small, and the ditch much smaller; so that I am persuaded it was made rather for spectacle than defence. Tethill castle is a little further westward, a strong little camp upon one of the many north-west precipices of chalk exceeding steep: a village underneath, and springs of water: it is a double camp, both square; in one a round keep, or large tumulus ditched about, which shows it is a Saxon work.

The prospect all along the steep northern sides of the Chiltern hills is lovely; the Icening-street goes at the bottom; it is corn-field for the most part. These hills are all steep westward and northward.

Brick hill, or more properly Brink hill, stands on a very high sandy hill, steep north-west: the Watling-street, just before it arrives here, winds a little eastward, to avoid a deep valley, and passes above it.

Stone begins beyond Brick hill; and we enter a country of long-extended ridges, with large valleys and rivulets at bottom.

The country here, which is probably the highest in England, is a quarry of reddish stone, in small strata; the uppermost very full of shells, especially belemnites. The air must needs be exceeding good, as in the centre of England; the soil is a reddish clay. This is a neat pleasant town, well situate: two springs of the Avon run close by it. Eastward the great hill whereon is Borough-hill camp: a very pretty spring arises in the inner ditch, probably the highest in England; it is on the north-east side, which way the hill declines. This camp is on that end of the hill which it fills up, and conforms to its shape; double ditched, but toward the entrance the ditches separate, and meet at the entrance obliquely, after a manner I have not seen elsewhere. All round the mid-way of the hill it is boggy and springy: the whole hill is stone. Upon it are many more works of great compass; I suppose, some later camps of the Danes, Saxons, or Britons against them: there seem to have been some entrenchments round that part of Daventry town where the church stands: the inner ditch of the first-mentioned camp is very broad, and the vallum proportionable. Spellwell is the name of the spring on Borough hill; it looks blue: they say it is good for sore eyes, and is a great dryer.

It is a stony and clayey soil all the way from Daventry to Warwick: the country is open and full of corn-fields. The river divides countries of different nature; for on the other side it is a very good sort of large rocks: the country is very woody.

There seem to be signs of a camp on the east side of the river, over-against the castle, in a close where is an old chapel now become a barn: a spring riles a little above it: if so, then this was the garrison before the Romans built the city on the west side. Warwick is a very neat and beautiful town; many fine houses and public buildings of good stone, dug up at hand. The old castle is very perfect, and a noble seat: many fine pictures of the Greville family, and others, particularly an original of Sir Philip Sidney: the whole length of the place is one suite of rooms very magnificent; one wainscotted with cedar: they all look over the river. One may see here much of the ancient manner of fortification: their methods of defence, two gates, two portcullices at the entrance; with hole to drop down poles, and an immense strength of stone-work: before the towers at the gates are iron hooks fastened into the wall, which they told us were for hanging wool-sacks on in a siege: a tower in the corner of each wing, very high; that at the corner next the river they call Cæsar’s tower, made of three circular segments; that at the corner next the town is twelve-angled, called Guy’s tower: the keep is very high, now made with a circular walk to the top. At the priory, in two galleries which seem to be part of the first building, are some paintings on glass, of religious stories. The chapel at Guy’s cliff is double, having two arches within, that divide its length into two ailes or chapels. Under the castle-walls, by the river side, upon the rock grows much liver-wort, thriving in so agreeable a place. I observed the lowermost rocks are perpetually dripping, which gathering together in a channel underneath, makes a small rivulet. This seems to indicate, that fountains are the effect of exudation from the most elevated protuberances into some internal cavity; which though by drops only, yet the sum amounts to enough to make a spring run perpetually; as the alembic distills the vapors. Now the tops of the hills are kept always moist by the natural ascent of the water below. I know nothing against this doctrine, but springs arising in very large quantity from narrow apexes, and where no other higher ground is near, if any such springs there be: but we want sufficient number of instances and data to determine this great question. People since the creation have been very negligent, or very injudicious, in making observations for this purpose. This is not an useless inquiry; for if we found out Nature’s method in this affair, it would assist in making artificial springs, or finding out natural ones, to the great enrichment of barren lands, and watering all in a dry season; water being the universal instrument of all increase and nutrition.

Warwick bridge has twelve arches. The potamogeiton majus grows in the river; a large yellow flower, tripetalous, with an apple like the Egyptian lotus.

Dr. Philemon Holland, who translated Camden’s Britannia, is buried in the choir of Trinity church. In the window is a piece of painted glass of Leofric earl of Chester, lord of this place, and Godiva his wife: he holds a charter in his hand with this writing, I Luryche for love of thee grawnte Covetre tol fre. Stichell, a mile south of Coventry, has its name from the clays. The road here is paved very broad for a great length. St. Michael’s church is a very stately and magnificent building: the spire is very fine, and the highest of any I have seen for its base, but built of a mouldering stone. Over-against it is the town-house, a large stone building, and old, like a church: a very old wooden chair there, said to be that wherein king John was crowned; much old rusty armour; pictures of several kings of England, and other benefactors; and many inscriptions, Latin and English, relating to them. A vintner bought some ground north of St. Michael’s, and built a house upon it: he dug up great ruins of the old convent, and many coffins, and among the rest (as they say) that of Leofric and Godiva. This is a very large and populous city, but narrow irregular streets; and the houses chiefly of wood, and very old, hanging over the streets. The gates are many and stately: no doubt the walls were answerable, but now demolished for the most part, after the rebellion: in some places, where parcels are left, it is very thick, and so strong, that they only undermined it, and threw it down flat; as particularly in the meadows north of St. Michael’s, where it passed over the brook by an arch. Between that and the church stood the priory, founded by Leofric before the Conquest: some old walls of it remain. Here have been many elegant brasses in the churches, but broke up. The famous Cross is of a pretty model, but of perishing stone. The basis of St. Michael’s steeple is but twelve yards from outside to outside of the buttresses. Every road hence is paved with a broad high-raised causeway, from every gate a mile.

Griff coal-works here, forty ells deep, of vast compass. No sort of fossils found in them. Griff, from grave, grooff, digging. The soil sandy from Coventry hither, then black earth. The coal-mine runs from Coventry to Tamworth in a line: here are such breaches that intercept the strata, and such trapping and dipping as in Somersetshire: the fissures, upon breaking the track and parallelism of the strata, make them diverge generally. Great old toads are often found in the solid coal, leaving a cavity of their own shape. They draw away the water from the mines by an invention originally of the earl of Worcester, improved by Captain Savery and others: it works with a vast power from the atmosphere pressing into a receiver exhausted of air, by vapor, and then condensed. I saw the ruined chapel of Nuneaton. Many religious houses thereabouts, and remains of camps, castles, &c. and nothing else can make amends for the badness of the roads.

Dugdale says, divers Roman coins of brass and silver have been found here. It stands on the river Anker. The first syllable of the name remains, Man-castle or ’cester. At Oldbury a square fort of thirty acres, with very high rampires, situate on an eminence: this, no doubt, was a camp: to the north of it have been found frequently flint axes of the old Britons, about four inches and a half broad, ground to an edge: there are no flints within forty miles of the place. Either our maps are wrong, or the Roman road goes very much winding, perhaps to avoid the great Arduen forest. The name of this forest left in divers places, Weston in Arden, Henly in Arden, Ardbury, &c.

I called on Mr. Henry Beighton, an ingenious gentleman, who is making a map of this county; and we visited this station. South a little of the bridge, under which the Anker passes the Watling-street, I found the old city: it lies on both sides the road, and is of a square form: the road passes exactly through the middle of its length, which is 600 foot, its breadth 200, on each side the road. The field in Leicestershire is called Old-field banks; that in Warwickshire, Castle banks. The ditch is very perfect quite round, and the bank whereon stood the wall. The people know of great stones, and mortar work exceeding strong, being dug up; much Roman brick, iron, and great numbers of coins brass and silver, and some gold: in sinking wells the like things found. Several vaults go quite through, and cattle have sometimes dropt into them. A spring at the north-east gate. Oldbury is a great camp upon a high hill, west of the place; whence a most delightful prospect. The hill whereon stands the church of Mancester, which is a field or two off the bridge, seems to have been a camp too: it is intrenched very deeply, but I cannot say with so much regularity, as to its present appearance, that will ascertain it to the Romans: it is in the way to Oldbury. The houses reached from the castle to the bridge; for in the ploughed piece between, called the Furlong, foundations have been discovered, and many bridges. A great family has lived at Mancester, and of that name, who probably made, or altered, the ditches there. Geo. Astley esq. of Wolvey, near High-cross, has a great collection of coins found at High-cross, and all the neighbouring places; as Monks Kirby, where urns and ashes have been often found. The prospect from Oldbury is exceeding extensive all over the country; the camps of Shugbury, Arbury, and Borough, all in view, and the country that way, where the Watling-street runs, as far as Watford gap; so all into Nottinghamshire, and westward to a great distance. Withersley, and several villages round, parish to Mancester as their mother-church. The church there is a pretty large building with a tower-steeple. The country there is all a rock, and abounds with springs: the rock is of very hard stone, and dips westward, as the adjacent coal-mines. Mancester stands on much higher ground than the road and old city. More coal-mines about Dudley, Wolverhampton in Staffordshire. Sometimes the ends of the coal at those breaches bend the contrary way: this shows the breaches were made before the coal was perfectly hardened. When the damps exanimate a man at these coal-pits, they draw him up instantly, and make a round hole in the earth, put his head in, and cover it with fresh mold, which infallibly restores him. Between Wormleighton and Stanton they found, in a pit, a trunk of a tree hewn into a coffin, with bones in it; and many coins, particularly of Constantine. At Wolfencote, upon the Leam, in sinking a well they came to a vault with urns and coins: in digging at the priory at Coventry they found the old cloysters, with many grave-stones of monks; and in the old walls, which were very thick, bones and skulls with teeth, &c. were laid in, as fillings-up, from ruins of the older monastery.

A large rich town, the very shop of Vulcan. The vicinity of the coal-mines has made it the chief place in England for all sorts of iron work, sent hence throughout the whole world, in great abundance: it is a pleasant, woody, plentiful country hereabouts: they have repaired an old church, and built a new one: the streets are large and good buildings: there is a pretty square, inclosed and planted like Soho: the town lies on a declivity. In the old church are tombs, in alabaster, of a Jerusalem knight, two other knights, and some others. Deritend chapel built of timber, 5 R. II. by the river side. Here is a large school-house founded by Edward VI. not long since rebuilt: they have marked out large tracts of ground on the hill round the new church for buildings.

I find the Rigning-street way comes from Alcester, directly north and south, by Moseley, over a heath where the road appears now very broad, on the east side of the rivulet Rea: it descends Camp hill, and passes the river by the present bridge, and the valley where the low and old part of the town stood: it makes an angle in order to pass this broad meadow, directly as the Icening-street does at Newbury, or ad Spinas. No doubt but here was a station in the time of the Romans, because a convenient distance, ten miles from Etocetum: but of its name I know no footsteps. I imagine the present name derived from the great quantity of broom growing all round. Ingham signifies the dwelling upon the meadows; for the town has advanced itself but by degrees up the hill. When the Roman road has passed the valley, it turns up the first street on the right hand (Park street) to take the most convenient rise up hill, and at the end of the town falls into the present road, with its former direction to Etocetum. Probably upon Camp hill has been a camp, being by the road side, and having a fine prospect: what with the deep roads to Coventry and Warwick, here meeting the Ricning; and the inclosures, and digging for brick and tile, I could discern no signs of it. At this town is a considerable manufacture for thread. Beyond Birmingham, the Rigning-way runs upon the division between the counties of Stafford and Warwick, by Aldston.

In the forges here, three men beat together with successive strokes; which brought into my mind Virgil’s

A little to the west of where the Rigning crosses the Watling-street, south-west of Litchfield stands a little village, called Wall; south of that a quarter of a mile is Chesterfield. This is said to be the oldest city in England, by the inhabitants; and the Watling-street the oldest road. The Itinerary of Antoninus sufficiently evinces the place to be Etocetum. Part of the Rigning-way, northward hence, is very fair, with a high strait bank; part very mirey and bad. The country is sandy, clay, and full of round coggles, of which the road was composed. The Watling-street eastward hence about half a mile is inclosed in fields; but westward it appears very strait and broad. They call the Rigning the Hickling street at this place; and likewise Port-lane: it goes to Burton upon Trent. Many Roman coins found here, both great and small. Mr. Quintin, living here, has many: he owns the field called the Butts, where I saw great ruins of walls equidistant twelve foot, and twelve high, like square cellars. I saw bits of pavement there, Irish slate, Roman bricks, some pieces thus marked . The walls are a yard thick, of strong mortar, rubble stone, &c. The Watling-street parts the two villages, Chesterfield south, and Wall north. By the side of a road going northward thence to Pipe hill, I immediately espied the Roman walls, notorious by the manner of their structure; of rag-stone, a course laid sloping this way, a course that way, with very strong and white mortar: this lies under a hedge, and the roots of old oak-trees for the length of a hundred yards, till intercepted by a dwelling-house. They say the building in Butt’s close was a temple; and probably they are not mistaken. The Watling-street at this old city goes precisely east and west: some mile-stones found by the brook running west of the city: a pretty spring there; ruins upon digging all the fields round: the brook has a broad marsh along it westward. A little below the temple, we saw the crown of a subterraneous arch in the hedge. They showed me where the Rigning-way went through a corn-field south of the castle, and passed the river west of Shenston: it is a field way still southward, and an open road north. The castle stood in the north-west angle, between the Watling and another road, going to Litchfield, upon a gentle southern declivity: the old walls are founded upon the solid rock, and much more of them was left within memory: now they pull them down to build withal. There is a gate crosses the Watling-street at the castle end, by the side of the other road. That called the Temple is upon the western declivity, much lower in elevation than the castle, which is upon the highest ground in the neighbourhood, and somewhat raised above the common level, by heaps of rubbish, and foundations, which I could discern above ground in the orchard. The place of this old city is an elevation, and has a good prospect, especially southward: Oldbury castle and Mancester are in view. Wm. Milner, at the Swan, is an antiquary, and knows the old name of the place: he showed me a Roman wall in his cellar, and says it goes far backward by the garden. No doubt there were houses all the way, on both sides the road, from the castle to the brook, which is a sweet descent westward. There was a Roman coin of gold found near Hales-Owen. Many floors, pots, and other antiquities, found on the south side the Watling-street, in the ploughed fields called Chesterfield Crofts; and a very fine red earthen ware, with figures of bucks upon them. The circumference of the castle is hardly to be found; the ground has not been dug in the yards hereabouts. The Rigning-way goes by Lyn-lane, and so passes the river west of Shenston, at Shenston nether town. This country lies upon a rock here and there interspersed, but not a good stone; but there is a quarry of good free-stone, of a brown colour, by Swinfield. I saw a Nero of Corinthian brass, and some square Roman pavements found there.

The Rigning runs on the east side of an eminence called Mawcop hill, as it passes northward hence. The building in Butts close is level at top with the pasture, except toward the declivity, where they have dug away the earth, and the great wall that ran along it. Two miles beyond Etocetum, on the top of a hill is Knave’s castle, on the south side the Watling-street: it is a large tumulus inclosed within three ditches; an entrance on the south side: it has been hollowed at top. This is in a vast moor, or common full of heath, as the nature of the soil is all the way. The Watling is very fair and strait, and in many places the ridge is perfect for a great length. A little west of the bridge, under which the river Penk crosses the Watling, are a few houses belonging to Stretton, upon an eminence. This is thought to be the

And, no doubt, it was hereabouts, to answer the miles in the Itinerary. The village of Stretton lies a little to the north of the road; and a mile south is Brewood, another village, which they say has been an old city: it lies upon the Penk. Upon ploughing the fields they find Roman coins frequently, and much other antiquities. In that great old city, king John kept his court. A little brook runs a pasture or two below the road, and parallel to it, into the Penk, called Horse brook: it is a very full river, and the bridge is broad it runs through. The Watling-street is here east and west. Three large stone bridges cross the river in two miles. The old Roman city, no doubt, was by the road-side somewhere near here, and perhaps by Horse brook. Brewood may have been a Roman town, but it is too far out of the road for the convenience of travellers; and Penkridge is two miles and a half off, so that it can put in no claim. This town must have borrowed its name from the river, as that from the Roman city. Penkridge stands by the side of a large marsh made by the river: the church is built of good stone; a remarkable stone cross in the street. The healthiness of this country favours Mr. Baxter’s conjecture of the derivation of Pennocrucium.

The prospect hence southward is noble, and very comprehensive. Dudley castle, and many of the steep summits of the hills in Worcestershire, are in view; together with the mighty height of the Wrekin, which, from a plain, rises like a sugar-loaf to a narrow tip, and of very difficult ascent. The Watling-street runs under it. It is good land here, warm and woody, being just beyond the moor.

The castle here to the north west, a mile and half off, stands on a tip of rising ground very steep to the north-west; on which they have raised a keep, or high mount of earth: on that stood a square tower of stone, part of which remains. Here is the most magnificent prospect quite round, that one can imagine; the Malvern, the Wrekin, and many Welsh mountains, lift up their narrow heads beyond the utmost horizon, and above the clouds, as it seems. To the eastward is room for the castle, fenced too with a deep ditch. This was the work of Edward the elder, in the Saxon times; or rather his sister, the virago Elfleda, A. D. 913. A little church stands near the castle, called the Castle church, with a house or two near it. The situation of Stafford is low, in a broad marshy vale, where several rivers meet; and it has been fortified quite round, the waters of the rivers favouring that purpose. Two miles directly eastward is Beacon hill, a large parcel of rocks laid upon a level eminence, and covered with grass, having a steep ascent on every side, like a camp: it has a very pleasant prospect. The town-house here is a handsome large building. Upon St. Amor heath, under Beacon hill, a battle was fought in the civil wars.

We passed through Uttoxeter, where I could find nothing Roman, notwithstanding its name, cester; only heard of three gold coins found by the river side, not far off, some time since: it stands in a very fine country, watered by the Dove, a fruitful river, running through large meadows. Thence, in our way to Derby, we saw several large, flat Celtic barrows, upon a common at Sidbury. We rode over the meadows under Tutbury castle, famous for the bull-running on Aug. 10. where the people of two counties meet according to ancient usage, and contend for the honour of their counties, sometimes to bloodshed. The castle, once the seat of the dukes of Lancaster, stands on a very high precipice, looking north and west, strong by nature and art; very probably a Roman camp originally, as its name, bury, imports: it is not far from the Rigning-way. Tot signifies an eminence. Underneath it we went through Hilton. The lord of the manor there held of the dukes, by a ridiculous appearance before him, on the day after Christmas, whilst Jack of Hilton blowed the fire. Of this, of the king of the fidlers, of the bull-running, &c. see a large account in Dr. Plot. Mr. Gale says, this Jack of Hilton was a Saxon idol, called Pouster: it was made of brass, hollow, with a little hole, which when filled with water, and set before the fire, as an æolipile, vented its contents in vapor, rarified with great force. This was a good philosophical trick to delude the vulgar, and would appear like magic to them, ignorant of the cause.

Mr. Prescot of Chester showed us the impression of an intaglia found at Uttoxeter.

A mile and half off Derby we fell into the Rigning-street coming from Burton; which, leaving Derby a little on the east, passes over Nun-green to Derventio: there it crossed the river on a bridge, and thence went to Chesterfield.

I find the Rigning proceeds over the common, by the mill and brook at the west end of Derby, and falls into a valley, which gives a gentle descent to the river side, every where else steep, over-against the old city: this, no doubt, is the reason why the Romans placed it in that very spot. The river is very broad and deep, equal to the Medway at Maidstone; the sides steep, so that a ford was not at all practicable: it is six or seven foot deep here at least. Darley slade is the name of the valley where the descent of the road is: they call the road the Foss hereabouts; which shows that no more is meant by the name, than that it is an artificial work: the Foss and Rigning therefore are but synonymous terms. A little up the river, beyond the city, was the bridge: in time of a frost, when there is clear ice, they can see the foundation of the piers very plainly, and a piece of one is still left. Thence the road proceeds over the pasture, where, after a fortnight’s dry weather in summer, they can distinguish it by the parched grass: it goes up the valley north of Bradsal, by Priory Hall, so to Chesterfield. Another such way, they say, went up the hill directly from the street of the city by Chadsden: part of it has been dug up near the town by the Crown ale-house, and its ridge is still visible. In the pasture over-against the house two square Roman wells were opened by a violent flood in Sir Simon Degg’s time: they were made of very broad flat stones, let into one another, and were paved at bottom with bricks set edge-wise, as they tell me. Roman coins are found in every road, foot-path, and ditch, about the town: they never dig in the gardens, or pastures, but they find them, together with rings and other antiquities. A man who kept the Duke’s-head ale-house found seven score at a time in digging a hole to set a post in but they are all dispersed. The city of Derventio is in possession of the deanery of Lincoln: the city walls were dug up in great quantities to mend the ways with but they were so strong, they were forced to blow them up with gunpowder. There is much painted glass in Morley church, a mile beyond Bradsal, and tombs of the Sacheverels. A piece of the wall of Derventio is left under Mr. Hodgkinson’s garden-house. I saw a piece of a vase of coral-coloured earth found there, also several pieces of pillars; and they meet with foundations wherever they dig. Mrs. Hodgkinson showed us a gold Anastasius, victoria aug. g. g. said to be found near Leicester and a silver Arcadius. I saw a large brass coin, found at Derventio, Diva Faustina. I find this city is exactly of the same dimensions as Manduessedum, 120 paces long, 80 broad.

I rode to the hill south of Littleover, upon the Rigning-way, which lies in a strait line under the eye as far as Etocetum, and the hills beyond it. Litchfield cathedral appears a little to the west of it. The valley of the Trent, by Burton, is bounded on each hand by great heights. Repton, the burial-place of Ethelbald and other Mercian kings, is in view. From the other side of the hill, north of Littleover, the road butts upon the valley of Bradsal, by Priory hall, directly over Derventio. The Rigning is the common road from Burton to Derby, till a little north of Littleover it descends the hill to the left of the common road, which there is drawn to the right on account of Derby. I saw a great number of coins found here; Trajan, Carausius, pax aug. Victorinus, Magnentius, Dioclesian, Valens, &c. Mr. Hodgkinson gave me a Constantine, soli invicto comiti, struck at London. I measured the castrum with exactness: it is 600 foot long, 500 broad. We saw the wall on the outside Mr. Lord’s house: the mortar is full of pebbles as big as nuts, but excessively hard. Darley Slade is a fine descent for the road. We saw the admirable silk-looms again: there is a large additional building to them. The five churches here have all tower-steeples: the new one, a spacious and neat pile; the tower belonging to it, of old work, is stately. There is an old chapel on the bridge. A weak chalybeat water was found out lately, two miles off. The market-place is a pretty square.

Entering the Peak country, where the rocks begin, we saw two tumuli on the edges of two opposite hills. We came by the great rock called Radcliff, where the hermitage is: these and the neighbouring rocks have a frightful appearance: on the back of them are some stones set upright, two and two, as if the remains of a Celtic avenue. All around, the hills are big with lead ore. The cattle drinking the water here are liable to a distemper called the belon: it is owing to the mercury that falls in the smoak of the smelting-mills: they become asthmatic, and frequently run mad. Cats, dogs, and poultry, are seized with it.

This town seems to be Roman, and possibly its name was Braciaca, because of the inscription found near here in Camden, DEO MARTI BRACIACAE. There is a large tall stone in the church-yard, raised on a pedestal, as a cross, with engravings, very ancient, of George and the dragon, a crucifix and other things, with flower-work: it is eight foot high, besides the pedestal. The church is a large handsome building, but in very bad repair; a spire-steeple upon an octagonal tower, and that set on a square one; the whole in the middle of the church; the choir large: an alabaster tomb before the altar, of one of the family of Vernon: the south transept has, in a large chapel, many tombs of the Vernons, and Manners’s, ancestors of the duke of Rutland, but in a ruinous condition: many other old tombs; a knightly one of Colepepper, one of Foljamb, &c. a very ancient font with images, as rudely cut as those on the cross. The church stands much higher than the town. The Wye is a very rapid river; it never overflows, so great is the descent from it. The castle is a square plot of high ground, with a large tumulus hollow at top. I cannot affirm there is any thing Roman. This town stands in a flat valley, where the river passes in meanders; and the prospect every way is very romantic. A cold bath at the Angel inn, arched over, and made very convenient. Derbyshire marble wrought here, very beautiful, bears a good polish, full of belemnites and other curious shells petrified together.

We reviewed this noble seat of the duke of Devonshire’s. The front of the house is a fine design; the colour of the stone agreeably overcast with a faint redness. Several antique marbles: upon the pedestal of a busto this inscription, P. Ælius Aug. libertus. Lycus fecit Solusæ libertæ suæ. a sepulchral urn.

Another, Dis manibus Ti. Claudi thalliani Vix. Ann. XX. dieb. XX. Claudia felicula Mater filio piissimo.

The canal hewn out of the rock is made where a great hill was: now it opens a beautiful prospect towards Winster: it is 325 yards long, 25 broad: the hill was 44 foot high: the cascade is 212 yards long, with 23 breaks. There is an admirable antique Plato in the duke’s library, like that at Wilton; and a cast of Hobbes from the life: also an antique ram’s head. The painting about the house is by Verrio, la Guerre, Thornhill: the gallery is a curious room, painted by Cheron. Vast quantities of Derbyshire marble, of all colours, and beautiful.

Just before we come to this place, on the right hand is a square vallum, ditch inward; both small, about fifty feet each side: eastward adjoins a roundish space, marked out in the same manner. There are barrows upon the tips of the hills hereabouts. We found infinite quantities of shells among the stone: but the belemnites are most frequent; they are dropped as it were into the superficies of the stone, while soft, with the points downwards. The soil of this country is sandy and rock: the whole superficies of it is a rock, whose strata lie every where parallel to the declivity of the ground: it is lime-stone, like that at Bath; but the layers of it are much thicker. One may guess hence, that this sort of stone by some means procures the warmth of the waters.

We saw Mam Torr from hence seven miles; a steep huge rock elevated above the hills. There is a great yawning between two rocks split as it were from top to bottom: on the precipice of one jaw is an old castle, whence the adjacent town Castleton. Between it is the great cavern called the Devil’s Arse. A few little houses under the very rock. This country is fruitful in what we may call the magnalia naturæ. By these wonders of the Peak, and the warm waters, people are tempted to visit these wild wastes. At a place called Hope I learnt there are some stones, called Marvel-stones, which cannot be numbered: I guess them to be a Celtic temple. I could not hear of those at Chelmerton, though I fancy there must be such, because of some barrows on the hills looking that way: it requires some time, labour, and hazard, to hunt them out, by reason of the rockiness of the country. The sides of the hills, where the villages are, are divided into closes by stone walls, as in other places by hedges.

We went into Pool’s Hole again. This cavern rises, as we go farther in, with the hill: the stones within are covered over with petrifaction, from the water distilling down: some of the icicles are three or four yards long, hanging from the roof; the slow accretion of ages: the springs dribble down every where, as draining through the strata into this cavity. I fancy there are such in most rocky hills, and they cause springs: for we may conceive that after the harder shell of a hill was condensed, and first, as being outermost and more exposed to the external heat, in the infant globe; the internal parts, when they came to harden afterwards, by attraction of so much solidity, cracked and shrunk (as we see clay does in the open air) and so left casual fissures every where: the water then by degrees found or made an outlet from many meeting together; and this created fountains, most commonly toward the bottom of hills. This reasoning is strengthened by springs running in less quantity in summer than winter, because the sun exhales the dew and moisture, not suffering it so freely to sink down into the earth.

Escaped from this Stygian cave, I revisited the antiquity called the Round Fold, by the road side from Chelmerton hither, at Stadon; and under the hill called Stadon Hoe. I take it to be a curious Celtic antiquity, much of the nature of those which in Anglesey and Wiltshire we call Druids houses: so in Dorsetshire circles of stones they call Folds. The country people say it was cast up in war-time long since. It consists of a square vallum, 100 feet each side: the ditch whence it came is on the inside: eastward from this is a circle of 160 feet diameter, of like manner: the whole stands on an open plain, which declines northward: the square is upon a level; but the circular part declines gently from thence: on that point of the circle farthest from the square is a little semicircular cove of earth, like the place of a tabernacle. It is hard to say whether it was for a private use, or for judicature, or religious affairs; but in the pasture behind it is a barrow, and several more barrows in view, on the hill-tops. At Stadon I saw a large square intrenchment, now divided into pastures; and upon the top of the hoe, where the hawthorn stands, seem to have been some works. This circle of ours, by sinking the ditch within, seems well contrived for shows: five or six tire of people may stand commodiously round it, and look over one another’s heads. Both vallum and ditch are but small, much inferior to that of a camp.

In the field by the garden at Buxton are two springs close together, one hot, the other cold. Little flint arrow-heads of the ancient Britons, called Elfs arrows, are frequently ploughed up here. Roman plaster found here, mentioned in Thoresby’s Ducat. Leodiens. p. 558. A Roman road is said to go hence to Burgh, beyond Elden park.

Journeying hence over the remainder of these Alpine regions, we come to Goyt house, in the very centre of desolation. The most western of these hills are more barren and difficult than the others, and fuller of springs. At length we entered the pleasant country of Cheshire, as into a new world; wondering that people are found who can content themselves with the poverty and horror of the Peak, so near riches and delight.

Is a pretty large and pleasant town, sheltering itself from eastern blasts by its vicinity to these high hills: it stands upon an eminence, and is famous for manufactures of silk twisting, mohair, making buttons, &c. The church is placed upon the edge of the hill. South is a large chapel of the ancient family of Rivers (Ripariis) another of the Leighs, where, for saying a small number of Ave-marys and Paternosters, we obtain 26,000 years and odd days of pardon: to such a degree of extravagance was the superstitious folly of our ancestors advanced!

Stockport is built on a hill of rock. The church is spacious. A place called the Castle-yard, walled in. The Tame, Mersey, and other rivers, meet here, falling from the Derbyshire hills: united they pass swiftly through a rocky channel under a bridge of a single arch, large and well turned: they cut themselves houses in the rock here, as at Nottingham. Sometimes the floods reach the top of the bridge.

The Roman castrum was on the west side of the Roman road going from Chester, by Stretford, and on the northern bank of the river Medloc. It is a small piece of level ground, somewhat higher than that around it: it does not cover the whole piece, but is a square, 500 foot one way, 400 the other: nor can it well be said to be ditched about; but the ground near it, for some distance, is manifestly removed into the castle, and spread along its verge, not as a regular vallum, but sloping inward: by this means the area of it is higher on the sides than middle, and the external ground is lowered all around, to the foot of the castle, which is steep like the side of a vallum. Upon this edge there has been a wall quite round: the foundations of it are to be discerned almost every where; in some places large parcels of it left, but not above ground. Now they call it the Castle croft. The river Medloc runs near it, but is no security to it, as being not close enough: nor are its banks steep hereabouts, though its channel is rock, as is the whole country near. This is a quarter of a mile from the present town of Manchester. The Irwell river, coming through the town, runs on the west side the castle, and there the Medloc joins it. I look upon Manchester to be no ancient town; and even the hundred is denominated from Saltford, the village on the other side the bridge, therefore older: but Manchester is a much better situation, as higher; placed too between two rivers, having rocky and precipicious banks, with a good prospect: it is a very pleasant, large, populous, and thriving town; new buildings added every day: the roads are mending about it, and the river is making navigable; which will still contribute to its prosperity. The old church is very spacious and handsome, and enlarged still with numbers of large chapels and oratories; but the monuments, which were many, are destroyed and obliterated: a priest, of the name of Huntingdon, lies before the altar. It is a collegiate church, and the stalls in the choir are of very good carved work in the old manner.

This country is very woody, and affords a fine prospect every where, bounded by high and distant hills. A conflux of the many roads at this place gave origin to the town. Saltford is a large town; a broad and very strait street leading to Warington, probably Roman: a very good bridge over the river. Ten yards west from the castle is a natural precipice, which the Romans disregarded, trusting to their walls, but more to their own valour. A cavity cut in the rock by the river, under the south-west angle. The natural track of this road is north-east, but towards Manchester it trends a little more northward; I suppose, with an intent to come to the bridge, where it met the road from Veratinum.

I saw the altar at Holm house, lady Bland’s: it is 16 Roman inches broad, one front; a foot on the sides; 28 inches high: it is now removed out of the garden into coverture. They call the castle the Giant’s castle. Probably there was a town at the river Medloc in Roman times: an annual fair is still kept there. The castle stands parallel to the road. The river Irke comes in here under the college-walls: the castle-walls were pulled up to mend and build the churches and bridges.

I find the Roman road went across the church-yard originally, and so by the common street to the bridge over the Irke, called Scotland bridge: then it ascends the hill, and proceeds with its original direction north-east to Rochdale, which way the old Coccium was. Edward the elder by our monkish authors is said to have built a castle here, which probably was by the church and college; and the church may be founded on its ruins: this drew the town that way: the meeting of the two rivers there, and the steep rocks upon them, rendered it a convenient situation for such a work.

The college founded by Chetham, a tradesman, has a very good library, and good salary: here are about fifty boys maintained.

Mr. Prescot of Chester has a gold Otho found here. I saw a Celt found in the mosses.

We rode all the way upon the Roman road from Manchester to this place: it is the common road throughout, except a little near Altringham: that market-town has caused it to be left, by a common; but we recover it again at Bowden hill, whence we had the prospect of it a long way before us, in a strait line: it leaves Altringham a little to the east, passes west of Rotherston mere, close on the west of North Tabley house, and so directly to Northwich, which therefore must be of necessity the Condate of Antoninus. The Britons called these wiches, or places of salt-works, Hellath, from heli, salsugo: the last syllable seems to be in Condate: then it will signify the principal salt-work, cond, caput. Part of the road hither, by the Bollin river, they call Wash-way, from its wateriness; which shows the derivation of our country washes. This town stands in an angle made by the Weaver river and the Dane, both which are passed by bridges, sometimes overflow with great fury. South of the bridge, upon the high ground by the Chester road, is a great tumulus, or keep, of Saxon work, called the Castle. This is a pretty large town, but meanly built, depending intirely upon the salt trade: here are the strongest springs of brine, and the wonderful mines or rocks of salt, 60 yards under ground, which they work like coal-mines: how far they extend, is not known. I doubt not but there are many more all over this country: these are found out by chance, not many years since: they carry it into Ireland, Wales, and other places; and boil it up afresh with seawater. It is a most liberal gift of Nature, a compendious way of making salt; these springs being stronger than the ocean: the rock salt stronger than they; for it is perfect salt, transparent like crystal: it lies not in veins, or strata, as other minerals, or metals; but a solid rock, of unknown dimensions, which they hew away with steeled pick-axes, leaving pillars and spaces, as big as a cathedral. Poplar-trees are plentiful in this country: they all lean eastward, as continually pressed by the west winds from the sea.

The country from Northwich to Chester is intirely sand, and very deep: a barren view; once a forest. They dig up the turf every where for fewel; which prevents for ever its being capable of cultivation, otherwise not impracticable: the oaks are all gone. Mid-way is the Chamber in the forest, as called, upon a very high hill of sandy stone. Here they say Edelfleda, the great Mercian princess, built a city; I rather believe, a fortress, and that probably one of the Romans originally, to guard this road. We can scarce affirm any thing of the Roman way is visible, except at first setting out from Northwich, and near Chester, where it falls into the original Watling-street, half a mile off the city, by the river side: but there can be no manner of doubt but that a Roman way was drawn here, to that we rode on before: how it was done by that people, I cannot guess; for it was impracticable to raise a bank; and it would be wholly vain in this sand, unless they dug it away to the bottom, which is impossible: I suppose it was by stones set on both sides at proper distances, for a direction only, which are since carried away, or buried by the sands; for now and then we saw a stone seeming to be milliary. There is a horse-race, with a very good course; which shows the turf is well consolidated, where not skimmed off for the purposes aforesaid. When we draw near to Chester, we see on the left the Welsh mountains: on one, which is a very steep precipice on all sides, stands Beeston castle: before us, they rise one above another, and leave the clouds below their summits. Mr. Gale gives us several instances of Condate, and the like words, signifying a place where is the union of some rivers: and such is the situation of Northwich, where the Dane and the Weaver meet at the town; and the Pever a little below it, by the salt-rock. At Tarvin, where the road passes over a river approaching to Chester, is Stanford, so called from it.

This is a noble old city, the work of the victorious 20th Legion, the conquerors of these western regions. It is manifest at first sight, that they regarded, in the plan of it, the known form of their camps: it is a parallelogram set to the four quarters of the heavens; the longest side north and south: suburbs are extended eastward, and a new gate called the bars, where the Watling-street, and the road from Condate, enters: the Roman walls take in exactly the space of 10,000 foot, or two miles. The soil is sandy, upon rock of a red colour and sandy composure, with small pebbles intermixed. The soil has been more or less sandy ever since we left the Chiltern hills at Dunstable.

The Ichnography.

Stukeley delin.

Sturt sc.

TAB. LXV.Riding under the gate where the Watling-street enters, I observed immediately two arches of Roman work. I was overjoyed at sight of so noble an antiquity, which has never been mentioned. It was a square of twenty foot within; for so far are they distant from each other, and of so much diameter: they are exactly of the same manner as those at Lincoln; the stones not quite so large, nor so good: the breadth is 2½ foot. On each side was a portal, of a lesser arch, and lower, for foot-passengers; for part of the arch is left, and people now alive remember them open quite through; though now both these, and part of the great arch, are taken up by little paltry shops: or, rather, the lesser ones are quite pulled down, and even the great ones are in the utmost danger of falling; for the occupants of those places cut away part of the bottom of the semicircle to enlarge their shops. The portals answered to the Rows (as they call them) so remarkable in this city, being portico’s quite through on both sides the streets, undoubtedly continued in a manner from the Roman times. It is admirable that these vast arches, made of stones of so large dimensions, and laid without mortar, can stand at all when their proper butment is destroyed: that which regards the city has a key-stone: in both, below the lowest stone of the arch, the two next courses downward project a little inward, in nature of imposts; and over the crown of the arches runs a course of projecting stones moulded a little, but coarsely: the stones are artfully, though rudely cut; to which it is owing that they are not fallen, as depending wholly on their own principles, and the manner of their masonry, or geometry. Here terminates the famous Watling-street, whose beginning in Dover valley I walked over in May last. The road is here preserved, going by the river side to Aldford.

The ancient subterraneous canals are perfect still; their outlets into the river under the city-walls are visible; and they say that they are so high, that a man may walk upright their whole length. Wherever they dig, they find subterraneous vaults and arches, and all manner of antiquities; many of which were collected by the late Mr. Prescot, prebend of the cathedral here, and now remain in the hands of his son.

The city is commodiously placed in an angle of the river, which washes and protects two sides of it. As I said, it is an oblong square, 600 paces one way, 400 the other; that is, 3000 feet by 2000. Two principal streets run its length at equal distances from the walls and each other: one may be called Principium, having the gates at each end; the other is Quintana: they are crossed in the middle by the via prætoria, where are the gates Decumana and Prætoria. Another principal street runs on each side it, equidistant from it, and the walls of the ends: these may be called strigæ. Other lesser streets, or hemistrigæ, subdivide some of the squares made by the principals. Thus must the original scheme be understood, when the military and civil citizens first founded and inhabited the place. The little difference now is caused by the cathedral and the castle: the castle, the seat of Hugh Lupus, count palatine, and his successors, is built, for the most part, beyond the limits of the Roman walls, in that angle next the flexure of the river; consisting of a great court, and keep, strongly walled, and fenced with a ditch: the city-wall carried still round without it. To the north of the castle is some small remnant of a nunnery. The meadow between the walls and the river here is called Rood-eye, from a cross there, the stump whereof remains: upon this they keep a horse-race. The city-walls are carefully repaired by the corporation, and make an agreeable walk quite round: they are founded intirely on the rock. The churches have every where, as in other places, deformed the streets, which are originally the most noble and spacious I have seen. The whole city has a descent every way from the centre. The castle is rendered strong as the nature of the place will allow of: here the earls called their courts of parliament, and administered all affairs of state and judicature with regality.

Last year, digging in the chapter-house, they found the bodies of some of the old earls palatine, wrapped up in leather sewed; but within that, they were laid in woolen, like what we call wadding: the bones are pretty perfect, but the flesh is gone. They showed us one, thought to be Randulf Demeschin, the last earl, laid in a stone coffin; a place left for his head: he lies on the right hand of Hugh Lupus, the first earl.

They have built a large handsome exchange over-against the front of the cathedral, with pillars of one stone. The city is not set precisely east and west, though pretty near it. The ancient Roman gate at the Watling-street was larger than the rest, because of the entrance of the Roman ways there from Condate, Bonium, and the greatest part of the kingdom; likewise for readier passage of the soldiers upon occasion, most requisite that way; two of the other gates being fenced by the river: therefore this extends in front to 80 foot. This city in Roman times must have appeared admirably beautiful, with such spacious streets: the tradesmens shops and houses I suppose then to have been next the piazza’s of the streets; the soldiers tenements backwards, with gardens into the squares, as it is at present. The river, which once washed the city-walls, is now thrown off to some considerable distance by salt-marshes: a dam too is made across it by the bridge, for the sake of the mill; and by other mismanagements it grows worse every day, so that ships cannot come up near the place; whence the only little trade they have accruing from the passage into Ireland, is in danger.

TAB. LXVI.I saw at Mr. Prescot’s the Roman altar of Flavius Longus: it is very intire, and very prettily ornamented. On the top where the discus usually is, is cut the head of a Genius within a garland: on one side is a Genius with a cornucopia; on the other, a flower-pot with leaves of brank-ursin. It was found under a house by east-gate. He has more fragments of antiquity; Roman bricks, square for paving, a foot each side ; some marked LEG. XX. V. two inches and an eighth high; some hollow bricks with a double cavity for hypocausts. He has likewise a curious statue of the god Mithras with the Phrygian bonnet, and a torch in his hands, standing cross-legged: it was found under a niche of the wall, between east-gate and the river. Some of the bricks are thus marked, LEG. XX. V. V. which demonstrates they mean the legio vicesima valeria victrix. The altar has a square pedestal of one stone, which it stood on: the back of the altar is carved with drapery, and a festoon. Along with it was found a little earthen pot like a lamp; a brass winged Genius, small; two brass fibula’s; all in Mr. Prescot’s possession: he has likewise a brass camp-kettle, with two rings, 21 Roman inches high, found near here. The other inscription, which his father had, of PRAESENGVNTA, is sent to Oxford. He has also a very large collection of coins, brass, silver, and gold, most found at Chester. A golden British bracelet weighing 19 guineas, found lately in Wales, was melted down by a goldsmith here.

Stukeley design.

Sturt sc.

Stukeley delin.

Stukeley del.

Walking beyond the river, I found the Roman way going to Bonium: it answers precisely to the great street of the city, which I call principia, and is extremely strait: it goes through Eccleston, Easton, &c. Examining where it passed down by the bridge on the west side, I was led to visit a rock hard by, over-against the castle: there I discovered a Roman carving of a goddess,TAB. LXVII. in a tabernacle, with an altar: it was not in the least difficult to see the traces of a Roman hand, through so many years, rubbing of cattle, and ill usage. There is a seat hollowed out close by it, and which has taken away part of a pillar, supporting the pediment. It is a figure of Pallas, with a shield on her left arm: a belt from her left shoulder holds a sword tied under her right arm, after the Roman mode: she has a spear supporting her right hand: her under garments reach down to her feet. The altar stands against one of the pillars, and has a little hole at top of it. I wonder it has escaped ruin so long, placed so near a great city, and so low that it is subject to all manner of injuries.

This city is of a most charming situation; the prospect around it every way is august. The walls were repaired by queen Edelfleda. They talk of king Egbert’s palace by St. John’s. Between Eastgate and the river the Roman wall is pretty perfect for 100 yards together, made of squarish-cut stones, the length inwards, with little mortar appearing on the outside: I suppose they run it in along the inside liquid. This was an admirable contrivance for strength: as the wall of the gate was but one stone in thickness throughout; so by this means the city-wall consisted of few stones in thickness. Mr. Prescot showed us some urns, great and small, many fragments of patera’s of fine red earth, found here; some with embossed work of flowers, animals, &c. some with the potters’ marks at the bottom, particularly MACRINV and CARAIED OFF. likewise many horns of little deer and other animals found by the altar.

The village beyond the bridge is called Henbury, denoting its antiquity. Many fragments, seemingly of pillars and capitals, set for sitting-stones before the doors about the city, particularly in Parson’s lane.

To the east of the cloisters is the building called the Chapter-house, from the use it was put to; but I suppose it a mausolæum of the earls of Chester: it is on the north side of the choir; it is of an odd and ancient kind of building: there is a vestibulum to it, of a very pretty model, which I have not seen elsewhere: the pillars are cabled, without capitals, so that they resemble palm-trees. In the gateway between this and the mausolæum they showed us a coffin of stone, or rather vault, of the length of a man, and proper depth (about six foot): at the head was cut a cross; in the bottom lay the skeleton; probably the first abbot made by the earls: they guess that to be Hugh Lupus’s remains, which are buried in the very middle of the place. There were found seven of these graves, correspondent to the number of earls. Bishop Ripley, who built the body of the church, lies under a brass in St. Mary’s chapel: behind the clock is a painting of him, with Christ, St. Peter, and other figures, and much writing in Latin verse, but defaced. St. Werburg’s shrine, foundress of the cathedral, was an elegant structure of stone carved: little niches with gilt statues of saints, men and women of the Saxon nobles, their names wrote upon each, some still legible, all defaced, their heads broke off, &c. the bishop’s throne is built upon it. There has been an ancient monastery at St. John’s, much ruins of which remain. The cloysters have been built since the mausolæum. They have a report that king Edgar’s palace was upon that rock, by the river side, where the image of Pallas is cut; but I think erroneously: it seems to have been a Roman villa and gardens of some learned commander. There are but two chief streets of the city wanting, as plotted by the founders; on one stands the cathedral: that answering it, on the opposite side of the city, at present is but a foot-path, and lane across gardens, which have encroached upon it on both sides. There are some Roman bricks in the wall of the Friery, as observed by Mr. Gale. In one quadrangle by the cloysters is a wall with Gothic arches, very much pointed, like that at Peterburgh, engraven by Mr. Sparkes, V. p. 130. Edesburg was the name of the Chamber in the Forest. At the great house over-against the shambles is a hypocaust of the Romans, made of bricks all marked with the twentieth legion. It is now the floor of the cellar.

Leaving this famous seat, and the antique monuments of the renowned twentieth legion, we directed our course northward through the Chersonese, between the mouths of the Dee and the Mersey; a flat, sandy, clayey country, not much unlike the best part of the Lincolnshire levels. To the east of the old church of Bevington is added a spacious choir, and side-ailes. We ferried over the great bay to Leverpool. In the visto upward, the huge mountain whereon stands Beeston castle is very entertaining: it appears, though at the distance of above twenty miles, as a great rock emerging from the water. The novelty of Leverpool forbad us to hope for antiquities: it is a large, populous, busy town, placed upon the edge of the water, in a sandy soil, and open country, arisen from the commodiousness of its situation, with a spacious harbour. Quarry hill, a delf of stone of the red sort, and sandy, but not a brown red; so that in building it has a pleasant colour; and that fetched deep is lasting, and a good sort of stone: the new church is built of it; a neat building, by a good architect. I observed in this quarry, that the workmen make for themselves artificial springs at pleasure; for, though the strata here are very close together, and of a considerable breadth, yet there is a small dripping between some of them, especially those not far from the ground: here they cut a little bason, which is never empty. This confirms my former sentiments about springs.

Near the new church is a most magnificent charity-school. Here was a great castle, or tower, which they are pulling down; and a new church is building upon its ruins. The wet dock is a most capacious bason, with a broad street round it: the custom-house, a very neat building, fronts the dock. This town seems to be as big as Manchester; and they are building new streets every where. The process of the delf ware made here is very curious. There is a scarcity of good water here. From this place I first beheld the Irish sea.

We paid a visit to lord Derby at his seat at Knowsley, who may be truly said to be a person antiquæ fidei, grown old in wisdom: he has left the vanities of courts and cities for a retirement, which his lordship diversifies and makes still more agreeable with the greatest judgement. This is one of his seats: it stands on very high ground with a delicate prospect, and abounds with canals and fish-ponds: it has a park ten miles in circumference. The whole is newly refitted and adorned by my lord, and rendered very delightful. There is a great range of new building, with fine apartments full of admirable pictures, of antique marbles, and good furniture. The pictures are by the most celebrated masters, as M. Angelo, Caravagio, Veronese, Luca Jordano; a fine stag-hunting by Snyders, engraved by Sympson; sea-pieces by Vandeveld: many of Vandyke, Rubens, (one painted on paper, as Dr. Mead’s) and the story of Ulysses and Achilles; the Triumph of Industry, the original sketch of which I have: many of Salvator Rosa, and two great drawings of his upon boards; Titian, Carlo Maratti, and an infinity more. The bustoes are, young Geta; a coloss one of Faustina; a lesser one of the same, with one breast naked, very beautiful; Caligula; Gallienus; Alba Terentia, Otho’s mother; one that seems to be Pompey when young, or one of his sons: a brass head, said to be Michael Angelo; a lesser bust of Flora; a fine bust of Homer in Parian marble, of curious Greek work; another, a philosopher, of like work and materials; with several more. A statue of Hercules, two foot and a half high; two fine statues of Venus rising from the sea, somewhat less than life; a little statue of a Faunus; one of Bacchus; a lesser one of Ceres; another Venus with a dolphin, and a Mercury, both less than life.

Among the portraits, that of the famous countess of Richmond and Derby, foundress of St. John’s and Christ’s colleges in Cambridge; a full-length picture of a man born near here, called the Child of Hale, 11 foot high.

My lord has in his library a great collection of drawings, particularly the whole collection of the late Cheron, after Raphael; one of Hans Holbein, Henry VII. Henry VIII. &c. the original of the painting at Whitehall.

Near Knowsley are coal-pits. From the summer-house on the top of the hill in the park may be seen six counties in England, three in Wales; the Wrekin. The tower at Liverpool, by the water-side, was built by Sir John Stanley, ancestor to my lord.

West-Derby, near here, is the place whence the title of the earldom. The trees here universally bend very much to the east, owing to the continual breezes from the Irish sea. This country is observed to have much rain all the year round, owing to the same cause; and were it not so, it would be very barren, as confiding wholly of sand upon solid rock, as all this western country is.

Ormskirk is said to be named from a church built by one Orme in former times: one of his name, still left, is wrote upon the font as churchwarden. This belongs to lord Derby; and here is the burial-place of the family, a deep vault filled up to the very church-floor with coffins: some old fragments of alabaster monuments of the family of Stanley; others of the Scaresbricks. The church consists of two buildings at different times; and two steeples, one a spire, the other a large square tower; and both are crowded together in an unseemly manner.

From thence we travelled toward Preston, over a boggy, flat and black level, called a Moss. On the right, at a distance, we saw Houghton castle upon a high hill; before us, the vast Lancashire mountains, on the tops of which the clouds hung like fleeces; till we forded the famous Belisama, now the Ribel; I suppose, Rhe bel, the river Bel. Vide Selden de diis Syris.

I went to view this old station: it is prettily seated on a rising knoll upon the river; at some distance all round inclosed with higher ground, well clothed with wood and hedge-rows: beyond which the barren mountains, or Fells, as they generally call them here, from the Cimbric fala. The soil hereabouts is gravel with clay and sand by spots. The river Rible is very broad at this place, rapid and sonorous, running over the pebbles, and, what is much to be lamented, over innumerable Roman antiquities; for in this long tract of time it has eaten away a third part of the city. I traced out the old ground-plot, and where the wall and ditch went round it: it lay in length east and west along the north side of the river, upon its brink, 800 foot long, 500 broad: originally, I apprehend, two streets ran along its length, and three crossed them on its breadth. This place has been long famous for old monuments found therein; and some fragments still remaining I had a sight of. At the door of the Red-lion ale-house I saw the base of a pillar, and a most noble shaft, seven foot long, handsomely turned; which was fished out of the river: it is undoubtedly Roman originally, though the base has, I guess, been used as the stump of a later cross, in which this country abounds: there is a scotia and two torus’s at the bottom, though not very elegantly formed; perhaps it was never finished: the whole piece is 2½ foot high, 22 inches in diameter: the frustum of the column lay in the ale-house yard, where the weather, and other accidents, have obliterated an inscription consisting of three or four lines, towards the top: it is 17 inches diameter at top. One corner of this house is a Roman partition-wall, built of pebbles and hard mortar, as usual. This house now is by the brink of the river, leaving only a scanty road between; but within memory a great many houses opposite, and among them the chief inn of the town, were washed away. Farther on, down the river, a great part of an orchard fell down last year; and the apple-trees still grow in their own soil at bottom. Viewing the breach of the bank exposed thereby, I saw the joists and boards of a floor of oak, four foot under the present surface, with many bits of Roman bricks, potsherds, and the like; and such floors are to be seen along the whole bank, whence most antiquities are found in the river. The late minister of this place, Mr. Ogden, collected all the coins, intaglia’s, and other antiquities, found here in great quantities; but his widow, as far as I could learn, disposed of them to Mr. Prescot of Chester: I was shown the top of a great two-handled amphora, or wine-jar, taken out of the river, of whitish clay: I saw another like fragment; and among antiquities he took up a very large piece of corallium tubulatum, bigger than a man’s head; an admirable curiosity of nature. By symmetry I find the whole channel of the river, at present, lies within the precincts of the old city: the original channel on the other side being filled up with the city-walls, and rubbish; for it bends with a great elbow toward the city. The eastern limit of the city, or that upward of the river, lies against a brook there falling in; and the two streams playing against that angle, have carried it away, and still threaten them. At the western end of the city, or down the stream, a whole road, and some houses too, by a barn, are absorbed; and great quantity of ashler, the remains of the wall, has been carried off for building: much remains in the ground, and on the edge of the stream. Farther up the land, and all along the west side of the church-wall, the ditch is perfect, and the rampire where the wall stood pretty high, and the foundation of the wall a little apparent. They tell me the ashler stone still lies its whole length. They call this Anchor hill; and, when digging by the house that stands upon part of it, they found anchors, and great quantities of iron pins, of all sizes, for ships or barges; for they say this river was navigable so high formerly, at least for smaller vessels. The north-west angle of the city is manifest, and where the northern wall turned round the north side of the church: a little way down a lane at that angle, a great bank runs westward, made of stone, like a Roman road. There is a lane goes down, north of the city, to the brook, called the Strand; which confirms their having some sort of navigation here. At the end of this lane is the street which is the Roman road, running directly northward up the fell, called Green gate: it passes over Langridge, a great mountain so named from it, so through Bowland forest: it appears green to the eye. In this street, over-against the Strand, is an old white house, where they say Oliver Cromwell lay, when going to Preston in pursuit of the Scots, after the battle of Marston-moor. The eastern wall over the brook stood likewise on a sort of precipice. I saw a large coin of Domitian, of yellow brass, very fair, found in the river, Imp. cæs. domit. aug. germ. cos. xvi. cens. per pp. reverse, Jupiter sitting in a curule chair, the hasta pura in his left, an eagle on his right hand, Jovi victori; exergue S. C. another pedestal of a pillar found in the river. Just under the Red-lion a subterraneous canal comes into the river, so high that one may walk upright in it, paved at the bottom. Many urns have been found hereabouts, but all lost and disregarded since Mr. Ogden died, who collected such things. They know the track of the Roman road all the way over the hills. In a garden by the Unicorn’s head a gold finger was found, and another brass finger as large as a man’s; two intaglia’s of Mercury with wings on his feet, the caduceus, &c. found near Anchor hill: much ashes and bones found about the city. Up the river, eight miles off, is Pendle hill, a vast black mountain, which is the morning weather-glass of the country people: upon it grows the cloud-berry plant. Digging in the church-yard, silver coins have been frequently turned up. The river hither is open and deep; but at Salesbury, a mile higher, rocks begin: therefore it is likely this place was chosen by the Romans because at the extent of navigation. Half of one longitudinal street, and of two latitudinals, are consumed. Horses and carriages frequently fall down the steep from the street, because it is narrow, and but factitious ground.

Panstones, up the hill, by the Green-moor lane, or Roman road, is a place much talked of; but they know not for what. I suppose it is either some Roman building, or a road eastward, or some terminus. They told me of an altar thereabouts with an inscription, axes, and the like, carved on it: it is on Duttonley, by Panstones. Haughton tower is within view; a great castle upon a precipicious hill.

Many are the inscriptions found here from time to time: Dr. Leigh has seen them all. Now they are removed, lost, or spoiled: one great altar they told me was carried to Dunkin hall, the seat of lady Petre, with an inscription, a ram, and a knife; many taken away by the family of Warrens, living lately at Salesbury hall. I saw the fragment of a stone, in the corner of a house by the mill, cut with very fair large letters: under the next house is the frustum of a pillar, 20 inches diameter, made into a horse-block: I saw another flat stone at the town’s end, laid over a gutter, with a monumental moulding upon it.

Above the town half a mile is a noble bridge of four very large arches, built lately by the country: over this I went to Salesbury; but all the inscriptions are carried away, probably to Mr. Warren’s other seat, near Stockport in Cheshire. I found a large stone in the corner of the house, which has been a Roman monumental stone, foolishly placed there for the sake of the carving: there are three large figures upon it, sweetly performed, and good drapery, though half worn way by time; a man and woman holding hands, both half naked; somewhat roundish in the woman’s hand: at the end is Apollo resting on his harp, his head leaning on his hand, as melancholy for the loss of a votary; for such we may guess the deceased, either a poet, physician, or musician: probably there was more carving on those sides within the wall. This has been a very large seat, with a park. They told me there were some carved stones at Dinkley, another seat of Mr. Warren’s, a mile farther; but I found they were all carried elsewhere, save two altars, both obliterated, but well cut: one stood in a grass-plot in the garden, covered over with moss and weeds; another used in the house as a cheese-press. This is a romantic place, hanging over the river purling across the rocky falls, and covered with wood. The late Mr. Warren was very careful of these learned remnants. They told me that Ribchester was destroyed by the Scots. These are all the memoirs I could pick up in about five hours I staid there, & antiquum tenuerunt flumina nomen. Ovid. Met.

Dr. Leigh, in Lancaster, says a Roman way goes from Manchester to Ribchester by strange ways towards Bury: he gives a cut of a ruby found here; on it a soldier with spear and shield. I take the two altars I saw at Salesbury to be those described in Dr. Leigh’s Lancaster.

At Langho, Ardulf king of Northumberland gained a victory, anno 798.

Between Preston and this place we had the vast hills that part Yorkshire and Lancashire, all the way on our right. This is all sandy country to within three miles of Lancaster; then rock begins: the other has rock under it, but red and sandy; this is white. Where the castle and church stand is a high and steep hill, length east and west: this was the Roman castrum. I found a great piece of the wall at the north-east, in the garden of Clement Townsend; and so to Mr. Harrison’s summer-house, which stands upon it: it is made of the white stone of the country, and very hard mortar, and still very thick, though the facing on both sides is peeled off for the sake of the squared stone, which they used in building. A year or two ago a great parcel of it was destroyed with much labour. This reached quite to the bridge-lane, and hung over the street at the head of the precipice in a dreadful manner: from the summer-house it went round the verge of the close north of the church, and took in the whole circuit of the hill. The ditch on the outside of it is now to be seen. I suppose it originally inclosed the whole top of the hill where the church and castle stand, which is steep on all sides, and half inclosed by the river Lune; so that it was an excellent guard to this part of the sea-coast, and commands a very great prospect both by sea and land. Here was this great convenience too in the situation, that on the south side of the castle walls, under the tower, is a spring. All the space of ground north of the church is full of foundations of stone buildings, Roman, I believe; and much stone has been taken up there. To the west of the church is part of a partition wall left, of that time. This is a navigable river. The castle built since on this spot has been very strong; it suffered in the civil wars. The prospect hence takes in all the western sea, and sometimes reaches the isle of Man. The Cumberland and Westmorland hills are of such a nature as I never saw before: I took them for clouds at first, not only from their height, but figure; consisting not of long ridges, but pens, or sugar-loaves, suddenly breaking off. Eastward is Ingleborough, a very strange hill, having a flat place at top, like a table: they say there are some works upon it, and some stones placed like a bower: Camden takes notice of it as rising gradually eastward. Upon some of these hills it was that George Fox ascended to converse with the Holy Ghost, as he pretended; which he revealed to Nailor, and so began the sect of the Quakers, about sixty years ago.

There is a friery in the town, and the church of it was standing within memory. When they pulled down the Roman wall, they found many great toads alive in the thickness of it, and where in all appearance there could be no passage for them from without. The town of Lancaster lies upon the eastern declivity, before the castle.

Through a very hard road, but not an unpleasant country, we entered Westmorland. The river Can is very rapid, and full of cataracts, as running chiefly over the rock, and having a great descent. It is strange that the salmon coming up these rivers from the sea to lay their spawn, when obstructed by these places, leap over them with a surprizing force; and there they lie in wait to catch them with nets laid on the upper edge. A mile below Kendal this river takes a circling course, and makes a sort of peninsula, called Water-crook, where I found the old city: its name signifies the valley upon the water Can. It is a fine large valley, and very pleasant. Either with a cut, or by nature, the river ran quite round the city. Mr. Tho. Guy is the possessor of it. As soon as I came into the yard, I saw a large altar placed by some steps: I believe it dedicate to Bacchus, because of grapes and festoons on it: it is above three foot high: the festoons are on three sides; the back is plain. All the house and out-houses are built of Roman stone, dug up in the old city. The top of an altar is put into a corner of that stable where the altar stands. At the end of the house is a large statue or bas relief of Cupid: the gavel end fell down some time ago, and knocked off his head and arms; but it is well cut. In the garden, at the end of an out-house, is a very long inscription on a stone. He showed me a little portable altar, but 7-1/4 Roman inches high: the dedicatory inscription is obliterated by using it as a whet-stone; but it is prettily adorned, has two scrolls and the discus at top. Innumerable antiquities have been found here; great arches and ruins of buildings: they never plough but somewhat is found. The father of Mr. Guy saved many, which are since lost: this gentleman found many brass, silver, and gold coins here; but all are dispersed, except a large brass Faustina: he showed me an intaglia of Mercury set in gold for a ring: another with three faces to a head; the foremost, Mars with a helmet on; a woman’s face on each side: a paste of a light onyx colour, with a head: a sepulchral lamp. He told me of a large brass urn with bones in it found here: it had two ears to it, and was used forty years ago, in the family, as a kettle, and is now at his sister’s, Mrs. Herring, at Wall near Hexam.

The town of Kendal is very large, lying under a great hill to the west; the river to the east. Upon the rise of the hill is a place called Castle-low hill, which has been a castle raised in Saxon times, fortified with a ditch where not naturally steep, and a keep or artificial mount; a sorry way of encampment: the keep is narrow at top, and cannot contain above forty people: they are much too high to offend an enemy, and have no ground to defend. Above this are great scars, or mountains, of a hard kind of stone like porphyry, that will yield to no tool: they break it up in small shivers, for building, by the force of a heavy gaveloc and sledge-hammer. I saw several pretty springs running out of little hollows of the rock, especially toward the upper part; and most of the strata thereabouts drip continually: the workmen told me, that those cracks where the springs are go a great length into the mountain; and that the strata all round the hill lie declining with the side of the hill; that some strata are soft and porous, which lets the water strain through them; whilst others by their hardness stop it, and turn it all into the cracks and fissures; that these springs run very sparingly in dry weather: this shows that they are made only of the rain and dews falling upon the hill, and collected into these channels, which being generally perpetual, and in sufficient quantity one time with another, render the springs so. There is a spring on the top of Penigent hill, the highest in these parts. In this country vast stones like the grey weathers in Wiltshire, lie upon the surface, and by the sides of the hills, which are no part of the quarry, being of a different stone. On the other side of the town eastward, and over the river, is Kendal castle; a large stone building on a solitary apex, but not extraordinary high: it is fenced with a wall and ditch: they report that queen Catharine Parr was born here. This town has been built mostly with pent-houses and galleries over them all along the streets, somewhat like Chester. The carts or carriages of this country are small machines, with two wheels each, made of three pieces of timber, fastened to a cross axle-tree, which turns with the wheels: the cart is laid upon these wheels pro tempore, kept from slipping off the axle-tree by two pins underneath: they are drawn by one horse.[1] They say these carriages, of a light burthen and with one horse, answer better in this stony country than heavier, which are shook to pieces presently: hence Nature makes the horses of this country small in bulk. Here is an anchorite’s house with a very fine spring: near was a chapel of St. Mary, Abbot’s hall, and some other ruins of religious places. The church is a handsome and very large structure, consisting of five ailes: a good organ: several ancient chapels in it, with the tombs of the founders; one of Roos. The parishes of this country are generally of great extent, having several chapels of ease. This was, I believe, the county-town before Appleby, as rising immediately after the destruction of the Roman city. In the church is a monument of a judge, who died at the Assizes here in queen Elizabeth’s time.

The city of Concangios is much better situate than Kendal in several respects; because good land for a considerable way quite round it, as far as the valley reaches: the river, which may well be called spumosus, incompasses it like a horse-shoe: it is deeper, broader, and smoother, here than any where else: it is indeed a place incomparably well chosen for a small city: the ground is sufficiently high, even in floods; but floods render it an island, for it is low ground before the entrance, but not marshy. Across the entrance there are plain marks of a ditch north of the house; and Mr. Guy told me there was a wall all along, an apparent rampire on the inside of it; that his father dug up vast quantities of stone there: he showed me a place in the city, where a hypocaust was found, all arched with Roman brick, and paved with square bricks; that they covered it up again without demolishing it. I saw a brass Antoninus, found here; and a stone, somewhat like the capital of a small pillar, hexangular. Beyond the low ground which lies before the entrance of the city, is a Roman tumulus. Upon a slope of high ground, and in a pasture behind it, is another very large hill, partly natural, and partly artificial, by cutting away the roots of it, and rendering it more steep, as it appeared to me: there is an ash-tree planted on it: when it was ploughed, they discovered stones with mortar on them. I conjecture there was a building upon it; probably an outguard, or lodge, for the soldiers that stood upon the watch: for here was placed the numerus vigilum in the Notitia; and this place takes in a larger view than the city, as being higher. The city contains about 14 acres of ground, or more: it consists of two closes, one of twelve acres, another of four; but the fortified part took not in intirely the twelve acres: the ditch goes along the partition-fence visibly enough; the remainder was suburbs to the castle, which was 500 foot one way, 600 another. The inscription I spoke of at the end of the barn has not yet been described. Thus Mr. Gale read it.

Publius Ælius Publii filius Sergio Basso Decurioni legionis vicesimæ valeriæ Victricis vixit annos et privatus libertis et herm miles emeritus legionis sextæ victricis fecerunt. Si quis sepulchro alium mortuum intulerit mulctam ferat fisco Dominorum nostrorum, &c.

A great woollen manufactory at Kendal, especially of such stuffs as are proper for hangings. Winander meer, near here, is ten miles long, remarkable for a fish called char, which they pot, and send all over the kingdom. This country is exceedingly obnoxious to rain, and some of the hill-tops on one side or other are perpetually covered with clouds: I imagine the vast solidity of the stone that composed them attracts the clouds big with water at some considerable distance, and then the winds break and dash them into rain. This is another furtherance of hills being supplied with fountains.

The city of Concangios is placed on the highest plot of the Chersonese: the four acres westward are more meadow-like, but far from low. A great ridge of hills runs north and south-eastward of this place, called Hag-fell, of a fine downy nature, and good riding on the southern point of it. About a mile and half off the city was the castrum exploratorum, or watch-tower: it is a mere tip of very high ground, like a narrow tongue, and very steep, especially side ways: it is called Castle-steed: it is sixty foot broad, 120 long: the sides being thus steep needed no ditch; but on the south end are two ditches, on the north three: I suppose it was walled about: it is of the common cliff of the country; and in one place the ditch has been cut through the rock. At the bottom of this hill is a large spring, which immediately falls into a cavity of the earth again, and so I suppose rises lower in another place. From hence is a fine prospect to the mouths of the rivers Can and Lune, and all over this coast. The Westmorland hills raise themselves into a new and more romantic appearance than before, and the place well answered the purpose of an espial.

About a mile north of Kendal is a cave in the rock near a wood, called Hells-fell Nab, or the Fairy-hole: they talk of organs, pillars, flitches of bacon, and the like matters here, as at Poole’s Hole in Derbyshire.

On the south side of the town of Shap, six miles south of Penrith, we saw the beginning of a great Celtic avenue, on a green common. This is just beyond the horrid and rocky fells, where a good country begins. This avenue is seventy foot broad, composed of very large stones, set at equal intervals: it seems to be closed at this end, which is on an eminence, and near a long flattish barrow, with stone works upon it: hence it proceeds northward to the town, which intercepts the continuation of it, and was the occasion of its ruin; for many of the stones are put under the foundations of houses and walls, being pushed by machines they call a betty, or blown up with gunpowder. Though its journey be northward, yet it makes a very large curve, or arc of a circle, as those at Abury, and passes over a brook too. A spring likewise arises in it, near the Greyhound inn. By the brook is a little round sacellum, composed of twelve stones, but lesser ones, set by one great stone belonging to the side of the avenue: the interval of the stones is thirty-five foot, half the breadth of the avenue: the stones, no doubt, did all stand upright, because three or four still do; but they were not much higher then, than now as fallen, because of their figure, which is thick and short: they are very large, and prodigiously hard, being nothing else but a congeries of crystals of very large sizes, of a flakey nature. Houses and fields lie across the track of this avenue, and some of the houses lie in the inclosure: it ascends the hill, crosses the common road to Penrith, and so goes into the corn-fields on the other side of the way westward, where some stones are left standing; one particularly remarkable, called Guggleby stone. The people say these were set up by enchantment: and the better sort of folks, as absurdly affirm, they are made by art. I doubt not but they are gathered somewhere off the surface, among the fells, and that here was a great temple of the old Britons, such as that at Abury, which it resembles very much, as far as I can judge at present; for the rainy weather, which in this country is almost perpetual, hindered me from making at this time a thorough disquisition into it. The ground it runs over consists of gentle risings and fallings, but in general declines toward the west: it is here, and for a great way further north, east and west, a very fine downy turf, and pleasant hills; or at least they seemed so after the rugged and barren views and roads we had just passed: but the country under this turf is a lime-stone, quite different from the stones of the avenue. In our journey hither the country is far worse than the peaks of Derbyshire, and nothing to entertain the eye but the numerous and rare cataracts; whole rivers, and the whole continuance of them, being nothing else; the water every where running among the rocks with great violence and rapidity: even the springs burst out of the ground, and rise into the air with a surprising push: therefore the Britons erected this laborious work very conveniently, beyond that uncultivated frontier, and in a country where they might range about in their chariots at pleasure. I guess, by the crebrity and number of the stones remaining, there must have been two hundred on a side: near them in several places are remains of circles to be seen, of stones set on end; but there are no quantity of barrows about the place, which I wonder at. Though these stones are not of such a flat form as those at Abury, nor so big as some there; yet they are very large, and as heavy as any of those in the avenues there. The site of the place is pretty much bounded eastward by the hill that way adjacent; but there is a large prospect west ward, and the country descends that way to a great distance. At a place called in the maps Stone-heaps, we saw a cairn or barrow made of stones: all the tops of the fells, I am told, abound with these crystallised stones.

Stukeley Desig.

Hulett Sculp.

This about 3 yards long, 2 broad, having 2 supporters
ds about 40 yᵈˢ. in circumference.

about 3 bow shoots from the upper

The Mount of New Grange in the County of East Meath, no far from Drogheda. There are 4 other Mounts near this, 3 lesser & the 4^th. as big as this.

The Circle is also in the same field.

88·2⁠^d.

87·2⁠^d.

In Drent

near Helmstad

near Bulke in Halsatia

Doctissimo Viro Joħi Keysler Amico plurimum æstimando Tabulam Jure & Lubentissime d. d. W:^m Stukeley

Stukeley delin.

Tom’s Sculp.

Stukeley del.

I. V.^der Gucht Sculp.

These Circles are within a stones cast of each other, about half a mile off King in a field on the right side of the road, as you go to Ballinrope in the County of Mayow.

The 9 maids in the Parish of S.^t Colomb.

At the conflux of the rivers Louther and Eimont there is a remarkable curiosity, that illustrates the method of the religious solemnities of the old Britons, as much as any I have seen. Upon the edge of the Louther, where the bridge now passes it, is a delicate little plain, of an oblong form, bounded on the other side by a natural declivity: this is used to this day for a country rendezvous, either for sports or military exercises, shooting with bows, &c. On this plain stands the antiquity commonly called King Arthur’s Round Table, and supposed to be used for tilts and tournaments: it is a circle inclosed with a ditch, and that with a vallum. At first sight we may see that it was intended for sports, but not on horseback, because much too little: the vallum on the outside lies sloping inward with a very gradual declivity, on purpose for spectators to stand around it; and it would hold at least 10,000 people. The outside of the vallum is pretty steep: it was high originally, as may be seen now in some parts; but it is worn down, as being by the side of the common road; and the inhabitants carry it away to mend the highways withal. There are two entrances into the area, north and south, or nearly so: one end is inclosed into a neighbouring pasture: the area had a circle within, somewhat higher in elevation than the other. The outer verge of the vallum is a circle of 300 foot: the composition of it is intirely coggles and gravel, dug out of the ditch. Upon part of the plain are marks of the tents of the Scots army, that accompanied King Charles II. in his way to Worcester: they encamped here for some time, and drew a small line across part of the southern circle: this was done within memory.

Just 400 foot from the verge of the south entrance is another circle, 300 foot in diameter, made contrarywise to the former: the vallum is small, and the ditch whence it was taken is outermost. Thus these two circles and the interval make 1000 foot in length; and there is just room enough without them, next the river and next the bank, for a circus or foot-race, according to the old manner of the Grecian, which were always celebrated by the sides of rivers.

Centum ego quadrijugos agitabo ad flumina currus, &c. Virg. and probably British chariots had here their courses. On the southern end it is manifest they contrived it just to leave room enough for the turn; and it required good skill to drive a chariot so as not to fall there, or into the river. It must be understood, that the bridge at present, and another of wood formerly a little below it, have impaired the banks by the more southern circle. This is the most delightful place that can be imagined for recreation: the rapid river Louther runs all along the side of it; the Eimot joins it a little way off, in view: beyond is a charming view of a vast wood, and of Brougham castle; beyond that, the ancient Roman city, and the Roman road going along under the high hill whereon is the beacon. But these are things later in time than our antiquity.

Though upon first sight of the place I knew its purport, yet I was more fully convinced thereof when I went to see Mayborough, as called, which is a little higher up the hill, on an eminence higher than any near it, and full west from this place, or circus: it is a vast concavity, of the same diameter as the circles just mentioned, viz. 300 foot: it is made with an artificial vallum of loose stones, without any ditch, carried with great labour from some other place, and here orderly piled up, so as to make a rampart as high and as broad as that at Abury: in some places the turf, with which it was covered originally, is peeled off: it slopes inward with a gentle descent on account of spectators; outwardly it is as steep as the nature of the materials would suffer, and now covered over with great timber-trees: the entrance is wide, and opens full east, and to the circus. Within this fine plain, which is now ploughed up, have been two circles of huge stones; four remaining of the inner circle till a year or two ago, that they were blown to pieces with gunpowder: they were of a hard black kind of stone, like that of the altar at Stonehenge: one now stands, ten foot high, seventeen in circumference, of a good shapely kind; another lies along: this inner circle was fifty foot in diameter. One stone, at least, of the outer circle remains, by the edge of the corn; and some more lie at the entrance within side, others without, and fragments all about. Just by the entrance, along the road runs a spring, full eastward.

This I suppose to be a great British temple, where the country met on solemn days to sacrifice. After the religious duties were over, they went down to the circus to celebrate their games: and I could not but admire the fine genius of these people in chusing places for their sports; for upon the verge of the acclivity, along the circus, an infinite number of people might stand to see the whole without the least inconvenience, besides those in the plain between the two circles; and these two circles admirably well executed the intent of the meta’s, but much better than those in the Roman circus’s. In ploughing at Mayborough they dug up a brass Celt. On the other side of the Eimot, upon a high ground overlooking all, is a very fine round tumulus, of a large size, and set about with a circle of stones: this in all probability was the funeral monument of the king that founded the temple and circus. Somebody has lately been digging away part of the barrow, and carried off some of the stones, and demolished others.

There is another Celtic monument in the fields beyond the Louther, and south-east of Countess pillar, upon a fine dry spot of ground near the moors: this is in sight of the temple. It consists of many burial-places, marked out with stones set at equal distances. One points eastward, and is what I take to be an arch-druid’s; being above 100 foot long, not a raised tumulus, but a pyramidal form designed by two sides of stones like an avenue. A little way above the head of this is another longish burial, and on a sort of barrow: it points differently from the former. Farther on is the arc of a circle, consisting of four large stones equidistant, opening south: I believe this to be part of another: one of the stones is of the same nature as those at Shap. Further on is one side of another long burial, like the first. There are many more such-like hereabouts, but ruinous; for the stones are carried away for building the adjacent moor-houses and walls. In the pasture on the eastern bank of the Louther, in the way to Clifton, are several cairns, or carracks, as the Scotch call them, made of dry stones heaped together; also many other monuments of stones, three, four, five, set upright together. They are generally by the country people said to be done by Michael Scot, a noted conjuror in their opinion, who was a monk of Holm abbey in Cumberland: they have a notion too that one Turquin, a giant, lived at Brougham castle; and there is a tower there, called Pagan tower; and Sir Lancelot de Lake lived at Mayborough, and slew him. Near Clifton is a famous spring, where the people go annually on May-day to drink, by a custom beyond all remembrance: they hold it an earnest of good luck the ensuing year, to be there and drink of the water before sun-rise. This, no doubt, has been continued from the British times, and is a remain of the great quarterly festival of the vernal equinox. So at Sidbury, on Palm Sunday.

Old Penrith is Petrianis, on the river Peterel: it signifies the warth over the river Petria; so that Penrith, its successor, is but a corruption of Petterith.

The Roman city lies on the east side of the Louther, just by Brougham castle, whose walls, and those of the park, are for part built of the stones from the old city, being manifestly of a Roman cut. The trace of the place is very easily discovered, where the ditch went between the Roman road and the river. I saw many fragments of altars and inscriptions at the hall nearer the bridge, all exposed, in the court-yard, to weather, and injuries of every sort. In the wall by the Roman road beyond Brougham castle, and near the countess of Pembroke’s pillar, is a pretty busto, part of a funeral monument; the bulla of the mantle most conspicuous, though much injured. Farther on, in the same dry wall, nearer the corner, is another basso relievo, but so defaced, that I could not make any thing of it. The Roman road coming from Carlisle, very apparent as they tell me, passes above or north of the town of Penrith, under the beacon-hill; then passes the river just under the castle; then went by the south side of the city, where its pavement is now firm and good; then where Countess pillar now stands: here it is visible as far as the horizon in a very strait lane, going full east to Appleby. Vast quantities of Roman stone, taken up in the city, have been burnt into lime. Coins, Mosaic floors, and every sort of antiquity, are daily found: they cannot strike a stroke into the ground but inscriptions, pillars, and some sort or other of ancient remains, appear. The site of the city is an elevated piece of ground by the river side; a woody country about it: a vast hill, or fell, of an immense height, goes all along the partition of this county from Durham, in sight here; and by the side of it, three remarkable lesser hills, or pikes, as they call them deservedly; being extremely sharp and conical, and very regularly so.

On the corner of Clifton house is an inscription with carving on it: it is an admirable fine stone, or rather two joined together in the middle; placed at the very top of a gable end: two winged Victories, with garlands and palm-branches in their hands, stand on their sides.

I saw at Lowther, the seat of lord Lonsdale, an ugly brass figure with wings, and somewhat like a laurel-garland about his head, found in the Picts wall near Drumburg castle.

The square plot of the city is very perfect, on the south side of Brougham castle: it had a broad ditch round it. The castle stands on the north end of it, and was built of its wall; the track of which is visible upon the edge of the vallum. The high ground by Countess pillar, where most of the inscriptions were found, seems to have been the site of the city, and this the castle or fort; the Roman road lying between. A good way farther on the road toward Kirkby, there is a hawthorn-tree with a buck’s horns fastened upon it: this stands by one of great note and antiquity, now decayed, where was a brass plate of

They say the bark of the tree had covered the bottom of the horns for a great many inches.

In the church-yard of Penrith is a monument of a giant, Sir Owen Cæsarius, a knight, I suppose, of their king Arthur; two pyramidal stones with rude carvings and letters on them, seemingly Runic. This church is new built, and fitted up very handsomely. Selden speaks of an image at Lowther. There is a castle at Penrith in the upper part of the town. Over-against Brougham is Isanparles, an odd rock.

The Madan-way goes over Cross-fell very perfect: an inscription on the side of a house built upon it: it goes to Barwic on the Wall. Cross-fell is the highest ground hereabouts; they can see the Irish sea from thence. A fine meadow by the river side over-against the Roman castrum. The stones of the city are of a different sort from those of the country.

Mr. Gale says there is such a work as the round table near his house in Yorkshire, with many barrows near it. Mayborough is finely incircled by the river Eimot, which is very deep. Dr. Hugh Todd, minister of Penrith, has a great collection of antiquities.

Many Roman inscriptions have been found lately at Netherhall, by the sea side near Workington, which are placed on the stable-wall at lord Lonsdale’s there. The fine inscription at the end of Clifton house has been there for 300 years, exposed to the rain and weather; so that the inscription is worn away; only it seems that imper. legat. aug. in Africa, is just visible. Another inscription is on the inside of the barn there. Some Roman carvings on the quarry whence the pillars of Penrith church were taken. I saw a Roman vessel of copper found near Clifton: it is deep, with a handle to it like a skillet, on which is stamped the maker’s name, TALIOF: within this is placed a cullender, and within that another: the use of it, I guess, was to carry lighted charcoal in, at the sacrifices. The spring below Clifton is a pretty grotto, much talked of, where, as I said, the anniversary meeting is on May-day. The great barrow incompassed with stones, by the Eimot side, is called Haransley hill.

Mr. Patten and I went to view that famous monument of antiquity called Long Meg and her Daughters, in the parish of Addingham, between Little Salkeld and Glasenby. It stands upon a barren elevated plain of high ground, under the vast hill called Cross-fell, to the east. This plain declines to the east gently, or rather north-east, for that I find to be the principal line observed by the founders. It is a great Celtic temple, being a circle of 300 foot diameter, consisting of 100 stones: they are of unequal bulk; some are of very large dimensions: many are standing, but more fallen, and several carried away; but lately they have destroyed some by blasting, as they call it, i. e. blowing them in pieces with gunpowder; others they have sawed for mill-stones: but the major part remaining, gives one a just idea of the whole; and it is a most noble work. The stones are not all of the same kind; some made of square crystallisations, of the same sort as those at Shap; and I saw many of that sort of stone scattered about the country; others of the blue, hard, flaky sort, like those of the temple at Mayborough. The intervals are not exactly equal, but judiciously adapted to the bulks of the stones, to preserve as much as possible a regular appearance. This large ring, thus declining north-east, is now parted through by a ditch; so that the larger half lies in an inclosure, the other in a common; and the road lies by the side of it, that goes from Little Salkeld to Glasenby. South-west from it, seventy foot, stands a very great and high stone, called Long Meg, of a reddish girt, seeming to have been taken from the side of some quarry of the country: I think it leans a little north-east: it is about fifteen foot high. In the middle of the circle are two roundish plots of ground, of a different colour from the rest apparently, and more stony and barren; which probably were the immediate places of burning the sacrifices, or the like. Not far hence toward Glasenby is a very fine spring; whence, no doubt, they had the element of water, used at their religious solemnities: and higher up the field is a large spring, intrenched about with a vallum and foss, of a pretty great circumference, but no depth. Full south-west from this work, in the next inclosure and higher ground, is another circle of lesser stones, in number twenty: the circle is fifty foot diameter; and at some distance above it is another stone placed, regarding it, as Meg does the larger circle. In that part of the greater circle next the single stone called Meg, are two stones standing beyond the circle a little, and another fallen; which I believe were a sort of sacellum, perhaps for the pontifex to officiate in: and westward is another stone or two, perhaps of a like work; but the ruinous condition of the work would not admit of any certainty about it.

We continued our journey through this rough country, and passed half round the bottom of the famous Skidhaw, a high mountain named from its fancied likewise to a shoe (yscyd.) Penruddoc, a town near it, with a Welsh name. These desolate and hilly regions were the retiring places of the Britons from the power of the Romans; which perhaps is the reason of the great number of temples scattered throughout the country; for a mile before we came to Keswick, on an eminence in the middle of a great concavity of those rude hills, and not far from the banks of the river Greata, I observed another Celtic work, very intire: it is 100 foot in diameter, and consists of forty stones, some very large. At the east end of it is a grave, made of such other stones, in number about ten: this is placed in the very east point of the circle, and within it: there is not a stone wanting, though some are removed a little out of their first station: they call it the Carsles, and, corruptly I suppose, Castle-rig. There seemed to be another larger circle in the next pasture toward the town.

The ascent to this hill (Skidhaw) is from the east; for the west side of it is exceeding steep, and drawn down into frightful ribs, like the roots of a tree. There is a place on the top called Skidhaw maen; a kind of sea-mark, by what information I could get: it seems to be a kist-vaen. Cnut-berries grow a-top of it, a delicious fruit.

There is no doubt, that when the globe of the earth received its motion round its axis, all the solid parts of metals, minerals and stone, flew to the outward parts at farthest distance from the centre, contrary to the assumption of our theorists, and the laws of Nature; for which reason we find the most hard materials on the highest mountains: these by time, and the heat of the external air, consolidated, and left great cavities lower down, when the matter underneath came closer together, and could not bring down these arch-like bodies: at length, when the parts of the globe became accustomed to this motion, the remainder of its internal matter I will allow to sink according to its specific gravity; and questionless the central constituents are heavier than that between it and the present surface; and probably this is fluid. Supposing then the matter of iron-stone fell to the centre, it formed a great magnet, according to Dr. Halley’s hypothesis, and may have a liberty of turning round itself with a slow motion, the intermediate fluid giving it that liberty; though, as to a subterraneous world, as that famous mathematician would suggest, I cannot believe the least of it: but this internal magnet, being not fastened to the whole earth, will naturally, as he supposes, have a motion of its own, somewhat different from that of the earth, and retain a regular revolution of that motion; which solves the famous variation of the magnetic needle.

Keswick is placed in a narrow bottom, under these vast mountains, which seem to hang over our heads. There is a place called Castle-head, a great rock, which has, no doubt, been a castle, I fancy in British times, and called a caer, whence the name of the town, Caerswic, as Keston in Kent, from the camp there, originally Caerston. Here are variety of mines hereabouts; some of lead, some of copper, and others of black-lead, which is no contemptible manufacture: there are scarce any other black lead mines, but what are here; they use it for glasing pots: it lies pretty much above ground. In our way hither we had sight of that vast receptacle of water called Ulles lake; and, when going hence to Cockermouth, we rode all along the side of a great lake upon the river Derwent. These collections of fluid element are owing to the rocks, which suffer not the water thoroughly to drain out of the valleys. When one stands at the end of these lakes, the prospect: is exceeding delightful; the mountains on each side rising to a great height, one behind another the whole length, and broke off into short ones, like the scenes at a playhouse: nor need a painter go to Italy for variety and grandeur of prospects. Though the sides of these hills are very stony, and even rocks of marble, yet the valleys every where look very green, and produce great crops, in years when they have a reasonable share of dry weather: but that, I believe, is not very frequent; for the hills will scarce suffer any clouds to pass over from any quarter, but dash them in pieces; so that the frequency of springs and cascades, and the rapidity and force of the brooks and rivers, is wonderful.

Stukeley. delin.

Stukeley. delin.

Stukeley delin.

Stukeley delin.

Sturt sc

At this place they manufacture cotton yarn for candlewicks. It owes its name to the river Cocker, here emptying itself into the Derwent. The castle belonging to the dukes of Somerset stands in the angle of union, and very pleasantly: the valley is rich ground: it was a stately building, and strong in the old manner; but now they daily pull it down for the sake of its materials. They report that the earth of the vallum on the outside the walls was fetched from Ireland, whence no venomous creature can pass over it. A fine vault here, which they call the Chapel.

Going toward this Roman station, we passed the river Derwent, and over a moor not far from the sea, where are coal-mines. Elenborough is a little village on the river Elen, the daughter of a great Roman city, which has produced a copious and instructive harvest of antiquities; as may be seen in Mr. Camden, p. 826. I quote Dr. Gibson’s first edition; for his second does disgrace this most excellent author, by mixing the notes with his masterly text. Here that great genius of old Britain, with Sir Robert Cotton, was entertained by the ancestor of the present possessor, Humphrey Senhouse, esq; who inherits a true love for these studies. His seat is on the other side the river: the walls of the house are incrusted over,TAB. LXIII. as we may say, with inscriptions, carvings, and bas reliefs, taken from the ruins of the Roman city. The first cohort of the Dalmatians, the first cohort of the Spaniards, and the first cohort of the Bœtasians, here kept garrison; as appears by the inscriptions.

TAB. LXX. LXXI.That noble altar now at Sir James Lowther’s, at Whitehaven, belongs to this place; the grandest yet seen in Britain: it is five foot and a half high: on the back, VOLANTI VIVAS import a sacred wish for the prosperity of his friend Volantius, hoping to see him again. Mr. Gale has observed several of this sort in Gruter.

In the wall of Mr. Senhouse’s dwelling is a curiosity seldom to be met with; a very large stone, whereon a man on horseback is designed to be carved, but left unfinished: it is a pleasure to see only the sketch of a Roman artist; and we are not to suspect these works here are so barbarous as our authors make them, for want of proper skill in drawing.

TAB. LXXII.There is another relievo of a lady sacrificing, which by the compartment of the inscription at bottom, though worn out, seems to have been fixed upon a temple by the founders. A most stately altar is placed in the middle of the garden, with a sun-dial on the discus. Some are somewhat more securely set up within the porch: many given away; as, one to the bishop of the Isle of Man; another, to Wm. Kirkby esq; at Ashlec in Kirkby, Lancashire: two altars lately found are placed upon a farm-house, which is now commonly known by the name of Volantium, falsely fixed upon this station: this is by the sea-side in Mr. Senhouse’s demesnes. It is much to be lamented that these fine remains should now be exposed to the weather.[2]

The castrum is just 400 foot square, two ditches about it, and three entrances: it had likewise a stone wall on the high vallum. On the north side of this castrum lay the city OLENACVM, of a great extent, as is plain from the ruins of it, but dug up all about. The family of the Senhouses, and the Eaglesfields whose heiress they married, have been continually digging here; and the ruins are still inexhaustible: the dwelling-house and all the out-houses are built from it, as from a quarry: hundreds of cart-loads of hewn stone now lie there.

One may trace many square plots of the houses, and of the streets, paved with broad flag-stones, that are visibly worn with use. All the walls that divide the pastures are made of these squared stones: I saw innumerable of them upon the spot, with mouldings on them of various sorts, gutter-stones, architraves, cornices, &c. The faces of the squared stones are generally not perfectly smoothed, but have the mark of the axe upon them; and I see many such sort of masonry in the old gates of London. Coins innumerable have been found formerly, now but seldom; urns, and other antiquities, which it is endless to particularise.

Mr. Senhouse told me there is a paved military way, besides the streets of the city, going hence northward along the sea-coast; another, to Papcastle by Cockermouth. Most of the inscriptions are found in the city and precincts; bits of altars, and fragments. In the castle are many vaults still left. The altar at Sir James Lowther’s was found in the north-west angle of the castle, on the vallum.

Here is a most magnificent prospect of the Scotch coast of Galway, and of the great sea between the two kingdoms. In the evening, when the sun shines, and it is clear weather, the lights and shadows of those lofty hills are extremely entertaining. The Isle of Man appears perfectly.

The river Elen did not empty itself, formerly, directly into the ocean, as at present, but went northward under the cliff, till it came under the castle: the old channel of it is visible: the sea has eaten away a large quantity of marsh and high ground between it and the castle. To this elbow of land, which made the mouth of the river, is the name OLENACVM owing. They talk likewise of anchors being found thereabouts: many Roman hand-mill stones found at Elenborough. I imagine this river is one of the Alaunas. Toward Cockermouth the western roots of the Cumbrian hills being very steep, exhibit a most curious spectacle; the declining sun shining on them from over the Irish sea; so that we need not travel to the Alps for magnificent views of this nature.

A mile off Cockermouth, on the north side of the river, lies this Roman station. The river water is very clear, according to its name, notwithstanding the floods here, owing to its running through rocky ground. The Roman castrum lies upon the top of the hill, above the village. I soon traced out its whole circumference, though the inhabitants had not the least notion of where it stood, supposing it to be lower down. I saw a bit of the Roman wall, which they wonder at, because it strikes fire when struck upon with a pick-axe, by reason of the hardness of the mortar: it lies by the road-side going to Wigton; and there the ditch is plainly visible, though half filled up with the rubbish of the wall. The whole town, and perhaps Cockermouth castle and town, are built out of it; likewise the walls of all the pastures and corn-fields adjoining. Free-stone cut is very common, which they say must have been fetched a good way off, because there is none such in the neighbourhood; and a great deal of ashler is still left in the ground. The field upon the top of the hill, the highest part of the castrum, is called the Boroughs. A man told me he found a hand mill-stone about the bulk of his hat, which he admired for its prettiness: he found a Roman coin too of Claudius, and others; but they are lost. Several other people told me they found coins upon the side of the hill; and the children pick them up after a shower of rain. Mr. Senhouse showed me a silver Geta, pont. reverse, princeps juventutis, among others found here. The famous font, now at Bridekirk, was taken up at this place, in the pasture south of the south-east angle of the city, by the lane called Moor-went. In the same place lately they found a subterraneous vault, floored with free-stone, of very large dimensions; the top of it made with the same sort of stone, all brought a distance off. The name of Boroughs includes both closes where the old city, or rather castrum, stood; for they find stones and slates with iron pins in them, coins, and all other matters of antiquity, upon the whole spot below the castrum, toward the water side. This was a beautiful and well-chosen place, a south-west side of a hill, a most noble river running under it, and a pretty good country about it, as one may judge by the churches; for that I find generally a good criterion of the goodness of a country, as Mr. Senhouse observed, who accompanied me hither. On the side of the hill are many pretty springs: at one of them we drank a bottle of wine, to the memory of the founders; then poured some of the red juice into the fountain-head, to the Nymph of the place. A person told us he had dug up, in the Boroughs, the foundation of a wall where the stones were laid slanting side by side, and liquid mortar poured upon them, as was often the Roman method; likewise several floors made of cement. The kind of slates dug up here, are brought too a good way off. Mr. Senhouse says he can trace the remains of the Roman road between this place and Elenborough in many places. This certainly was a town thoroughly peopled; and perhaps its name was Derventio, because standing upon this river Derwent. Fitz-house is on the south side of the river. Mr. Gilpin of Whitehaven has seen many Roman coins found at Papcastle, especially of Adrian.

This is a new sea-port town, standing in a little bay, sprung up from its conveniency for the coal-mines hard by. There are many salt-works upon this coast. Rock-samphire grows here. This western country, left beyond the monstrous hills, is sand and clay. Skidhaw is in view from hence, and with the rest deceives one exceedingly in its distance; for one of these hills, which we should be apt to compute a mile off, is seven; the eye judging according to the angle it makes from the horizon in such objects as it has been accustomed to. Here is but a small rivulet, which is a detriment to the haven, for want of scowering. They transport great quantities of coals to Ireland and other places. We walked two miles in these coal-works, the stratum of pure coal being all the way about ten foot thick, declining gradually, about one foot in five, till we got 300 foot below the surface; a rock of stone over head all along. Their method of digging is generally to run the grooves in a strait line, others going out on both sides at right angles; so that square pillars of coal are left to support the incumbent rock: hence some roads are made along the descent, the others parallel to its declivity. There are trappings now and then, but not very frequent, nor great; and those are both along the declivity, and sideways. Their methods of conveying the coal to the shafts where they are drawn up, and of conveying air from one passage to the other, to prevent damps and stagnations, and of drawing up the water from one height to another, are very dextrous, and worth seeing. At last the famous fire-engine discharges the water, which is a notable piece of machinery working itself intirely: it creates a vacuum by first rarifying the air with hot steam, then condenses it suddenly by cold water; whence a piston is drawn up and down alternately, at one end of a beam: this actuates a pump at the other end, which, let down into the works, draws the water out: it makes about 14 strokes in a minute; so that it empties 140 hogsheads in an hour, with moderate working. With this quantity of declivity it goes toward the sea, and below its level at present; and so, no doubt, proceeds under the sea as far as the outward shell of the globe reaches. From this it is most indisputable, that the convex thereof is formed into a spiral figure of layers of different materials; and it must be owing to the first rotation of the earth upon its own axis.

Here is likewise a great copperas work, which is effected by laying a great quantity of sulphurous and ferruginous earth into a great yard, walled about. This stuff is partly got out of the coal-mines, and out of the adjacent hills; in long tract of time the rains falling here, and passing through this earth, drain into a receptacle; into that they put all the old iron they can get, which it eats up presently: this is boiled to a proper degree of evaporation, then is let into leaden cisterns, where it crystallises against the sides of the vessels in pure copperas: it shoots into figures of regular surfaces, some triangular, others hexangular, &c.

Moresby, a mile north of Whitehaven. Here is a Roman castrum, notorious enough, at some distance, by its elevation above the plain of the field it stands in. This is one of the castles built at convenient intervals along this coast, to guard against the depredations of the Scots by sea: it lies upon a piece of high ground in a valley, bounded by higher all around, except seaward. Parton haven, where they are now making a new pier, is on one side; and a large creek, or little bay, on the other. The wall that stood on the edge of the vallum was just 400 foot square, as that at Elenborough. There is a great dry wall of stones now stands in its place, the stones taken originally from it: they are all squared: the stones of all the pastures, fences, and houses round about, and the stones of Mr. Brome’s house, and the churches, are most evidently taken thence; being of the Roman cut, as the inhabitants take notice, and wonder at it: they own the stone is of a different grit from that of the place.

The site of the Roman castle has been ploughed up. Many coins and urns found about the place; stones in great quantities still within the place: I saw one squarish, of a very large bulk. A reddish sort of slate to cover houses is dug here; they do not know of any such nearer than Scotland: such was the indefatigable labour of the Romans. There is no ditch about this castle; but the vallum is pretty high quite round. The church stands on the east side of it: in the church-yard is an ash-tree, that bends eastward fifty foot from the stem, by the force of the westerly winds continually pressing on it.

The new front of the hall is of an excellent model; I doubt not but it is from some of the admirable Inigo Jones’s designs: the inside is of the same relish. The Isle of Man is very clearly discerned from this place; and the Scotch coast quite to the mull of Galway: it is about thirty miles off.

In some pastures a little east of the place I saw a flat stone set upright by the road-side, and converted into a stile: it was a monument of some young Roman, but pretty much worn: he is robed with a toga, and holds a scroll in his right hand, to denote his being a scholar, perhaps a pleader, a disciple of the famous Papinian. I could not see to the bottom of it, where probably is an inscription. The man that rents the ground says it was found in the ditch, under the hedge, a little lower down.

At the next stile of the same pasture is another monumental stone of an old man; for such seems to be the head cut in the tympanum above. The inscription upon it is scarce legible: it was poorly cut at first, and has been thus long exposed with the face upwards; and because it is somewhat broader than the wall, and was apt to fall down, the man knocked off all one side of it: he has been courted with money and fair words to part with it, but in vain. Thus, as well as I can judge, the inscription should be read:

Dis Manibus sacrum Mertio Maximo, militum phractariorum equestori, stipendiorum decem, vixit triginta quinque annos.

There are evident signs of a Roman road from Morbium to Papcastle all the way, especially over the moor. The soil all along to the west of the Cumbrian hills, between them and the sea, is sandy, with rock underneath, sometimes lime-stone, sometimes of the red stone. Morbium, in the Notitia, is said to be the station of the numerus cataphractariorum; and the inscription above proves it.

There were six Roman castles against this western shore in Cumberland; a cohort in each took up half a legion to garrison: they are ten miles distant from each other; Mawborough, ten miles from Boulness; Elenborough; Morbium; another at Egremont; Maglove, Ravenglass. I suppose they were made by Stilico, who is celebrated for it in Claudian.

He was general to Theodosius.

Now called Old Carlisle; a mile off Wigton, upon an eminence: the fairest show of foundations I ever yet saw: one might almost draw an intire plan of it, and of every dwelling. The castrum was double-ditched, 500 foot from south-east to north-west, 400 the other way: the wall has been dug up to the foundations; but the hollow where it stood on the edge of the rampart appears quite round, and the track of all the streets and buildings obvious. A street of forty foot wide quite round the inside of the wall. From the north-east entrance two Roman roads depart; one full north, as far as we could see, paved with coggles; on each side of it are the square plots of houses: the other road marches north-east, paved in like manner; it passes over two great moors, and there it is very apparent: we travelled along it to Carlisle. I saw a group of barrows near it. Many antiquities have been found at Old Carlisle, and inscriptions; one on the side of a house a mile off Wigton, as Mr. Gilpin told me: others are at Ilkirk.

There are several springs all round the bottom of the hill, and quarries; and an extensive prospect, especially toward the sea-shore. Some coal-works in our journey from Cockermouth hither. I doubt not but the Romans had knowledge of this subterraneous treasure, though they neglected it, because there was wood enough in their time: but Solinus mentions it among the wonders of Britain, that they burnt globos saxeos into ashes. I saw a silver Antoninus Pius found here; reverse, rector orbis.

At the gates are guard-houses of stone, built by Cromwell from the demolished cathedral; and in the middle of the market-place, a fort with four bastions, roofed like a house, with holes for the gunners to shoot out at with small arms. At the south-east end of the city is a citadel built by Henry VIII. as is plain from its conformity to Deal, Walmer, &c. In levelling the ground of the fish-market they found many coins, which we saw in Mr. Goodman’s hands: he has an altar found in the river Irthing, by the Picts wall: also in Mr. Stanwix’s summer-house wall is an inscription of the sixth legion, and a pretty altar, but the inscription worn out. Fragments of Roman squared stones appear in every quarter of the city, and several square wells in the streets, of Roman workmanship. A great quantity of Roman coin dug up under St. Cuthbert’s church. Probably the city stood chiefly on that spot where the castle now is, as the highest ground, but did not reach so far eastward as the present city. One may walk about the walls of this city, as at Chester: there was a double ditch round it.

There are many hollowed stones found hereabouts, much like the marble mortars of apothecaries, with a notch in them. I take them to be the hand-mills of the Roman soldiers, wherein they ground their corn with a stone, and sometimes perhaps became their urns; making their chief instrument in sustentation of life, their inseparable companion in death.

This is a very pleasant and fertile country, rendered more sightly to us by passing so long through the mountainous stoney tracts of Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland. About this country we observe many mud-wall houses, thatched with flat sods or hassocks shaved off the moors; which I suppose the old British custom continued. Here too they use the little carts, as about Kendal.

We saw, in Mr. Gilpin’s hands, a silver Otho, found here; reverse, SECVRITAS R. P. also a middle brass of C. Marius; reverse, VICTORIA CIMBRICA: together with many more, which his father collected. In the cathedral are many remains of the tombs of bishops, I suppose, between the pillars of the choir; every one of which was a little chapel, but now pulled in pieces. A large brass of bishop Bell is left in the choir. The bottom of the steeple, and the west end of what remains of the structure, is of William Rufus’s time: the choir is later.

The road to Bramton is manifestly Roman, by reason of its straightness; and in two places, as I walked up the first hill, I saw the original, made of a bed of stone: it goes precisely south-east; and looking towards Carlisle, I saw it passed through the citadel, and along a narrow street; so through the cathedral to the castle-gate; all in a strait line. To the castle-gate the road over the river Eden came: that from the wall on the west came to the same point; into which falls that from castrum exploratorum.

The military virtue of the Romans outlived the spirit of their learning, or excelled it, seeing there is no author that deservedly celebrates this stupendous work of theirs in Britain: they just mention it: no coins struck upon it. I am not afraid to set it in competition with the wall of China, which necessarily occurs to our thoughts upon this occasion: that we readily acknowledge to be a structure of greater bulk and length, which we esteem the least part of the wonder in ours: the Romans intended no more, by their walls around their forts and castles than to prevent a sudden surprise: their strength lay in a living arm and head: in the open field they never refused fighting, without much regard to opposite numbers; the additional security of a little wall was all they asked, against emergencies.

Therefore the beauty and the contrivance of this wall consisted mostly in the admirable disposition of the garrisons upon it, at such proper stations, distance, strength and method, that even in times of profound peace, as well as war, a few hands were sufficient to defend it against a most bold and daring people, redundant in numbers, strong and hardy in body, fierce in manners, as were the old North Britons, who refused subjection and a polite life.

The Romans, tired out with the untractable disposition of these people, whose country they judged not worth while wholly to conquer, resolved to quit their strengths northward, and content themselves with the desirable part of Britain, and, by one of the greatest works they ever did, seclude the Caledonians, and immortalise their own name by an inexhaustible fund of monuments, for posterity to admire. These people, who had the true spirit of military discipline, did not lie idle under arms, but were ever at work, even whilst they lay pro castris; making and repairing public roads; setting up milliary pillars; building and repairing castles, cities, temples, and palaces; erecting altars, inscriptions; striking medals, and the like works, which we here find in such surprising quantities.

If we consider the great numbers of their works now to be seen, more that have been lost and destroyed, or put into new buildings of our own, most that are still left for future times to rake out of their vestiges, we may entertain a true notion of their genius, which subdued the fiercest and most populous nations in the world. Worthily may we propose them for examples of virtue and public spirit. This is no little use and advantage of disquisitions of this sort.

Alliances, treaties, and negotiations, are of small value to a nation always in arms, and ready to meet an injurious enemy; who strengthen, fortify, and enrich themselves at home, protect the people, and make the expences of government sit easy upon them; encourage industry, frugality, temperance, virtue; a few plain easy laws; administer justice with expedition, and without expence; but especially encourage a due sense of religion and morality: and how much easier and more effectually that is to be done now, than possibly could be done by the Romans, will appear notorious, when we consider, that under the Christian dispensation we make a much stronger impression on the hearts and minds of people, than before: the full certainty, which all reasonable consciences must now have, of a future retribution and account to be made before an omniscient judge, lays an infinitely greater restraint on our actions, than possibly can be had from the terror of rods and axes.

The Roman wall is called by the people Pights wall, with a guttural pronunciation, which we of the south cannot imitate; and which the Romans called Picti; but not from any fancied painting of their bodies, though it gave a handle to it.

At Stanwick, which hence has its name, just over-against Carlisle beyond the river, I saw the ditch very plain: the blacksmith there, told me he had taken up many of the stones of the foundation of the wall: it passes the river over-against Carlisle castle. At Stanwick was an arched gate through the wall: Mr. Goodman showed us a cornelian intaglia found there, of Jupiter sitting. I followed the wall to Taraby, where, a little beyond, it makes an angle, going more south-east; so to Draw-dikes, which was a fort, about 100 foot square: it is on the edge of the meadows, and moist in situation. Here I found an inscription upon the house-wall.

In building the wall, I observed evidently, the intent of the projectors was to conduct it, all along, upon the northern edge of the high ground, as near as might be. All about Carlisle, this most noble monument of Roman power and policy is pulled up; first, perhaps, by William Rufus, when he built the castle; then for the cathedral: and I suppose all the church walls of the city, and houses of it, and the villages near it, are of the pillage: hence most of the churches along the wall are set upon it, for the convenience of having stone near at hand, ready cut. The farmers and inhabitants are daily taking away the small remains.

The track of the ditch on the north side of the wall is visible enough all the way, though sometimes corn grows in it. The line where the wall stood, is generally a foot-path. The valley between the end of the wall at Stanwick, and the castle of Carlisle, is not above 300 yards broad, and is guarded too by the stream of the river Cauda. Westward, on the south side of the river Eden, it went toward Drumburgh, and ended at Boulness. Why the Romans carried it so far, on the south side the bay, was because of its being a flat shore, where an enemy might land in boats. It goes up the hill at Newton, from Carlisle; and so marches in a strait line up the next hill, to Beaumont, one of the old forts. All this way it is turned into a street: the ridge of the wall is the foundation of it, as a pavement; the ditch pretty much filled up by rubbish. Mr. Goodman says, he remembers two forts near Carlisle, now demolished, and ploughed over; one on the north side the river; the other on the south. I cannot suppose the stone work of the wall went across the meadow; rather a wood work with towers, which made up the communication between the two ends of the wall, over the river.

The fort on the north side of the river was on the high plat of ground, between the road up to Stanwick, and the wall. At the place where the ditch ends over the river, has been some little fortification work; and thereabouts is a pretty little spring, faced with stone, and having a stone bason. Hitherto the wall was carried; because directly opposite to the union of the Cauda and Eden rivers, running close under the bank; and directly opposite to the western steep of Carlisle castle, which was the Roman castrum, but somewhat larger than this castle of William Rufus: perhaps it took in most of the present city. In a tower of the walls of Carlisle castle, on the outside, between it and the Irish gate, I saw a Roman carving of a boar, which was the cognisance of the legion here in garrison, and that built it.

We visited Scaleby castle, Mr. Gilpin’s seat, about half a mile from the wall, and built of its stones. This was a strong place with a circular mote, well beset with wood, which is not very common hereabouts. In the garden we copied many Roman altars: they showed us two Roman shoes, found in the bog hereabouts. The church too of this place was built out of the wall. Mr. Gilpin says, in taking up the foundation of the wall at a boggy place, they found a frame of oak timber underneath, very firm.

From hence, over a most dismal boggy moor, an uncultivated desert, we travelled to Netherby. We passed by a Roman fort upon the river Leven, where antiquities have been found. They tell us, that, for sixty miles further up northward, there is scarce a house or tree to be seen, all the way. This was the march, or bound, between the two kingdoms. The land might be drained and cultivated, and how much a greater argument of national prudence would it be to have it done, by those we transport to America!

The foundations of the Roman castrum at Netherby appear round the house, or present castle: it stood on an eminence near the river. Many antiquities are here dug up every day. The foundations of houses, and the streets, are visible. They pretend, most of the space between the vallum and ditch is vaulted. A little lower down has been some monumental edifice, or burial-place, where they find many urns and sepulchral antiquities.

In the garden here, are some altars; and a carving of a female head, in a lion’s skin; I suppose, Omphale; and an admirable carving of a Genius sacrificing. We saw a gold Nero found here: a cornelian with a woman’s head, flowing hair. This valley by the river side is very good land, with some shadow of Nature’s beautiful face left; but every where else about us, is the most melancholy dreary view I ever beheld, and as the back-door of creation; here and there a castellate house by the river, whither at night the cattle are all driven for security from the borderers: as for the houses of the cottagers, they are mean beyond imagination; made of mud, and thatched with turf, without windows, only one story; the people almost naked.

We returned through Longton, a market-town, whose streets are wholly composed of such kind of structure: the piles of turf for firing are generally as large and as handsome as the houses.

After this excursion northward, we set out from Carlisle eastward, withinside of the Roman vallum. Warwick, thought a Roman station, upon the river Eden, pleasantly seated in a little woody valley. We left the Roman road going strait from the citadel of Carlisle to Petrianis. To the right a little is Corby castle, where are many monuments of antiquity preserved; as likewise at Caercaroc near it.

Upon the river Gelt, a little before we came to Bramton, we went up the river to see a Roman inscription, cut upon the natural rock; a most odd and melancholy place: the river runs through a canal of rock all the way. Upon the great ridge of fells coming hither from Cross fell by Penrith, are many circles of stones, and circular banks of earth, the temples of the Druids of the patriarchal mode. There are likewise square works set round with stones, which were their places of judicature.

Beyond Bramton, just over the town, is a keep ditched about, called the Mount, on the top of a hill. Hence to Thirlwal castle we rode upon the foundation of the wall, the river Irthing accompanying us. We visited Knaworth castle. Near here is a great house of the Howard family, built of stone, and castellated: among many family pictures, the great earl of Arundel’s, the reviver of learned curiosity among us; a library once well stored with books and manuscripts: here is the famous Glassonbury-abbey book, or rather screen, for it is big enough; an account of the saints buried in that place. In the garden are many altars and inscriptions: I copied all those tolerably fair: with much regret I saw these noble monuments quite neglected and exposed; some cut in half to make gate-posts. A fine park here, and much old timber. The country hereabouts good land and pleasant. Above the house upon a hill, a circular work double trenched; the outer ditch broadest.

About Thirlwall we rode along the side of the wall: here was a gate through the wall, for the great Roman road called Madan-way. The name Thirlwal retains a memory of the gate here; foramen: we use it now to drill, and nostrill. All the fences of the inclosures, the houses, church, and Thirlwal castle, built out of the ravage of the wall. At the castle was a head of Roman carved work, which they have put into the blind wall of a little ale-house.

A little upon the south side of the wall was a great Roman city and castle. We traversed the stately ruins: it stood on a piece of high ground, about 400 foot square; had a wall and ditch; vestiges of houses and buildings all over, within and without. We observed the Madan-way coming over the fells from the south, where it passes by a work, or labyrinth, called Julian’s bower. We saw too the Roman road passing eastward along the wall. The country hereabouts is a wild moory bog; and the wall itself climbs all along a crag, and is set upon the southern edge of it; the steepness of the cliff northward performing the part of a foss. Near Haltwistle is Baliol castle, corruptly Belister castle, said to be founded by a king of Scotland.

I suppose this wall, built by Severus, is generally set upon the same track as Hadrian’s wall or vallum of earth was; for, no doubt, they then chose the most proper ground: but there is a vallum and ditch all the way accompanying the wall, and on the south side of it; and likewise studiously chusing the southern declivity of rising ground. I observe too the vallum is always to the north. It is surprising, that people should fancy this to be Hadrian’s vallum: it might possibly be Hadrian’s work, but must be called the line of contravallation; for, in my judgement, the true intent both of Hadrian’s vallum and Severus’s wall was, in effect, to make a camp extending across the kingdom; consequently was fortified both ways, north and south: at present the wall was the north side of it; that called Hadrian’s work, the south side of it: hence we may well suppose all the ground of this long camp, comprehended between the wall and the southern rampire, was the property of the soldiery that guarded the wall.

I remarked, that where the wall passes over a little rivulet, the foundation of it is laid with broad, flat stones, square, having intervals between, sufficiently large for the passage of the water.

At Haltwistle I got an altar of, DEO SOLI INVICTO. We took the wall again at Chester on the Wall, about two miles east from Caer voran, Wall town, lying between the Roman way paved with broad stones, which led us over the low boggy ground up to the castle. It is a square of 400 foot close to the wall, which makes one side of it; 350 foot less than those on the east and west. Great marks of buildings all over it, and even side-walls of houses left. At the south entrance were two round towers within side, and the cheeks of the gates. Last year one of the iron hinges taken away. All around this castle were houses built. An altar lies in the fields a little way off, but quite obliterated.

The Picts wall continues still on the southern verge of the cliff. Eastward hence we saw, here and there, the vestiges of the square towers, built on the inside of the Wall, and close to it: that called Hadrian’s ditch runs still on the southern verge of the hill, with a large vallum on the north.

We came again upon the Roman road, which goes on the inside of the wall, but not near it, chusing the best ground and shortest cut all the way through this boggy waste country. Upon it is the compass of an inn, or little station for lodging of travellers or soldiers. This road continues very strait and bold to Little Chester, the next station, on a brook, and somewhat better land. A mile before we came to it, on a hill stands a great stone, and a little one, called the Mare and Foal. A little west of that, over-against Chester, is a barrow which Mr. Warburton dug through, and found bits of urns, ashes, and other like marks of its being British. A little farther westward is a large group of British barrows.

Before we come to Little Chester is a most noble column, or milestone, set upon the road: it is of a large bulk and height, with an inscription, but only not quite defaced. Mr. Gale thought he could read TVNG. upon it: it is the finest stone of this sort I have seen, and would have informed us who made the road.

TAB. LXXV.We saw the castrum here, of a square figure, hanging on a precipice over a little river on the south side of the Roman road, and at some distance from the Wall: it had been walled about, as others: great vestigia of buildings, altars, carved stones and antiquities innumerable, have been found here, but now dispersed and gone. We saw the mouths of vaults with great stones lying over them. The fences of the pastures are made of the stones of the castle-wall. The man who lives here showed us a few fragments of Roman work; a pine-apple, which had been a pinacle on the top of a circular tholus; a piece of an inscription within a civic garland, finely cut; a brick, with LEG. VI. V. He has found many coins; but his children threw them away.

In a corner of a field below, by the side of the brook, and as the military way turns, up the hill, is another such milliary stone, but no inscription legible.

The moory country hereabouts has coal under it. Upon the tops of the hills are several cairns, or sepulchral heaps of stones, made by the old Britons.

A little eastward of Great Chester, where the ditch ends, at the bottom of a cliff, we saw the foundation of the Wall, which the country people are digging up for building: we measured the true breadth of it, just seven Roman feet.

TAB. LXXVI.The next station we visited, about two miles from the former, and by the Wall, is deservedly called Housesteeds, from the vestigia of the houses therein, which are as easy to be seen and distinguished as if ruined but yesterday. Approaching the farmer’s house there, I saw a mill or two, i. e. the recipient stones of the hand-mills which the Roman soldiers used to grind their corn with; likewise some tops of altars: over the door of the house, a large carved stone, but defaced. Going a little further, in a corner of a dry wall is a large stone that has been curiously cut, but now broken and much injured: three figures in it, in high relievo; two with sacrificing cups in their hands: I believe it has belonged to some temple, and means the Genii of three cities: it is in my learned friend Mr. Horsley’s 20th table, but poorly represented: they seem to stand before steps. Near it, in the wall, is the bottom part of a very large altar, or pedestal of a pillar, a yard square: near that a long carved stone, somewhat like the shaft of our later crosses.

Stukeley delin.

Stukeley delin.

Above the house, upon the Picts wall is an altar; the legend gone. As for fragments of pillars, or rollers, as they call them, they lie scattered all over the place. A large part of a Doric capital lies by the door, consisting of two thori, or swelled mouldings in architectonic language.

But when we were led lower down into the meadow, we were surprised with the august scene of Romano-British antiquities, in the most neglected condition: a dozen most beautiful and large altars; as many fine basso relievo’s, nearly as big as the life, all tumbled in a wet meadow by a wall side, or one on the top of another, to make up the wall of the close: the basso relievo’s, some with their heads down the hill; particularly an admirable image of Victory, both arms knocked off: one large soldier, a sepulchral stone, with his short sword hanging at his right side, the man told us, was condemned to make a pig-trough on; but some gentlemen, full timely, with a small sum, for the present reprieved him: many soldiers with heads broke off; mutilated by the middle: three ladies sitting close together, with globes in their hands; their heads all gone.

Mr. Gale and I laboured hard at the inscriptions, and made out what we could of them under all disadvantages. Along the same wall, as we walked on further, we found more altars and carved stones of various sorts: but at length the farmer carried us up to a knoll in the middle of the meadow called Chapel-steed, where undoubtedly was the Roman temple: there we saw three or four most beautiful altars; and a little further, under another wall, a pretty sepulchral carving of an old soldier’s upper part in a niche.

With great regret we left the place, deserving to be accounted the Tadmor of Britain. The inscriptions being mostly of the captains of the first cohort of the Tungrians, shows they were chiefly stationed here; and then they had piety enough generally to erect such an altar, when they took possession of their post.

We passed through Newborough. Just before the church, on the middle of the street, stands an altar; but the legend vanished. I am informed, that where the Roman wall passes the north Tyne, it is by a wonderful bridge of great art, made with very large stones linked together with iron cramps, fastened with molten lead.

We do not wonder at the great quantity of antiquities here to be seen, when all the workmen of the Romans were generally got into Britain: as is evident from the Panegyrist to Maximian, sub finem.

Devotissima civitas Heduorum ex hac Britannicæ facultate victoriæ plurimos quibus illæ provinciæ redundabant, accepit artifices, et nunc extructione veterum domorum, et refectione operum publicorum et templorum instauratione resurgit.

Two remarks are naturally inferred from this testimony. 1. How fond the Romans were of this island; whence the cities, castles, roads, temples, altars, sculptures, and in general the whole face of the country here, vastly exceeded that of the continent. 2. When I returned home from this journey, and compared my drawings of the antiquities here exhibited, taken from the things themselves, with those that have been published before or since, by Mr. Alexander Gordon, or Mr. Horsley; it grieved me that, for want of a tolerable skill in design, they have given us such poor and wretched pictures of these elegant antiquities; so that the reader may not wonder when he views them both together: and indeed it gives foreigners a mean idea of the Roman works in our island; but very injuriously. I have therefore caused a good many of these to be engraven, to show the just difference.

At Chesters an admirably carved stone was dug up lately, very large: the tenant of the farm caused it to be planed and turned into a grave-stone for himself; and it is now laid over him at the parish church.

Hexham has a fine appearance every way; stands on a hill in a pleasant woody vale by the river Tyne; once a bishop’s see: the church dedicate to St. Andrew by the great Wilfred, who was the occasion of bringing my native country of Mercia to embrace christianity: he founded the priory of St. Leonard’s, between Stamford and Uffington, the first of the kingdom of Mercia: part of the church of his building remains, though turned into a barn: he built St. Peter’s church in Stamford, the first church there.

By Mr. Gale’s persuasion I wrote the whole primordia of Stamford, which I have by me. At Tickencote, hard by, is the most venerable church antiquity extant, the intire oratory of prince Peada, who founded Peterborough abbey. But return we to Hexam.

The cathedral is a large, lofty structure; but the body or west end, and the two towers, are intirely demolished: it was collegiate: a great building, called the College. Between it and the church are cloisters, now a garden. In the choir two knightly monuments of stone cross-legged; by the arms on their shields, Vernon and Umfrevile; they either went a warfare into the Holy Land, or vowed it: a tomb of one of the Northumbrian kings: two oratories over sepultures unknown: a tomb of a woman with a veil over her eyes.

Here has been much old-fashioned painting, upon wainscot and stucco, of bishops, saints, kings and queens; but, to the loss of history, defaced. This town was undoubtedly Roman. We judged the castrum was where the castellated building now stands, east of the market-place; which is the brow of a hill, and has a good prospect. The market-place, which is a square, lies between this and the cathedral.

On the site of the cathedral once stood a Roman temple. Digging for a foundation of a buttress to be built on the west side of the steeple, they opened a vault, which descends under the church to a subterraneous oratory, like that under the cupola of St. Peter’s at Rome, called limina apostolorum. Here I suppose were kept the reliques of saints. This place is built out of the ruins of the temple. Over the inward entrance to the vault is laid flat a fine Roman inscription; the report of which led us down thither, though the passage to it was as bad as that of Poole’s hole, Derbyshire. We found it a noble large stone of the emperors Pertinax and Aurelius: we could not transcribe the whole, because part of it is still within the wall. Over the next door lower down, a large stone is set perpendicular, and half of it cut away, in nature of an arch: the mouldings likewise chopped off; the whole so defaced, that nothing to any purpose could be made out of it, all the words being imperfect. Upon the walls of the crypt we saw many Roman fragments of mouldings, and carved work, with bits of fluted and cabled pilasters.

In searching about the oratory we found a very fine altar almost intire, laid sideways into the very foundation. We dug away the earth and bones underneath, and discovered thereby a new Legatus Augusti Q. Calpurnius Concessinius; and a new troop of horse in Britain, of which he was the captain, the equites Cæsareani Corionototarum.

The ground-plot of this town is much like that of Caster in Lincolnshire; four streets going diagonally from the angles of the market-place. Some silver and other Roman coins were found not long since near the church. This church is a very venerable and noble Saxon structure, and may serve for a specimen of the manner of raising those fabrics at that time of day. The workmen were but lately then brought from Rome, by the great Benedict bishop of Weremouth, who may truly be called the Arundel of that time: he was a nobleman of Northumberland, minister to king Oswy: he travelled to Rome twice, some say five times; and brought home a fine collection of books, of which the venerable Bede made so good use: he also brought hither architects and artificers in building, carving, painting on glass, and the like; so injurious are the notions of some modern antiquaries, who think we had no stone buildings before the Norman kings.

Our Wilfred was likewise a great genius: he travelled first to Rome in Benedict’s retinue: he was a great promoter of building cathedrals and religious houses: besides this of Hexam, he rebuilt that of York, before raised by Paulinus: he built a cathedral in the old Roman city of Cambodunum, Almondbury, in Yorkshire: he built Rippon cathedral: he had a great hand in founding the cathedrals of Peterborough, Ely, Litchfield, Leicester, and Chichester. He died in a good old age, 12 Oct. anno Dom. 709, in his little monastery at Oundle, Northamptonshire: the room still remains, and the church in ruins, but later than his time.

The Corionototarum, in the inscription, is probably the Coriolopocarium in anonymus Ravennas; as Mr. Gale conjectures: and I add, probably it was the neighbouring Corbridge.

The Roman castle was situate near the present Corbridge westward, and on the northern banks of the river: it is called Corchester. They tell us with some sort of wonder, that it is the richest and best hereabouts for ploughing: they discern not that it is owing to the animal salts left in a place that had been long inhabited. Corbridge is built out of its ruins, which are scattered about there in every house. Before the doors we saw many mills, pieces of shafts of pillars, capitals, bases, many pieces of basso relievo, and carvings: a fine large picture of Victory, holding a great parma, which belonged to the horse: two carvings of lions tearing bulls; their heads knocked off: several bits of inscriptions. The foot of the cross in the market-place is an intire Roman altar, of a large size; the inscription worn out: on one side, the head of a goat; a pitcher on the other. In the outer wall of the chancel is a fragment of the fourth cohort of the second legion. In the church-yard is the remarkable altar, in Greek character, to the Tyrian Hercules: another imperfect one set up for a grave-stone.

In Mr. Tod’s house a fragment of a most noble inscription of the emperor M. Aurelius, cut in very large and handsome letters: the date of the tribunicia potestas lost. I have endeavoured to do justice to these elegant sculptures; whereas they are generally by others so very ill done, as to be disgraceful both to Romans, and to Britons, and to antiquity in general.

Over the door of a house, is a poor carving of a Northumbrian king, with a sceptre in his hand, of the same style as their coins. There is a fine bridge here over the river. From hence we travelled all along upon the Roman road, on the northern banks of the Tyne, to Newcastle. We saw Prudhoe castle on the other side of the river, standing on an eminence; and a green mount, keep or tumulus, by the church of Ryton. In the choir upon the ground lies the sepulchral monument of the founder, probably; a lion at his feet; in his hands a square piece like a book, with an eagle upon it.

At Newburn, as we passed, I saw a stone over a stable-door, next to the sign of the boat; a tablet of the Roman fashion, ansated, cut in, but the inscription worn out, as being exposed to the weather over the river side.

The Roman wall leaves the common road about a mile east of Newburn, and passes northward to recover the northern edge of the high ground; the counter-guard ditch, called Hadrian’s, accompanying it pari passu. I saw some more carved stones at Newburn, not worth reciting.

We leave Benwell on our right hand, a Roman station. The road two or three miles west of Newcastle is very broad and strait, and enters the west gate directly.

At East Denton, three miles west of Newcastle, is an inscription, in a stable-wall, of the eighth cohort of the second legion.

This is a very large and populous town. The Picts wall ran along by the north side of the road from Corbridge hither, upon a northern declivity all the way, and in a strait line, on the north side of Newcastle. The present castle was built where the Roman castrum was, and the Roman bridge: that and the walls of the town, the churches, and oldest houses, are raised from the plunder of the Roman wall, which ought to have been preserved as the noblest monument in Europe: it seems to have gone across the present town, from the west gate to Pandon gate; and lately, about the meeting-house, they dug up foundations of it: near Pandon gate was found a seal-ring, now in Mr. Warburton’s possession.

One of the church steeples in this town is of a very ingenious model, the original of one near London bridge. The bridge here is very long, has houses on it: the arches and piers are rather larger than those of London bridge. There is a ground-plot of this town lately made by an artist. In some parts of this country, the ordinary people make a good sort of ale called hather, that is, ling ale, by boiling the tops of the Hather plant to a wort: then I suppose they put wormwood to it, and ferment it.

The coal in this country, and which is universally diffused through it, dips many ways, as the falls of valleys, or ducts of rivers, occasionally divert its primary bent; but the main dip of it is to the south-east. Sometimes here are fissures, or interruptions of some considerable quantity, being coaled strata, stone, and other materials jumbled together: this proves that there has been such a partial disruption of the strata of the earth, as we all along suppose was effected by the Deluge; but not such a hotch-potch, or total mixture and confusion, as others would pretend. It is objected against our scheme, that the fishes in this deluge would be destroyed, and so the renewal of them prevented; for, whether the water of the flood was salt or fresh, or compound, yet this consequence must follow: and indeed I allow it; but I suppose the eggs of these fishes renewed the species, which, like the seeds of plants, would in an immense quantity escape the storm, and provide for the succeeding world. Immense are the quantities of coals transported from this focus of the kingdom; and the trade thereof is a perpetual source of seamen for our navy. They speak very broad; so that, as one walks the streets, one can scarce understand the common people, but are apt to fancy one’s self in a foreign country. The perpetual clouds of smoke hovering in the air makes every thing look black, as at London; and the falling of it down must needs inrich all the ground round about.

It is an old proverb in this country, “As old as Pandon gate;” which shows that there were formerly some ancient remains thereabouts; and I believe the Picts wall went from thence, or rather somewhat above it, i. e. north of it, directly across the town, to West gate; though now the town is enlarged beyond it: nor was the old city, which stood within the Wall, so broad to the east and west, as the present town, but only filled up one of the eminences on which it now stands, having deep valleys with brooks running through them on the sides. Again, it may be inferred, there was a city or castrum at Newcastle, because the Wall on both sides runs in toward a point somewhat this way; otherwise they ought to have carried it on by a straiter line north of the town, and above it at some distance, and where it would better the northern side of a declivity than at present; which was not so very necessary when there was a city or castle here, beside Gabrocentum on the other side of the water. Further, the ferry over the river here would naturally erect a city for travellers northward.

Thus I conceive the intention and management of this famous work, the Roman wall. It reaches 90 Roman miles: this is distributed into nine parts by one of the largest castles, or cities: that interval has six lesser castles. The names of the larger, till I am better informed, are thus: 1. Blatum Bulgium, Boulness; 2. Drumabon, Drumburg castle; 3. Luguvallum, Carlisle; 4. Amboglauna, Castlesteeds; 5. Voreda, Caer Voran; 6. Borcovicus, Housesteeds; 7. Procolitia, Caerhaw brough; 8. Hunnum, Portgate; 9. Vindolana, Ruchester; 10. Banna, Newcastle. The great castles were generally 400 foot square: these held a cohort; the lesser held a maniple, or century: the first consisted of 600, the other of 120 men; for the Romans, in their military affairs especially, reckoned by dozens. Thus the great castles contained a full legion, 6000 men; the lesser, or centuries, a legion and half: the cohorts were the standing garrison; the centuries were the watch: for the Romans did not, as at present, set a single man to watch over an army; but they watched by centuries, whence we have got the word of standing century, without the thing. This I suppose the primary disposition, whence it was provided that two legions and a half should be a sufficient force to render this wall impregnable; and no doubt it was so, as long as the Romans continued here. Further, upon the mouths of the rivers were the fleets and galleys, to prevent the enemy from passing them in their boats, as the Cohors Ælia classica at Tunnocelum, or Tynmouth, as the Notitia Imperii in the last times informs us. As also, of the disposition of the other troops along the Wall, and castles adjacent at that time. Notwithstanding the foregoing method of planting these castles, as the regular and primary intention of the Romans, in such regular distances that they may relieve one another as occasion requires; yet it must be understood with allowance, and accordingly we find it so: they were not so strict as to plant their castles at the alligned distances indiscriminately, for that would be ridiculous; but chose out all along the nearest ground to those distances, which by situation, on hills and the like, best suited the end, for strength, prospect, water, and all other conveniencies: they likewise placed them thinner, or more frequent, as the more or less defensible parts of the Wall required.

I pursued the Picts Wall beyond Pandon gate to Baker-mill hill, two miles off eastward: it is very plain thither from Sandgate mill, both the ridge of the wall, and ditch, the common road going beside it, and many stones in the foundation left: it passes a very deep valley at Euxburn, so ascends the opposite western hill very steep; a rivulet running now in the ditch. Having mounted the hill, a coal-shaft is sunk in the very ditch, and here is a square fort left upon the Wall: some of the foundation of the wall of the fort, and of the Picts Wall, is visible. This is upon an eminence, and sees from Newcastle one way beside Benwell hill beyond it, where was another fort; and to Baker-mill hill the other way, where no doubt was another; but a mill and some farmhouses, standing thereon, have obliterated it. Between here and Baker-mill hill both wall and ditch are very plain, the ditch being deep, with a rivulet running along it: the present common road to Tynmouth passes on its north side. The foundation of the wall is yet intire within the pastures, and a considerable ridge of it is left. Without the ditch is a coal-work lately set on fire, which vomits out smoke continually, like a volcano: many more coal-works all about it. From Baker-mill hill I observe it goes still forward eastward, in a right line, upon the northern verge of the hills, as it has done hitherto, till it comes pretty near the Tyne.TAB. LXXVII. From this hill I took a prospect of its course Newcastle-ward; and the rather, because in all probability, if, not from the fired coal-work at present, yet from some others hereabouts, the country being intirely undermined, it may some time or other sink, and disorder the track of this stately work.

Afterward I pursued the Wall westward out of west gate. As soon as I passed the houses, I espied the ditch on my left hand, and the bank whereon stood the Wall: the common road goes all the way on its north side. I followed it for two miles up the hill by Eswic, going along the road side as before. Many shafts of the coal-mines are sunk upon it. When we are got into the closes, the foot-way goes along that called Adrian’s ditch; both bank and ditch plainly visible, the bank north. It runs parallel to the Wall, but upon the declining ground south, as the other north: this confirms me in my suspicion, that both works were made at the same time, and by the same persons, and with intent that this should be a counter-guard to the other, the whole included space being military ground. When arrived at the highest ground, is Benwell hill, a military work, one of the larger castra; being 400 foot along the wall, i. e. east and west; not quite so much north and south, 350: this is intrenched with a foss, and had a stone wall, the vestiges whereof are sufficiently distinguishable; as also great tracks of buildings within it, as at the others. It commands a great prospect every way: I doubt not but they could see hence to the next castrum westward; to the east, over Newcastle to the late-mentioned little fort beyond Euxborn; so to Baker-mill hill: southward is a most delightful prospect up two fine valleys over the Tyne; so up the hills south of Gabrocentum, or Gateshead: the eye reaches too the sea-coast to Tunnocelum, or Tynmouth, and the mouth of the river. The village of Benwell subjacent was built out of the ruins of this place, and great quantity of stone is still left. I saw much fragments of Roman bricks, pavings, and gutter-tiles. Two urns were dug up near here; sent to Durham college. I transcribed some altars too, found in this place, at Mr. Shaftoe’s of Benwell tower.

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It was a refined piece of management, and great knowledge of things, the Romans showed in the method of this wall; and a matter worthy of remark, that they chose all along to raise this work on the north side of the two rivers, that partly cross the island hereabouts, the Eden and Tyne. Many are apt to wonder at it, and think it was injudicious, imagining the rivers, with a very slender work on the south side of them, would have been sufficient security, and saved them much labour: but, if we consider this matter, we must confess it was not done without great consideration, and a master-stroke of military policy; for by this means the Romans took in all the fine rich ground lying upon the rivers for the sustentation of their troops, encouraged thereby to cultivate it, and build towns near, and make possessions to themselves and families, that they might live easy, and think themselves at home in these distant regions: here too trade and navigation might be carried on, and supplies of corn, wood, and other materials, conveyed from garrison to garrison; and in the times of the perfection of this work it must be looked upon as the best planted spot of ground in the island: and we may imagine the glorious show of towns, cities, castles, temples, and the like, on the south side of this Wall, by contemplating the prodigious quantities of their ruins and memorials beyond that of any other part of Europe, scarce excepting imperial Rome: and we have reason to think this will continue to be a source of entertainment for the curious and learned, when that is exhausted. Hither let the young noblemen and gentry travel, to admire the wonders of their native country, thick sown by that great, wise and industrious people, and learn with them how to value it.

Cæsar tells us the warlike nation of the Germans, the Suevi, gloried most in laying waste all the bordering countries around them, in destroying every thing that might administer sustenance to an enemy in approaching to their quarters. It was certainly equally political in the Romans to leave on the north side of the Wall that huge tract of waterless and dismal moor, a great barren solitude, where in some places you may walk sixty miles endwise without meeting with a house, or a tree: to ride it is impracticable. Thus, as much as in them lay, without the horror of barbarity did they remove the barbarians from their territories; whilst within the Wall, either naturally or by their industry, all things smiled like the garden of Eden: and indeed, toward both sea-coasts, about Carlisle and Newcastle, it is a very desirable and delightful country: and even in the midland moory tracts, by their great roads made every where, it was very good travelling; and in the worst parts, where their castra stood, and upon the valleys, it is now tolerably good, and was much better in their days, in the hands of those who could almost conquer Nature herself.

One of the Benwell inscriptions is plainly to be filled up at top thus; Jovi O. M. Dolicheno & numinibus Aug. Mr. Gale says, there is an inscription in Gruter, with Jovi Dolicheno ubi ferrum nascitur: there is another inscription, to Jovi Dolicheno, found in Wales: whence he infers with verisimilitude, that Dolichenus signifies not a topical deity; rather, some that presided over iron-works: but I cannot imagine what language it is. In the town I found three more inscriptions, though endeavoured to be concealed from me with a rudeness I never met before, even among the most unbred rustics. The fort at Benwell hill goes north of the road too, with an equal bulk; so that the Wall takes a circuit northward to inviron it: it is full of ruins too; so that it was really a city, induced probably by the extreme pleasantness of the place. A well was lately filled up there.

I find very plainly that the Picts wall, east of the town, came from Red Barns all along the street, so to Pandon gate, there being a great declivity, and a brook running without: then it crossed the valley within the town, where the brook runs, and went up the next hill to All-Saints church, which no doubt stands upon the Wall, out of which it was built: here is still a descent, where Silver-street is; and northward then it went directly to the lane called Panter-haugh, (probably from the old name, Panna, corrupted) with a descent still northward; so to the brow of the hill where the castle stands: here it met the Wall coming from West gate; and no doubt the site of the present castle was the ancient Panna, and this castle was built out of the ruins of the old one, and the adjacent parts of the Wall together. I suspect much, that a piece of the outer wall of the present castle, which stands on the west side in a tattered condition, may be Roman, at least built with Roman stone: this going upon the slope of the hill, the courses of the stone slope too, parallel with the declivity: but, be that as it will, at the foundation of it, a little lower, I saw a bit of the true old Roman wall, and indubitably so, made of white lime-stone, with mortar prodigiously hard, and ringing like a bell when struck upon. This castle has a great precipice eastward over Sand hill, and southward toward the river.

In the fields eastward, between Pandon gate and Red Barns, the counter-guard as I call that (vulgarly Adrian’s vallum) is plain, running all along parallel to the Wall; which method it observes where the ground leaves it that liberty. I suppose the city that belonged to this castle of Panna lay about Sand hill, at the end of the ferry. The south-west part of the town-wall to the postern was built on the counter-guard of that side. This town stands on three lingulas sloping toward the river. Probably William Rufus rebuilt this castle too, as that at Carlisle, and with the same purpose, as a guard against the pillaging Scots.

The manner of conveying the coals down to the river side from the pits, is very ingenious: a cart-way is made by a frame of timber, on which the wheels of the carts run without horses, with great celerity; so that they are forced to moderate their descent by a piece of wood like a lever applied to one of the wheels. The manner of rowing their great barges here is also very particular, and not unworthy of remark: four men manage the whole; three to a great and long oar, that push it forward; and one to another such a-stern, that assists the other motion, but at the same time steers the keel, and corrects the biass the other gives it. They observe that horses kept under ground in the coal-mines for two or three years, as sometimes they do, have their hair very fine and sleek, and as short almost as that of a mouse. We saw Col. Lyddal’s coal-works at Tanfield, where he carries the road over valleys filled up with earth, 100 foot high, 300 foot broad at bottom: other valleys as large have a stone bridge laid across: in other places hills are cut through for half a mile together; and in this manner a road is made, and frames of timber laid, for five miles, to the river side, where coals were delivered at 5s. the chaldron.

We were conducted down the river, by the officers of the customs, to North Sheels, at the mouth of the river, the Tunnocelum of the Romans. This is a very pleasant open river, and broad: sometimes 300 or 400 sail of ships lie here. Tinmouth castle, no doubt, was the Roman castle, standing high on the northern promontory. Clifford’s fort is a small insignificant fort upon the edge of the water. The shore of the river for the most part is rocky, and in some places pleasantly covered with wood. We saw Tarrow to the southward, famous for the birth-place of the most learned monk, venerable Bede.

Some of the coal-works here dip full East: it is plain south-east is the natural dip in general; those at Whitehaven, inclining south-west, I suppose receive a counter-bias, as being on the west side of the island. Sometimes they set green poles of alder and the like within the works, to support a weak part of the rock over-head; and then it is observed the juices in the tree will work upwards, and spread themselves upon the rock in a branch-like efflorescence.

Ravensworth castle was moated about, and castellated; but I could hear of no Roman antiquities found there. It stands under a very pleasant wood, and in a fine vale extending itself into Yorkshire, as they say, and farther; perhaps through the whole kingdom. Above this house to the west, upon the top of the fell, toward Tanfield is a most extensive prospect, over a great part of the Roman wall; so to the Cheviot hills toward Scotland, to Tinmouth castle, the sea, Lumley castle, and quite round; that it is very probable somewhere hereabouts was a Roman castle, and this might be the Ravonia Mr. Baxter places at Ravensworth.

The fund of coal in this country is inexhaustible; for the whole country is a mine of coal quite across the kingdom, in the moors, and so to Scotland: and this will be an eternal source of seamen in the kingdom. Going up the hill toward Benwell, I find the counter-guard goes just 300 foot off the wall, which was sufficient for the march of the detachments from place to place. The eastward part of the wall joined the castle where the stairs now are. A good part of the friery is standing, being a court: the chapel is converted into a hall for the smiths. Nothing of the nunnery left, but the jambs of the gate-house next the street.

Was Gateshead, as its name imports in British, I suppose, from the sign of some inn: a Goat still stands upon a sign of the Golden Lion, crowned. I guess this was a fortified town in the times of the Romans, where a ferry was for passage northward; but by reason of the buildings no traces of it are left: it stands on a deep rocky descent Westward. The Roman road here, which is the true Hermen-street coming from Sussex, coming down Gateshead fell, passes in a strait line to the bridge. I saw several Roman stones here, the recipient part of their hand-mills. In this place, in the time of the Notitia, lay the second cohort of the Thracians in garrison. There is an odd mausoleum in the church-yard.

Lord Hertford’s workmen, digging up the Roman city by Marlborough, found a piece of brass with an inscription in Romano-barbarous letters, a quarter of an inch high, thus: ʌ.MʌIS.ʌBALLʌVʌ.VXELODVM.CʌMBOGLʌNS.BʌNNʌ; which I interpreted, being the names of five Roman stations: it was upon the edge of a cup. The castle at Newcastle was built by Robert son of William I. after his return from the expedition against Malcolm king of Scots.

Lumley castle has a fine appearance hence. The Hermen-street is very plain, being in a strait line hither when we descend from Gateshead fell. I think Bede mentions this station, as called Concester, which retains part of the Roman name. Great coal-works too hereabouts. The first wing of the Astures made this their garrison, as the Notitia tells us, being ad lineam valli; for, though it be not upon the Wall, it is reasonable to think his expression is not to be strictly taken: it was convenient that some of the forces that guarded the wall should be quartered at some suitable distance, that they might have room of country for their maintenance. Here was a collegiate church founded by Anthony Bec, bishop of Durham; and here lived the Lindisfarn bishops, with the celebrated body of St. Cuthbert, before they settled at Durham. At Lumley castle is a curious old picture of Chaucer, said to be an original. Egelric monk of Peterborough, after bishop, built a church here in the time of William I. in digging the foundation he found an infinite deal of money, (Roman, I suppose,) with which he repaired the church at Burgh, and made a causeway through the fens between Spalding and Deeping.

Extremely well seated in a bend of the Vedra. The neck of the peninsula is guarded by a strong castle, with a great tower upon a keep, or mount: it is now the bishop’s palace: all beyond that is the abbey-ground. The city lies before the castle, and on both sides the river: this being very high ground, the back side of every street has gardens, with a fine prospect over the river. It would be very strange if the Romans missed so fine and strong a situation, so near the great road; yet I do not hear of any antiquities found here: but eastward over the river, upon another peninsula of high ground, I saw a camp, called Maidencastle, which I judge to be theirs: it is almost incompassed too by a rivulet falling into the river from the east: it is of an oblong form, 500 foot long, very steep on three sides; the neck is guarded by a rampart, and without that, at some little distance, with a ditch. The prospect is large, more especially eastward.

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The church antiquities of this place are capable of a large history, if pursued thoroughly by a judicious hand: it would give one a good idea of the ancient manner and magnificence of our great abbeys: there are no where such remains of that kind left among us. The revenues hereof are very great; which enables them to keep every thing in good repair, and to live very splendidly: indeed the whole city is supported only by the church. The cathedral is a very large and majestic pile, of the Saxon manner of building intirely, and all of a piece, except the east end transept and middle tower, and some later windows of mullion-work put into the old frames. I call that the Saxon manner which was in use among us at the time of the Conquest; being somewhat Roman degenerate, with semicircular windows, and arches, and great round pillars; the walls very thick, without buttresses: these, I suppose, together with pointed arches, slender pillars, and the like, which we call the Gothic, came from France. Very few monuments are left here: one of a bishop, under the bishop’s throne: in the choir the largest one, of a bishop, I ever saw; it is upon the ground, composed of two huge flat stones: the brass of it, which was proportional, is pulled off. Here are many of the ancient original copes, very richly embroidered, in which they officiate at the sacrament service; a custom here only preserved. The screen at the high altar is of stone, with pinacle work, somewhat like that at St. Alban’s; with many niches for images: behind is the stone under which lies the body of St. Cuthbert, and upon which stood his shrine. The eastern wall of the church is one intire transept, as long as the cross transept (I think,) and called the Nine Altars, from so many there placed. Much painted glass of saints, &c. Two images, among others left, are those of St. Cuthbert, and venerable Bede. The dome under the middle tower is very high, with a handsome balustrade of ancient manner within side. At the west end, built upon a high wall from the edge of the river, is a place called the Galilee, consisting of five ailes supported with handsome pillars: the use of it, and the meaning of the name, I know not; but the middlemost seems to have been an oratory, to pray for the soul of the founder of it, whose tomb stands at the east end: his arms are, Palé of ten, a mullet for difference. Near it, under a plain black tomb, lies the great Bede, the light of learning in darkest times; the first and the last among the monks. The cloisters are large and handsome; so is the chapter-house. The dean’s lodging is that of the prior’s; for the most part preserved in its primitive state; the hall, the parlour, large and stately; the prior’s lodging-room well cieled, and roofed with Irish oak, which Mr. Gale conjectures as old as Richard the Second’s time, by the chained white-harts carved therein: the prior’s kitchen is intire; a curious piece of geometry in stone, and vies with that of the abbot of Glastonbury; octagonal, with square outlets at the corners. The prebend’s houses are all very good. A large and handsome library, founded by dean Subden; his picture at full length at the end of it. Here is an excellent and large collection of old manuscripts; a very fine Latin Bible in three volumes; a psaltery wrote by Bede; a collection of Roman and others coins. Sir George Wheeler, a prebend here, gave his intire collection of Greek and other coins, which he collected in his travels; together with some natural curiosities, particularly the impressions of fishes, and other antediluvian matters, upon slate. Here are a great many Roman altars, inscriptions, basso relievo’s, &c. belonging to our own country;TAB. LXXIV. which they got from about the Picts Wall, Lanchester, &c. We were particularly favoured with a sight of the treasury as called, being a very numerous repository of the charters, bulls, inspeximus’s, and muniments, belonging to the church, from the kings of England, Scotland, popes, bishops, &c. digested into lockers: among others, an original Magna Charta. We saw likewise the old dormitory of the monks.

In the minster-yard are some monumental stones of knights, and a lady on the ground, with others of flower-work: among them I saw a Roman altar set for a grave-stone, but no inscription left. Likewise Dr. Hunter showed me a Roman head in a garden-wall: if I be not mistaken, it is of Marcus Aurelius. The doctor has a great collection of antiquities. On a coral-coloured patera the potter’s mark, AMANDVS: many of these vessels curiously wrought with lions, flowers, &c. found at Binchester, Vinovium: the clay is there met withall, and there was a great pottery. He showed us a pretty onyx, found at Piercebridge: I think it is Psyche. He says there was an aqueduct at Lanchester: many inscriptions broke there, just before he went. He has a recipient celt, found with some others, and an odd piece of cast brass, at Weremouth near Sunderland, by the sea-side: the edge of the celt is turned up at both ends, and confirms my notion of the use of them, being designed for no great force: it is three inches and a half long, pretty much worn, but sharp yet.

There was a Roman city at Pierce bridge: remains of the castle-ditch. Cunscliff, a mile off, was the place they had their stone from; and there the inscription was found; whence some would fix Condate at this place, though it is plainly Dis Manibus Condati, &c. and refers to a man, not a city. There is an old chapel on the bridge. They call the Roman road here the Watling-street. A brass Jupiter fulminans, and a genius alatus, found at Lanchester, at Dr. Hunter’s. A golden inscription to Hercules, in the library at Durham.

From Pierce bridge we entered immediately upon the Roman road, which comes to the river a little lower down than the present bridge: it is a broad, very strait, and hard road at this day; the great ridge of stone originally laid, being not worn out through so many ages, though broken and in great need of reparation. Several mile-stones by the way. Upon a moor we saw a branch run from it north-west, which goes to Bowes, Lavatræ, and other stations towards Carlisle.

Brough, on the south banks of the Swale, was a castle: much Roman coins and antiquities found thereabouts. The town Catteric, which so evidently retains the name, is a mile off.

Thornborough, the old city, stands a little above the bridge and road: it is a farm-house only, on a high ground, and on the edge of the river, being steep. Foundations of the old walls left, and much antiquity dug up.

The Hermen-street continues southward by the British name of Leming-lane, all composed of stone, and paved with large coggles, which the neighbouring inhabitants take away to build withal, and pave their yards, &c. This is a ridge of ground that was originally down: on both sides lie the most delightful plains of Yorkshire, bounded by distant hills both ways: it is a rich country, admirably watered, and well planted with wood, thronged with towns, and Roman antiquities; for that people knew how to set a just value on it. Mr. Gale showed me, at his pleasant seat of Scruton, his admirable library, where are no fewer than 430 choice manuscripts, collected by his father, many finely illuminated; many ancient classics of great value; a Priscian, wrote by a disciple of his.

We travelled along the Roman road, strait and perfect, till we turned out to Rippon. The market-place is a square, spacious enough: in the middle of it an obelisk is erected: had it been of large stones, of a good kind, and of a good proportion, it would have been a real ornament to the place. The cathedral here is a large strong building, handsome enough: there is an entrance from the west part of the great tower within, to go under ground, exactly like that we saw at Hexham, and made for the same intent: here is a chapel to St. Wilfrid, where I suppose his bones lie; and a place called his Needle, a passage the vulgar amuse themselves with. Hence we went by Newby, a new seat of Sir Edward Blackett’s, in a rich country. So we fell into the Roman road again at Boroughbridge. We visited Aldborough, a mile off, the Isurium Brigantum. Here was a great city walled about: the church and present town, which is a borough by prescription, is inclosed within it. We saw the foundation of the Wall, where they have long been digging it up, as the common quarry for stone, when they want it: it was curious to observe their method of laying the foundation of it in clay: above that the stones are laid in mortar. This same manner I found used at the Picts wall, where I saw the foundation of it, by Chester. We saw and heard of many antiquities at this place: coins of Antoninus, Constantine, Tetricus, and many more; some of which I purchased: intaglia’s are very frequent here; for such, together with coins, are commonly taken up after rain; and the people customarily look for them as they walk through the town. There has been some very great building in the street before the church; for many stones were taken up there, many remain. We saw some at the church-yard gate, and at people’s doors; among which, two pieces of pillars; the hypotrachelion on one; and several foundations of a gate, in which were the iron hinges. I saw the stones; they were of a large size. Many square stones, with a square hole in the middle, lie at the ale-house door over-against the church, all manifestly of a Roman cut; and the whole town abounds with them. The man at the ale-house says the earth all about is exceeding rich, quite black, is never manured; that coins rusted together are found perpetually, and pavements, &c. In his sisters house, west of the church, we were highly delighted with a great part of a Mosaic pavement, perfectly preserved, and covered with a roof: the remainder is now under the causeway of the street: it was laid with stones, red, blue, and white, of excellent colour: some part is also under the adjacent barn-floor. The late Rev. Mr. Morris, minister here, collected much: Mr. Wilkinson, the duke of Newcastle’s steward, collects now. Slates are sometimes ploughed up, (none such near;) many silver coins, some of which were bought by Sir James Dalrymple. In the church wall are many Gothic remains of basso relievo’s, figures of animals, much like lord Winchelsea’s Sark antiquities. A figure of Pan in the vestry-wall of Aldborough: an intagliate cornelian was found there; an eagle, a signum militare, a cornucopia cut on it.

Rippon monastery was founded by Wilfrid, the Saxon bishop, about anno Dom. 670, the same who founded St. Leonard’s priory by Stamford; and likewise that at Hexam, which afterwards became a bishoprick. Wilfrid died at Oundle, and was buried at Rippon.

The stones,TAB. XC. as much famed by the name of the Devil’s Arrows, as misrepresented by writers, stand in some fields, half a mile west of the Roman road south of Boroughbridge. Some think them Roman, though they regard not any Roman work hereabouts: some say they are factitious, though plain stone as possible. They are stones of very large dimensions, and have been hewn pretty square, much as those at Stonehenge; but silly people have knocked off the edges: their height is very great: they were very taper and well-shaped, and much of an obelisk form; but the tops are decayed, and long furrows worn down on all sides along the tenderest part of the grain of the stone. I remarked, that they all lean somewhat southward. The stone is entirely composed of small white crystals, unperishable by weather: they are certainly natural, and brought about ten miles off, from the west, where more such lie above ground in great plenty. Three now stand; one was taken away, as all report, to make a bridge over the bec a little eastward. The cross near the church is of the same stone. These stones stood 200 foot asunder, pretty near in a line north and south: the first stone westward is not so high as the other, but broader much, and stands square, or perpendicular to the line of direction; it is 8½ foot broad, 4½ thick, 23 foot about: the second in the next pasture is square each side, but not precisely; it is 5 foot broad, 4 foot thick, 18 foot square: the next is twice as far distant, and beyond the road, of a figure much like the former, but rather higher, as that is higher than the first; this is 5 foot by 4: the two last are very beautiful obelisks, and their height about 25 foot, as I guess. The ground this fine monument stands on is high, and declines every way a little from it: the great river, the brook, and some low ground to the south, hem it in as it were. Mr. Gale, and the beforementioned clergyman, some time since dug under one to the foundation, and found that it was about five foot under ground, and fastened into its seat by stones laid in clay, quite around it, as a wall: they put four half-pence, in a leaden box underneath, of queen Anne, Vigo, &c. and filled it up again. I could not commend them for it, as it could only tend to mislead the curious of future times.

Two of these found on lead; BRIG. on the side. AVG. 833, the year of Jul. Agricola coming hither.

We went upon a Roman way till we came to the river Nidd, half-way to York, where moor begins. At Ackham we saw the hill called Severs hill, with much reason thought to be that on which was performed the consecration of Severus the emperor; and, no doubt, with great magnificence: it is a large round hill, and the highest ground near York, about two miles distance from it: there seemed to be a long barrow west of it. York is a very large city, but old, and narrow streets. I saw the multangular tower in the city-wall, just by St. Mary’s abbey, which was built by the Romans, as to the bottom part: the upper has been added; it was originally of twelve sides: the stones are of squared faces, four Roman inches high; the inside, rubble, and excessive hard mortar: it seems within side as if a seat had been carried round it: three of the sides are gone: it is on the west side of the city. I went to see the two statues on St. Laurence church-wall, thought to be Roman; but they are not so: they are monumental tomb-stones of founders of churches laid just above ground somewhere, and removed hither: they are very ancient; I believe, about king John’s time. TAB. XCVIII.The cathedral here is a noble building; but, except that the side-walks are somewhat broader, and are carried on the west side of the transepts, it is exceeded in every thing by Lincoln minster; as, for instance, in the manner of approach on the west, in the front for breadth and height, in the stone roof, the towers, the cloisters, and in general the magnificence of the whole: the chapter-house here is only vaulted with wainscot; that at Lincoln with stone. The river Ouse divides the city in two. The walls on the west side are in good repair, and may be walked round. All the walls here are low, but built upon a huge agger of earth; I suppose, the Roman manner. There are two figures of Ulphus’s horn in the cathedral. In the west end of the steeple of St. Martin’s church, Micklegate, is the remnant of a fine funeral monument, Roman; a man and his wife, with their son, a child, in their habits: near it a piece of flower-work, perhaps belonging to the frize of some magnificent building. There are twenty four parish-churches here. The bridge over the Ouse, commonly magnified to strangers, is a very ordinary thing, and exceeded by most of the bridges in the county.

W. Stukeley delin.

I. Harris fecit

92·2⁠^d.

Stukeley delin.

Near Bondruse

Stukeley delin.

I. Harris fecit

Eglwys Glominog on the top of Arennig Vaur in Llanykil Parish Merionydshire.

Karnedhan Hengum above a quarter of a Mile South East of Dynas Gortyn, both in the Parish of Lhan Aber Meir.

Coeten Arthur.

On the Roadside between Rwnahyrin & Clochau Cantyre

Karn Maur

Stukeley delin.

I. Harris fecit.

97·2⁠^d.

Stukeley delin.

Toms Sculp.

98·2⁠^d.

A
Chori Eccl: Cath: Ebor:
Arcus Australis.

B
Cornu Ulphi

G. V.^dr. Gucht Sculp.

E. Kirkall Sculp.

Remnant of Ramsey Abby Gatehouse 1713.

Tower on y^e Moor near Tatershal Linc^r.

Capella ruinosa Spiritus apud Basingstroke.

Henrico Torkington de Stukely mag. Ar. Tabula Votiva.

Of Severus thus writes Herodian III. Antoninus, and Geta his brother, governed the empire jointly: they sailed from Britain, and went to Rome with their father’s reliques; for his body being burnt, they carried thither his ashes, put into an alabaster urn with gums and sweets, that they might be reposed in the sacred monuments of the princes.

There were two reasons why the Roman Emperors residing here chose to make York their imperial seat. 1. Because of its vicinity to the Scotch frontiers, where they were perpetually upon their guard upon the Wall against their incursions. 2. Because it is in a fruitful country, upon a navigable river; but more because they could bring hither corn from the southern countries of Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, &c. all the way by water carriage, from the river Ouse or Nen at Peterborough, up the Cardike, the Witham to Lincoln, the Fossdike (undoubtedly a work of theirs) the Trent, across the Humber, up the Ouse to York; a particular not yet taken notice of. The old arch in the bar leading to Micklegate is said to be Roman.

We still kept on the Roman road all the way hither. A great sconce a little way off York, called the Mount, consisting of four bastions raised in the civil wars. It is a most delicious country, overflowing with plenty. The Roman castrum here is now called the Castle-field; it was square, about 400 foot, and had walls round: it stands north of the town, near the church and river: its ground within, and rampires are high; but it must be understood withall, that the place has been altered, and made into a castle of later form, with a keep or mount. I heard of coins being found here; but at Newton Kyme, a mile off, vast quantities of antiquities are discovered. The castle at Tadcaster is called Kelkbar; a remnant of the ancient name. This country is a lime-stone quarry, and, by reason of its convenient rivers, was a trading place in that commodity in the time of the Romans; whence its name. Many barrows are to be seen hereabouts, for I suppose it was formerly a down.

Here the Hermen-street passes the river Aire, remarkable for its smooth face and gentle current: it is broad and deep withall; navigable hither: thus the river Arar, synonymous in Gaul. The place where the Roman ford was, is a little above the cascade: the stones are in great part left, but the mill-dam lays it too deep under water. Hence the paved road goes up the bank to the east side of the church, and forward through the fields, where innumerable coins are ploughed up: one part is called Stone-acre. A man told us he had formerly ploughed up a dozen Roman coins in a day: urns are often found: there are stone pavements, foundations, &c. South of the church is a pasture, called Castle garth: here were buildings of the city; but the Roman castrum was where the church now stands, built probably out of its ruins: it is very high ground, and included the parsonage-house, gardens, &c. the low ground of the ditch that incompassed it is manifest. The country people have a notion of its being an old city, and of the Roman road crossing the meadows by this ford; and of great seats and palaces having been here formerly. Here is a sweet meadow, north of the river, of great extent. There is a ditch a little west of the old castle, which I take to be some later work. Great coal-works here. The Romans ran the Hermen-street through this country as much to the west as they reasonably could, to obtain fords over the numerous rivers; because they avoided ferries and bridges, as troublesome, and wanting frequent reparation. Much dane-weed, or wild elder, grows here.

Just before we came to Robin Hood’s well, we met the Hermen-street with a very high and perfect ridge coming from Castle-ford; it bears north-west and south-east precisely: presently after, it makes an angle, and goes southward. Robin Hood’s well stands upon the road in a valley: there is a new cover made to it lately by Sir John Vanbrug. Then the Roman road leaves us on the right a little, till at Doncaster town-end. At the marsh-gate is an old chapel and a cross of stone, triangular, with three niches. Doncaster church and steeple is large and beautiful: at the east end is an old chapel, now converted to secular uses. Near the market-place another older chapel, of St. Magdalen, which the corporation use for their place of assembly. I believe the Roman castrum was by the river side, where the church and parsonage-house stand. Coming out of the town is another cross upon the road, where they fable a Roman emperor was buried. The Roman road a little farther is very apparent, going over a fine heath, so to Bawtry, upon the river Idle, slowly conducting its waters through a large level moor to the Humber. Probably here was a camp formerly. They have some trade here in lead from Derbyshire, mill-stones, and Roch-abbey stone of a good kind. Hither comes the Hermen-street, which I call the new branch, from Agelocum. We passed over a deep valley at Went, beyond Robin Hood’s well: the northern precipice of it is rocky, as that of Gateshead.

Having brought this journal to the edge of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, of which parts I gave my observations in former Iters, I conclude this with the following reflections. The amazing scene of Roman grandeur in Britain which I beheld this journey, the more it occurred with pleasure to my own imagination, the more I despaired of conveying it to the reader in a proper light by a rehearsal. It is easy for some nations to magnify trifles, and in words gild over inconsiderable transactions till they swell to the appearance of an history; and some moderns have gone great lengths that way: but if in any people action has outdone the capacity of rhetoric, or in any place they have left historians far behind in their valour and military performances, it was in our own country; and we are as much surprised in finding such infinite reliques of theirs here, as that we have no history of them that speaks with any particularity of the last 300 years that the Romans dwelt in Britain, and rendered it perfectly provincial. The learned memoirs are very short; and it is well they were guided with such a spirit, as left monuments sufficient to supply that defect, when handled as they deserve: though I have no hope of coming up to that, yet I hold myself obliged to preserve, as well as I can, the memory of such things as I saw; which, added to what future times will discover, will revive the Roman glory among us, and may serve to invite noble minds to endeavour at that merit and public-spiritedness which shine through all their actions. This tribute at least we owe them, and they deserve it at our hands, to preserve their remains.