In the course of the compilation of this History, the Author re-perused theHandbook to the Roman Wall,in the fifth edition, put forth by Mr. Robert Blair, many years after the death of the original compiler, Dr. Bruce. In the light of succeeding events it is curious to note what is said of Corstopitum, a site noted in the text as being near Hadrian's great line of wall and its defences. Thus the record runs:
This site, which lost its military importance with the retreat of the Romans, apparently became a commercial emporium, and underwent very various fortunes, culminating in its destruction by barbarians; so that, from the fifth century, it ceased to be from that day to this; no man dwelling on the site.
Mr. Blair says of the place itself:
Its form and extent gave it the aspect of a city rather than of a camp. Remains of a bridge across the Tyne are to be seen when the river is low. Excavations were made in the summer of 1906. Nothing of account was found except a few walls, an intaglio, some fragments of pottery and a few coins.
How frigid and disappointing is not this record! But listen to the story which Sir Arthur Evans related to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in his Presidential address at Newcastle last September:
The work at Corbridge, the ancient Corstopitum, begun in 1906, and continued down to the autumn of 1914, has already uncovered throughout a great part of its area the largest urban centre—civil as well as military in character—on the line of the Wall, and the principal store-house of its stations. Here (together with well-built granaries, workshops, and barracks, and other records of river life as are supplied by sculptured stones and inscriptions, and the double discovery of hoards of gold coins) has come to light a spacious and massively constructed stone building, apparently a military store-house, worthy to rank besides the bridge-piers of the North Tyne among the most important monuments of Roman Britain. There is much here, indeed, to carry our thoughts far beyond our insular limits. On this, as on so many other sites along the Wall, the inscriptions and reliefs take us very far afield. We mark the gravestone of a man of Palmyra, an altar of the Tyrian Hercules—its Phoenician Baal—a dedication to a pantheistic goddess of Syrian religion and the raised effigy of the Persian Mithra. So, too, in the neighbourhood of Newcastle itself, as elsewhere on the Wall, there was found an altar of Jupiter Dolichenus, the old Anatolian God of the Double Axe, the male form of the divinity once worshipped in the prehistoric Labyrinth of Crete. Nowhere are we more struck than in this remote extremity of the Empire with the heterogeneous religious elements, often drawn from its far Eastern borders, that before the days of the final advent of Christianity Roman dominion had been instrumental in diffusing. The Orontes may be said to have flowed into the Tyne as well as the Tiber.
This quotation has been given at length in order to sustain the contention—put forth more than once in this book—that treasures associated with the Roman epoch lie around us in every part of our island, and that all sorts of novel surprises mutely await the advent and quest of the diligent investigator.
But to return for a moment to Corstopitum. It has been realised that the city was a centre of iron-work and pottery-making to supply the needs of the troops. It furnished a base for the invasion of Caledonia by Lollius Urbicus inA.D.140, and for the great expedition of Septimius Severus inA.D.208. Much of the area excavated during 1906 and the following years has been filled in, but the most important buildings remain open—two large granaries, the fountain or public water-pant, and a large unfinished building, which may have been designed as a military storehouse, or as the praetorium of a legionary fortress which never came into being. The most remarkable finds made here have been the Corbridge lion in stone, which now enjoys an European reputation, and two hoards of gold coins, now in the British Museum.1
1VideOfficial Handbook to Newcastle and District, put forth on the occasion of the last visit of the British Association to that city.
The Mapabovegives the line of Hadrian's Wall through the two counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, viz., from Wallsend to Bowness, and indicates the principal places on the route. For further details of this absorbing subject the reader is referred to such works as the Proceedings and Transactions of learned societies, such as theArchæologia Æleana,or theLapidarium Septentrionale. TheCorpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,Vol. vii gives a full rendering of the inscriptions.
"The Society of Antiquaries, in conjunction with the Shropshire Archæological Society, carried on extensive excavations at Wroxeter during the years 1912, 1913, and 1914.
"Wroxeter, the ancient Viroconium or Uriconium, is situated on the east bank of the Severn, between five and six miles south-east of Shrewsbury. The lines of its walls can still be traced, enclosing an area of about 170 acres, and the town must have been an important centre in Roman-Britain, as it stood at the junction of two of the main roads, viz., the Watling Street from London and the south-east, and the road from the legionary fortress of Caerleon in South Wales. There were also other roads running from it into Wales and to Chester. The town is referred to by the Ravenna Geographer as Viroconium Cornoviorum, and was probably the chief town of that tribe which inhabited a district including both Wroxeter and Chester.
"That the site was inhabited soon after the invasion under Claudius in 43A.D.is evident. Coins and other objects of pre-Flavian date have been met with in some quantities, and there are tombstones of soldiers of the XIV Legion from the cemetery. This legion came over with Claudius, and left Britain for good in the year 70A.D.Wroxeter, situated on the edge of the Welsh hills and protected from attack on that side by the river Severn, would have formed an admirable base for operations against the turbulent tribes of Wales, and it is more than likely that it was used as such in the campaigns undertaken by Ostorius Scapula in 50A.D.and by Suetonius Paulinus in 60A.D.
"The Welsh tribes were finally subdued before the end of the reign of Vespasian, and the country became more settled. Wroxeter appears to have ceased to be a military centre and to have grown into a large and prosperous town. It is in this period—namely, the last quarter of the first centuryA.D.—that the occupation began on the part of the site recently excavated. Very little of the earlier buildings remained, as they all appear to have been built of wood and wattle-and-daub.
"In the second century more substantial houses were erected, and in the course of the excavations the following buildings were uncovered. In 1912, four long shops, with rooms at the back and open fronts with porticoes on the street. In 1913, a temple, which must have been of some architectural pretensions, and contained life-sized statues, of which several fragments were discovered. In 1914, a large dwelling house, consisting of a number of rooms with a large portico on the street and a small bath-house on the south side. The porticoes of all these buildings formed a continuous colonnade by the side of the street. At the back of the large dwelling-house another structure was discovered. Unfortunately it could not be entirely explored, as its west part was beyond the reserved area. It consisted of two parallel walls, 13 ft. apart, which enclosed an oblong space with rounded corners 144 ft. wide and 188 ft. long to the furthest point excavated. No other building of this form appears to have been found elsewhere, and it is difficult to say for what purpose it was used, especially as part of it is still unexcavated. It is possible, however, that it may have been a place of amusement for games, bull-baiting, etc., and that the two parallel walls held tiers of wooden seats.
"The buildings that faced the street had been altered and rebuilt several times, the mixed soil being from 8 ft. to 10 ft. deep in places, making the work of excavation very slow and laborious. For instance, in 1914 there was evidence of at least four different periods of buildings on the same site. In the early period there were wood and wattle-and-daub houses. Over the remains of these in the first half of the second century three long buildings were erected with open fronts or porticoes similar to those found in 1912. About the middle of the second century these three buildings were incorporated in one large house with corridors, two courtyards, many rooms, some with mosaic floors, and others fitted with hypocausts. A bath-house, with cold baths and hot rooms, was situated at the south-west corner. At a later period this dwelling was considerably altered, several of the rooms being swept away, and the central part of the building turned into one large courtyard with corridors on three sides. Two new hypocausts were inserted and extra rooms and a long corridor or verandah built at the back. Water was supplied to the houses by a water main at the side of the road. By shutting sluice-gates it was possible to divert the water into side channels which ran through the houses, flushing their drains, and discharging at the back into the river. Eleven wells were found during the excavations, varying from 10 ft. to 12 ft. in depth and stone-lined.
"A number of crucibles and some unfinished bronze castings, etc., have been met with, showing that metalworking was carried on on the site. There was also evidence of other industrial processes, such as enamelling and working in bone. A very large number of small objects has been discovered during the excavations, such as cameos and engraved gems (some still set in finger rings), many brooches of different metals, enamelled ornaments, and a quantity of interesting articles in different metals, bone, glass, etc.
"The great quantity of pottery found may be judged by the fact that upwards of 900 potters' stamps on Samian ware have been recorded. The coins number between 1,200 and 1,300, among them being a few British varieties. No coins later than the end of the fourth century have been, as yet, met with, and the town does not appear to have been inhabited after that date. What was the cause of its destruction or desertion is, as yet, uncertain, but it is hoped that future excavations will solve the problem.
"Detailed accounts of the excavations are printed in the Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Nos. 1, 2, and 4."
The above has been extracted, by kind permission of the Council, from the proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 1915; and is taken from the Report of the Committee on "Excavations on Roman Sites in Britain," comprising the Special Return made by J. P. Bushe-Fox, F.S.A.
WORKS BY REV. J. O. BEVAN,M.A., F.G.S., F.S.A.
WORKS BY REV. J. O. BEVAN,M.A., F.G.S., F.S.A.
(Rector of Chillenden, Canterbury; Sometime Prizeman, Exhibitioner, and Foundation Scholar of Emmanuel College, Cambridge).
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