ON THE BRITISH ANTIQUITIES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 183 



have been disclosed. This place I look upon to have been a most 

 ancient lowland British fortress. 



The earthworks at Brinklow present one of the most perfect spe- 

 cimens of castrametation to be met with in this county ; it has been 

 generally supposed to be a Roman camp, but I think that this is a 

 mistaken notion, and that it was a lowland British fortress. It 

 possesses, indeed, the main characteristics of British castrametation, 

 and is constructed on a point of land projecting into a vale ; and 

 from the irregular shape of the earthworks and divisional rampart, 

 by which, exclusive of the exploratory tumulus, it is divided into 

 two parts (an arrangement we do not find in remains of pure Ro- 

 man castrametation), I am inclined to suppose it a British fortress. 

 The tumulus is likewise, in character, British, and I should con- 

 ceive it to be one of the largest in this island ; its pre-eminence as 

 a landmark is remarkable, and it was doubtless one of the principal 

 connecting points in that system of Barrow communication which 

 prevailed generally throughout the country. 



This fortress or camp is situated on the line of the foss road, 

 which does not, as in the case of the Roman camp at Chesterton, 

 go through it, but is somewhat diverted from its straight course in 

 consequence of the position of the camp ; a circumstance which 

 leads me to conceive that the camp was constructed prior to the 

 formation of the road ; whereas the camp at Chesterton, and the 

 Roman camp at Manduessedum, on the Wattling-street, near 

 Atherstone, were evidently formed upon the roads which pass 

 through them. 



About half a mile from the camp at Brinklow, and running in 

 nearly a parallel direction with the Foss road, is a curious covered 

 way called Tutbury-lane, leading down to the river Avon, formed 

 exactly like a ditch, with high banks on eacli side ; and it is a welL 

 known characteristic of British roads that they had frequently 

 other trackways or roads running parallel at a short distance from 

 them. 



At Seckington, in the north of this county, is a camp very simi- 

 lar, in some respects, to that at Brinklow, being accompanied by a 

 large tumulus ; it is not, however, like that at Brinklow, divided 

 into two compartments by an intervening rampart, but has merely 

 a single vallum and ditch ; and from the circumstance of a battle 

 having been fought here in the eighth century, between two con- 

 tending armies of the Saxons, this has been called a Saxon entrench- 

 ment, but it is, I think, evidently of British formation, possessing 

 the characteristic marks of many British fortresses, the tumulus and 



