252 ON A RECENT SUBSIDENCE AT MUCKING, ESSEX. 



in E. Norfolk. It is given in a letter from Thomas Munro (?) to the late 

 Samuel Woodward, dated 29th August, 1834. Mr. Munro thus writes : — " It 

 was discovered on the side of a lane a little to the left of the road leading 

 through Lammas to Buxton, where an acquaintance of mine was allowed to dig 

 .-and and gravel for top-dressing an adj iceut meadow, and the quantity was not 



less than eight or ten quitters An oik tree of considerable age 



grew near the spot, the fibrous roots of which had insinuated themselves among 

 the wheat, which lay in two distinct compartments at the bottom of the sloping 

 bank, separated by a natural division running transversely through the pit." 



Also in Norfolk, at Caister near Yarmouth, was found in 

 1837 a bricked pit, an account of which appears in the Gentle- 

 man s Magazine Library (Romano-British Remains), Part /., 

 pp. 230-5. From the very full description of this pit we learn 

 that : — " The masonry [of Roman bricks and tiles] was very rude, 

 and there was no appearance of covering above, nor could we 

 discover any traces of a paved bottom, there being nothing but 

 the natural clay in which the whole was imbedded forming the 

 floor of this oblong pit." Its length at the bottom was 11ft., and 

 its breadth 7ft. At the top the length was 12ft. and the breadtli 

 8ft. Its height had probably been " at least 4 feet." Among 

 the remains found in the pit were oyster shells and fragments of 

 Roman pottery. The writer of the account (T. Clowes) 

 discusses the purposes to which this pit may have been devoted, 

 rejecting the notions that it may have been a bath or a tanner's 

 pit, and adding that it was " in truth so rude a building that my 

 own idea is that its use was one of so ordinary and common- 

 place a nature as scarcely to be worth much speculation ; that it 

 was Roman, beyond doubt, is I conceive the only point of 

 interest." 



We have, however, some reason for thinking that this rude 

 pit was not devoid of interest, as Mr. Clowes supposed, for we 

 find that " Mr. Woodward suggests that the building w r as 

 intended for a corn store, but I scarcely incline to this supposi- 

 tion, as an underground vault, though very well for concealment 

 in cases of necessity, would by no means be a corn store in a 

 well-defended Roman encampment." 



It is somewhat singular that Mr. Clowes was disinclined to 

 accept Mr. Woodward's view for the reason given, even though he 

 considered this pit as " constructed for some domestic purposes." 

 For in a "Notice of the Barrier of Antoninus" by John 

 Buchanan, which appears in the Archaeological Journal, Vol. 



