SESSION 1898-99. liii 



Foster's Farm on the road from Rodbourn to ITemcl TTcmpstoad, 

 and, by kind permission of ^fr. Farr, the ocenpier of the farm, who 

 accompanied them, proceeded to view the old fortified camp known, 

 as tlio Aubreys. 



The camp, which has an area of about twenty acres, is roughly 

 oval in form, with a fosse from nine to thirteen feet deep and 

 from forty-five to sixty feet wide. In some places the mounds 

 are double, and at the south end the earthwork has been levelled 

 so as to form a suitable site for the farmhouse and homestead. 

 Excavations are being made in various places on the site by the 

 llev. Lewis Browne, Vicar of llcdbourn, but nothing has yet been 

 found which throws any liglit upon the age of the camp. 



The party having assembled under a shed near the farm, Sir 

 John Evans made a few remarks on the camp. It was, lie said, 

 a very extensive earthwork, and it would be desirable to ascertain 

 its date. It was not Roman, and he was inclined to regard it as 

 pre-Roman, for it resembled many camps which were known to 

 belong to that early period. At Maiden's Bower, near Dunstable, 

 for instance, which was not far distant, many stone arrow-heads 

 and scrapers of flint have been found, showing that to belong to 

 the Stone Age. The chief objection to regarding this camp as 

 pre-Roman was that it lies so low, such camps being usually on 

 the top of a hill, but there might be reasons for the construction 

 of this one on low ground, such as facility in obtaining a supply of 

 water. He hoped that the excavations which were being carried 

 on by Mr. Browne would prove successful, and that something 

 might be found which would throw light upon its origin. What 

 appeared to be a coin had been found which was in fact a J^uremberg 

 counter of the fifteenth century, an Elizabethan threepenny-piece, 

 dated 1578, and two seventeenth- century tradesmen's tokens, one 

 for James Hannell, of Redbourn, struck in 1669, and another for 

 John Halsey, of the Black Lion, in the same village. There is no 

 " Black Lion " there now, but there is a " Red Lion," and 

 Sir John suggested that perhaps it was the same inn but had been 

 boiled like a lobster. Referring to the derivation of the name 

 " Aubreys," he said that it was merely a corruption of Old Burys 

 or Old Burghs, meaning an old place. There were two parishes in 

 the county the name of which was similarly derived, viz, Aldbury 

 and Albury. 



Sir John Evans then related the story of the invention of 

 St. Amphibalus as recorded by Matthew Paris. In olden times 

 there were two mounds near Redbourn, known as the " Hills of 

 the Banners." A St. Albans man dreamed that St. Alban appeared 

 to hira and pointed out one of these hills as the tomb of his master, 

 St. Amphibal. Excavations were made and his dream was 

 confirmed by the discovery of the skeleton of the saint, together 

 with those of three of his friends. A paper on the antiquities of 

 the neighbourhood of St. Albans was read before the Society 

 of Antiquaries in 1849, in which Mr. Thomas Wright showed that 

 these barrows belonged to Saxon times, and that the bones must 



