Ixxii PROCEEDINGS, 



Heath to visit the Museum. Here Mrs. A. E. Gibbs kindly 

 provided tea for a party then much increased in number. 



Several interesting questions were discussed in the course of the 

 walk. King Harry Lane, it was mentioned, is sometimes called 

 the Watling Street, and it would appear from the 6-inch Ordnance 

 map that our Ordnance Surveyors considered this lane to follow its 

 course, for they mark the farm-road between the end of the lane 

 and "the Hollows" as its track, and bring it into the Gorhambury 

 road at " Gorham Block." It was not so, however, for this is 

 a winding country lane, not so very long ago merely a cart-track, 

 and it is named from the much older "King Harry" public-house 

 at its corner, opposite St. Stephen's Church. The British street 

 continued in an almost straight line from St. Stephen's, and it may 

 still be traced by the remains of a row of trees and of a hedge- 

 bank across the tields to the kissing-gate at the lower end of the 

 Verulam Woods, where it entered Verulamium and continued 

 through the city past St. Michael's Vicarage and near the site of 

 the Koman Theatre into the Gorhambury road, leaving this road 

 at Gorham Block to cross the meadows below Mayne's Farm and 

 join the Dunstable road between "the Pondyards " and Bow 

 Bridge. Except for a short distance this road then follows its 

 track to the ancient Durocobrivse, near Dunstable. 



On the same Ordnance map the Causeway is stated to be "on 

 site of Aqueduct," but there seems to be no evidence that this very 

 ancient dam, which confined the waters of the lake which protected 

 tlie north-eastern boundary of the old British city, ever conveyed 

 water across the valley of the Ver. On the same map, also, the 

 reservoir in Prge Wood, which was constructed by Sir Nicholas 

 Bacon to supply water to old Gorhambury House, is marked as 

 a Roman camp, for which the site is a most unlikely one. The 

 "deep lake" or fish-pool was pxirchased from King Edgar by 

 Abbot -3^1fric, and drained by cutting the dam near the present 

 Silk Mills because the royal fishing-parties from Kingsbury Castle 

 annoyed the monks. The Gorhambury reservoir was abandoned 

 by Erancis Bacon because the supply of water from it failed in 

 very dry weather. He said that "as the water would not come 

 to his house, he would take his house to the water," and built 

 Verulam House by the Ver and there made his fish-pools, now 

 known as the Pond^-ards. Not a trace of Kingsbury Castle nor of 

 Verulam House now remains, but their fish-pools, or portions of 

 them, still exist. 



Beech Bottom, Mr. Gibbs said, on the arrival of the party there, 

 was generally supposed to have been constructed by the ancient 

 Britons, and was probably either a tribal boundary or part of 

 a fortified post. It bore a general resemblance to the earthwork 

 known as the Devil's Dyke, which formed the present boundary of 

 the parishes of Sandridge and Wheathampstead, and to the still 

 larger one, Grim's Dyke or Ditch, in the extreme west of the 

 county. At the spot where they were then assembled Beech 

 Bottom was of considerable depth and probably had not been much 



