78 THE ROMAN STATIONS OF DERBYSHIRE. 
came upon what he considered a Roman well beneath the bank. 
He says that he opened it to a depth of twelve feet, found it built 
of rough and approximately square or rectangular slabs placed 
edgeways one above another, thus making the ‘‘ well” square, and 
not round in form. 
I take this well to be a shaft forming an avca finalis, or Roman 
subterannean landmark, of which numbers have been found. Had 
Mr. Brasher excavated it to the bottom, he would have probably 
found layers of pottery, bones, charcoal, etc., in succession. A 
very similar instance of a dofontinus superimposed upon an arca 
finalis occurs at the ‘‘ Mote Hill,” Warrington, which I have 
described at length in “‘ Roman Lancashire,” p. 224-5. 
In 1875 a railway was carried through the village of Little 
Chester, it does not invade the camp itself, but sweeps round the 
south-east angle. As it is carried on an embankment, tke latter 
has probably precluded us from reaching part of the cemeteries of 
the station which will lie buried beneath it. The only excavations 
necessary during the railway works were for the foundation of the 
piers of a bridge over the road in the village, and they yielded a 
few coins and some pottery, but I have been unable to trace the 
former. 
Mr. Glover tells us that on 16th Sept., 1824, the workpeople of 
Mr. Harrison, digging for the foundation of a wall upon the green 
at Little Chester, found fifteen inches below the surface a skeleton, 
which had around it a thin stratum of an ochre yellow colour, as 
if formed by a decomposed suit of armour, and amongst it several 
rivets were found. Mr. Glover, Mr. Bateman, and Mr. Jewitt, all 
speak of this as a Roman interment— which, however, seems to me 
impossible. There is not, so far as I am aware, another instance 
(in Britain at least) of a Roman soldier having been buried in 
armour. It seems totally at variance with the Roman custom, 
and the slight depth at which the remains were found is another 
(and conclusive) proof that the interment is at least no older than 
the Saxon period, when it was customary to bury a soldier with 
his arms, etc. 
Proceeding now to the second list of stations which I have 
