241 
Be this as it may, England was still covered with Roman ruins until the 
middle of the twelfth century, when the Church interfered and broke the spell 
that kept the unlettered people aloof. The monks and abbots then began to use the 
Roman ruins extensively as building materials whenever a monastery or a church 
was built in the neighbourhood. ‘The abbots of St. Alban’s,” says Matthew Paris, 
‘built their Abbey from the bricks and stones of the Roman city of Verulamium.” 
“So, too,” says Mr. Thomas Wright, ‘‘ the ancient city of Wroxeter was probably 
one of the great quarries from which the builders of Haughmond Abbey were 
supplied ; and the churches of Wroxeter and Atcham, the adjoining parish, bear 
evidence of the same appropriation.” It was the same elsewhere. It is very 
probable that the stones for Credenhill church came from Magna as they certainly 
did for many of the walls in the village and farm buildings around. 
The Romans found Herefordshire a wide waste of uncultivated forest. Its 
steep wooded hills, its narrow sequestered valleys, and its numerous streams with 
their boggy margins, afforded an admirable means of defence to the active and 
fierce Silurians who occupied them. For very many years after the fall of Carac- 
tacus, his successors remained bitterly hostile to the Romans, and could only be 
held in subjection by the constant presence of Roman soldiers. The military 
stations throughout the county must therefore have been numerous, and yet so com- 
pletely have they disappeared that it was not until the last century that any real 
knowledge was obtained as to their sites. The great Roman military centre 
**Magnis” of Antonine, was thought to be Old Radnor, at Gaer near Brecon, and 
at other places. The true site, now well known, was even supposed to be Ari- 
conium, whilst others placed Ariconium at Cirencester, or on the ‘‘ Ine” brook near 
Hereford, and so on. The only historical authorities for British localities in 
Roman times are the Geographical Survey of Ptolemy, which gives the names of 
the towns of the native tribes (Monumenta Historie Britannice, pp. 10 to 15), and 
the Itinerary of Antonine, which gives the Roman roads and towns (Ibid, pp. 
20-22). These are believed to have been written about a.D. 120 but in both of 
them most of the sites of the places named are now unknown. 
The Itinerary of Antonine consists of fifteen journeys made by him in different 
parts of England at this period, so early that many Roman cities are not even 
named in it, and the sites of the great majority of those which are named in it 
cannot now be recognised. Seven of these journeys were made in the Province of 
Britannia Secunda, which comprised all Wales and the district westward of the 
river Severn. The details of these seven journeys are well given in a paper read 
by Mr. James Davies at the Hereford meeting of the British Archelogical 
Association in 1870, and which was afterwards published in the journal of the 
Society. 
MAGNA CASTRA. 
The Roman towns and stations in Herefordshire are as yet but very imper- 
fectly known. The fortified town of Maagna CastTraA was the most important of 
them all. In the first years of the Roman occupation, the strength of the great 
Camp on the hill, Credenhill Camp, gave security to the military station ; but 
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