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when the town was built in the valley below, nearly a mile from it, surrounded by 
a strong wall enclosing a space of twenty-one acres, it also became a fortified camp, 
and as the residence of all the leading Roman official officers, military and civil, it 
soon threw the camp on the hill into the background. The Romans have not left 
us their name for either camp, since the names of ‘‘Credenhill”’ and ‘‘Kenchester ” 
are clearly of a later period. The twelfth journey of Antonine, called by Sir 
Richard Colt Hoare ‘‘ Via Orientalis,” establishes beyond question the site of the 
two camps. Antonine gives the distances thus:—From Caerleon (Isc Silurum) to 
Usk, nine miles; from Usk (Burrio) to Abergavenny, 12 miles; from Abergavenny 
(Gobannio) to Kenchester, 22 miles; from Kenchester (Magnis) to Bravinium, 
24 miles; and from thence (Bravinio) to Wroxeter (Uriconium), 27 iniles. The 
Roman mile has been determined by Dr. Black to be 5,000 English feet, or, within 
a fraction, nineteen-twentieths of an English mile (which is 5,280 feet). It is 
remarkable that in the text this military station is alone mentioned in the 
ablative plural. Dr. Black thought ‘‘Magnis” might therefore include the 
camps of Sutton Walls, or Dinedor, but it seems more reasonable to suppose 
that Antonine referred to the two camps here—the town camp, which was the 
Castra Hiberna or winter camp, and the far larger camp on the hill, Castra 
Atstiva, or summer camp. It was not until the last century, when the attention 
of antiquaries began to be directed to the relics of Roman occupation, that the 
name ‘‘ Magna Castra” was given to the site of the Roman town to distinguish 
it from the village of Kenchester, which had taken the previous name of the town. 
Dr. Black, the great authority on Roman works in England, stated that he 
believed Magna Castra occupied the most important position in the geometrical 
system of the Roman survey, or mensuration of the country, in the district. 
From this centre the roads were made, and the census taken, which were the two 
necessary preliminaries for the exaction of the land tax and the poll tax, and these 
two were the main burdens of Rome’s fiscal system. Thus this town became the 
centre also of the civil administration of the district, and was occupied not only 
by the military staff and engineers, but also by the financial officers, and they, 
with the wives and dependents of many of them, would thus form a distinct 
Roman society with their own Roman manners, Roman customs, and the Latin 
language. 
The site of Kenchester or Magna Castra has never been lost, though it has 
not always been recognised. The first report we have of this great Roman station 
in more modern times, is from the pen of John Leland, the chaplain, librarian, 
and antiquarian of Henry VIII. He spent six years most laboriously in travel- 
ling to collect materials for the History and Antiquities of England and Wales, and 
visited Herefordshire about 1550. He says, ‘‘ Kenchestre standeth about iii myles 
or more above Hereford, upward on the same side of the ryver that Hereford 
doth ; yet is yt almost a myle fro the ripe of Wy. This towne is far more aun- 
cyent than Hereford, and was celebrated yn the Romaynes tyme, and appeareth 
by many thynges, and especyally by antique mony of the Cesars, viz., often found 
withyn the towne, and in plowghyng abowt; the which the people ther cawld 
dwarfes mony. The cumpace of Kenchestre hath bene by estimation as much as 
