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Ewyas Harold, Ewyas Lacy (Clodock or Longtown as it is now called), Grosmont, 

 Skenfrith, and White Castle, are all within a short distance ; whilst the abbeys of 

 Llanthony and Dore, the churches of Kilpeck. Ewyas Harold, and Grosmont, 

 possess, each one of them, features of remarkable interest. The archaeologist, 

 too, would easily discover remains of several priories, usually converted into farm 

 buildings, in the immediate district, not to mention the interesting associations of 

 Old Castle, or the fine old mansion of Alterynys, the home of the Cecils, directly 

 in front of us ; nor yet the romantic legends that hover around the rocks and din- 

 gles of the Black Mountains. These can be merely named on the present occasion. 

 The pages of history throw no light on these particular vestiges of warfare, the 

 camps and tumuli of the Marches of Wales. It is left for the imagination to pic- 

 ture from their situation, and from their physical characters, the object for which 

 they were formed, and the hard, restless lives of their occupants. They indicate 

 constant warfare, tribe against tribe ; and it has been well said of the men who 

 made them — 



"The good old rule 

 Sufficeth them, the simple plan 

 That they should take who have the ix)wer, 

 And they should keep who can." 



The first gleam from real history relating to this district, comes from the 

 Romans. Antoninus, in his 12th Iter, shows that the great Roman road, the Via 

 Orientalis, from Isca Silurum (Caerleon), through Burrium (Usk), and Gobannium 

 (Abergavenny), to Magna (Kenchester), and thence on to Bravinium (Leintwar- 

 dine), Uriconium (Wroxeter), and on to Deva (Chester), must have been the road 

 which we have just traversed by Trewyn House ; but here the information stops. 

 Nothing is said of the camps near it, nor of the means used for protecting this great 

 Roman highway of communication between the Legion at Isca, and that at Deva; 

 along which, moreover, must have passed the troops and supplies for the many 

 years of constant warfare with the Silures in Herefordshire and Shropshire. 



Mr. W. Thompson Watkin agrees with many other archaeologists in thinking 

 this camp of Roman construction. He says in his Roman Herefordshire (Journal 

 of the Archffiological Institute, p. 20) : -"The original camp is rectangular— 480 

 feet by 240 feet— (5 acres, 3 roods, 36 poles, 14 yards and 3 feet) ; but attached to 

 its south-east side is a similar-sized camp of a semicircular shape, and having a 

 double ditch and rampart." One of our members, Mr. A. D. Berrington, of Pant- 

 y-goitre, who knows the district well, has kindly sent the following remarks for 

 this meeting :— "I am heretical enough to say that this camp is not Roman at all. 

 The only Roman character that it has is that its sides are straight and not curved. 

 The situation is British, not Roman. The curious covered way by which it is 

 entered from the east, is decidedly British. The entrances are not central to the 

 sides ; the west rampart is totally unlike a Roman rampart ; the soil shows no- 

 where any traces of prolonged occupation, and the straightness of its sides may be 

 due to the form of the hill. Straight sides are to be seen in the British camp at 

 Hollingbury, near Brighton ; and the covered way reminds one, on a small scale, 

 of Maiden Castle, near Dorchester. " As to the Roman road, Mr. Berrington 



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