CO 



pressed retreats. This feature, so far as is known, has no parallel in any of 

 the Herefordshire Camps. I concur, however, with Professor Babington, 

 who visited this camp with the Cambrian Archaeologists in 1863, on the occa- 

 sion of their meeting at Kington, in thinking that it was simply the latter, 

 though no doubt there is room enough for British, or, for that matter, Roman 

 huts in respectable number wthin the barriers. From Mr. Fowle's map and 

 its measurements it will be seen that the camp is about 572 yards in length, 

 and about 330 yards in breadth, at its broadest. But the truth is the geo- 

 graphical position of these border camps bespeaks them the inner line of 

 fortresses for the protection of the Silures and Ordovices against other native 

 tribes, in case of local disturbance of friendly relations, and still more against 

 the foreign invader, who, as we know from the historian Tacitus, eventually 

 forced them with so much loss and difficulty. Mr. Hartshorne in his Salopia 

 Antiqua (a work evincing a thorough examination of the whole subject and 

 topography, as well as orderly thought in systematizing the result of personal 

 investigation), has set down Wapley and Croft Ambrey f as the southernmost 

 of Caractacus's interior line of camps, a line which begins wiih Hen Dinas, 

 near Oswestry, on the North. 



Without aspiring to be a seventh Richmond in the field or to add another 

 conjecture to those hazarded by more or less enterprising antiquaries at this 

 distance of time, as to the site and locale of the last battle of Caractacus t 

 I fear I must trouble you to go back with me to that British hero's final and 

 gallant struggle, because it offers a way, in fancy .at least, of once again cover- 

 ing Wapley with living forms, less peaceably inclined indeed than the gather- 

 ing which it beheld to-day, forms, however, from one-half of which, the 

 weaker half, we inherit our love of freedom, whilst from the other and stronger 

 we get our civilization. They are the key to Radnorshire and Montgomery- 

 shire, and before Ostorius could advance into those counties, which I suspect 

 were occupied by the Ordovices, it was necessary they should be forced. I 

 will promise to be brief, but to avoid the possibility of misapprehension I must 

 repeat that I regard Wapley as one of the last entrenched camps defended by 

 Caractacus and stormed by Ostorius on the road to his final struggle. 



It was in the year .50 A. D. that Ostorius Scapula, the general sent by 

 Claudius in succession to Aulus Plautius, having suppressed the Cangi, and the 

 Brigantes, north of the Mersey, tiirned his attention towards the Silures, a 

 people of South Wales, as to whose precise situation it is in vain to attempt 

 definiteness, though Professor Pearson thinks that in early times they must 



t See " Salopia Antiq.," page 72. Mr. Flavell Edmunds considers Wapley to mean 

 the " Place of Weapons" (Wapley). 



t The Welshman, Humphrey Lloyd, of Camden's date, considers Caer Caradoc, near 

 Clun, to have been the scene of this battle. Aubrey, Gibson, and others argue for Coxwall 

 Knoll, which General Roy, in 1772, put out of the question by showing that it only cor- 

 responded in some points with Tacitus's account, whilst Caer Caradoc did so in none. 

 Hartshorne inclines rather to the fortification on the Breidden Hills, on the N.W. base of 

 which rolls the river Severn ; or to Cefn Carnedd, near Llandinam, in Montgomeryshire, 

 also washed by the Severn. But if so, why did not Tacitus give the name of the river with 

 which he was familiarV "Carnedd," by the way, means "slaughter." 



