179 



Captain Eichard Price tells me he is eighty-two years uf 

 age, and that when he was a boy of fourteen he was winding at 

 a well they were making just in the bottom of Bearland, when 

 they came down upon the mast of the boat I have mentioned. 

 It lay north and south, or nearly so. The part they got at was 

 near the heel of the mast, which was of pine, 13 inches in 

 diameter ; big enough, as he remarked, for a barge of 80 tons. 

 The shrouds were with it — "big ropes, wormed;* but they all 

 went to dirt as soon as they was handled." 



From the fall of the ground between the Eoman West Gate 

 and this part, I have no doubt that the Eomans cut this channel 

 to serve as a moat at some distance in advance of the wall, to 

 obtain a suitable level for it ; and that the mediaeval extension 

 of the city consisted in taking in the piece of ground thus 

 left — i.e., between the wall and the water's edge, f 



I believe we have a trace of this piece of open ground having 

 stood in front of the wall, in the name of the part at the back 

 of the Shire Hall, and which I have spelt in this paper 

 according to the present usage. Bear land. I find however in 

 a rent-roll of the city, dating back to 1535, it is given as " The 

 hare land." It seems probable that this was its true designation ; 

 for as late as 1644 the ground below it, where the Militia Bar- 

 racks now stand, had never been built upon. The Booth Hall, too, 

 the ancient court-house, seems to have been erected on a site 

 the property of the city, being a portion of the " bare land" itself. 



Such a space of bare land (the Pomoerium) was always resei'ved 

 next the walls of a Eoman colony, and considered sacred. 



With the data we now have we can picture to ourselves with 

 something approaching precision, the appearance presented by 

 the Western Gateway of the city seventeen hundred years ago. 



* Wormed means with a small cord laid along between the gi'ooves left 

 by the strands of a large cable, &c., to fill it up and round it off. 



t There is in the present channel of the River, at eight feet below low 

 water, a massiTC wall running from near the north end of the Prison to the 

 Gas "Works, part of it passing under the gateway of the latter. It is 

 certainly Roman. A beautifully perfect fibula was found on removing part 

 of it. In digging for the chimney-foundation at the Gas "Works they 

 found the bones of a sturgeon. 



