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greater change has passed over the name of our city. The ancient 

 name of Akmanchester has disappeared altogether, and a totally 

 new name has been substituted. This is in itself a great argument 

 for the desolation of the place. It is not a natural or an easy thing 

 for the name of a populous place to be changed. Every tongue in 

 the population has to be induced to drop the old name and take 

 up the new : and that is a thing not easily effected To my mind 

 the change of name from Akmanchester to Bath, is in itself a strong 

 argument that the city passed through a period of desolation and 

 ruin. 



When might this period have been ? Before I had noticed the 

 local application of this poem, and as long ago as the earliest 

 excavations were made for the foundations of the new Hotel, Mr. 

 C. Moore had surmised that there was a period of desolation in this 

 place, arguing from the appearance of the stratum next above 

 the Roman level, besides other geological considerations. He 

 maintained this against me in a discussion at this Institution, 

 in December, 1867, and he returned to the subject at a 

 later date.* The general analogy of history in the case 

 of other Roman cities in this country is such as to lend 

 confirmation to Mr. Moore's geological conclusions. As regards 

 Akmanchester we find the following scanty records. In the year 

 577, there was a great battle at Dyrham between the Saxons and 

 the British, in which three British kings were slain, and the Saxons 

 became masters of the three strongholds of the west, namely, 

 Gloucester, Cirencester, and Akmanchester. This happened in 

 one of the last huge waves of that tide of conquest which established 

 our ancestors from the German Ocean to the Severn, and from the 



* In Mr. C. Moore's paper of March 10, 1869, printed in these Proceedings, 

 he said : — Subsequently to the Roman occupation there appears to he little 

 doubt that an interregnum occurred, in which the city was deserted, and when 

 it became converted into a swamp. The cause for this is difficult to account 

 for, hut the evidence for the fact is I think conclusive, since it is certain that 

 the extensive foundations of the Eoman buildings, on the site of the new hotel 

 and elsewhere, are covered up by mud, vegetable remains and drift-wood ; the 

 deposit in some instances being almost converted into peat, and mixed with 

 which were many mammalian remains." — Vol. ii., No. 1, p. 42. 



