A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



of leafage and foliated scrolls is classical, and indeed more than classical : 

 it is a formal and conventional imitation of classical models. The Castor 

 ware has also its classical elements : its foliated scrolls, its hunting scenes 

 and still more its mythological representations can all be traced more or 

 less directly to Mediterranean origins. But that is not the whole matter. 

 Other elements demand attention. The Castor treatment of classical 

 details is rude of course, but it is not merely rude. It shows that free- 

 dom which always characterizes the native handling of civilized material 

 according to native artistic traditions. It is no formal or conventional 

 imitation but a recasting. The tradition which has helped to recast it 

 is of course that of Late Celtic art. Those fantastic animals with curious 

 outstretched legs and back-turned heads, those tiny foliated scrolls scat- 

 tered by way of ornament above and beneath them, the rude but not 

 ineffective beading which serves for ornament or for dividing lines, the 

 suggestions of returning spirals, the evident delight of the artist in plant 

 and animal forms and his avoidance of human figures, the quaint freedom 

 of handling which pervades the whole — all these elements are Celtic 

 and not classical. Here we stand at the meeting of two currents. In 

 Britain the Late Celtic art has mostly vanished before the neat finish of 

 Roman patterns and the coherence of the Roman civilization. But 

 sometimes it has survived, not uninfluenced but still unmistakable. At 

 Castor and wherever else Castor ware was made we may contemplate 

 with something of a melancholy pleasure the survival, amidst the 

 finished conventional forms of Roman origin, of the rude yet genuinely 

 artistic spirit of an earlier age.* 



If Castor ware thus embodied Late Celtic traditions we might 

 expect to find that its manufacture commenced at least as early as the 

 commencement of the Roman period. Two pieces of evidence lend 

 some measure of support to this view. Coins indicate that Castor and 

 its neighbourhood were at least inhabited at an early date (p. 176), and 

 Mr. Artis says that his excavations showed ' the site to have been occu- 

 pied by the potters previous to the formation of the old Roman road 

 or Forty-foot way' which led from Castor to Stamford (p. 204). Neither 

 of these evidences is quite conclusive, and I am not quite sure that the 

 second is completely proven.* However there does not appear to be 

 any other evidence of any sort, and the assertions sometimes made on the 

 subject seem to be a priori guesses.' We were compelled above to admit 

 that we could not determine the places where Castor ware was manu- 



' Dr. Birch {Hist, of Ancient Pottery, loc. cit.) has well understood this. 'The art is apparently 

 Gaulish and the figures bear a striking resemblance to those on the ancient British and Gaulish coins.' 

 Mr. Thomas Wright on the other hand calls the ware ' entirely Roman, without the slightest trace of 

 Celtic or Germanic sentiment' {Intellectual Observer, vii. 456). He was, I think, misled by the scenes 

 from classical mythology which occur on a few Castor pieces. A good instance of the Late Celtic affini- 

 ties of the ware, from Chesterford in Essex, is figured in the Archtrotopcal 'Journal, vi. 19. 



2 Artis (pi. xxxix. title) asserts it definitely. But I do not quite understand his plate and I cannot 

 quite reconcile its title with a letter of his published in the Gentleman's Magazine (1822), i. 484. 



' Thus Wright {Intellectual Observer, vii. 456) thinks the ware was introduced in the latter part of 

 the second century as a substitute for the expensive imported Samian ; and Birch, ignoring his opinion 

 quoted in the last note but one, writes of ' a low and degenerate stj-le, referrible to the last days of the 

 waning Empire.' Such opinions do not command confidence. 



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