2 ROMAN ENCAMPMENT. 



originally maintained to restrain the plundering 

 inroads of the restless inhabitants of the other bank 

 of the river : Thornbury, with its fine cathedral- 

 like church and castle, the opposite red cliffs of the 

 Severn, and the stream itself, are fine and interest- 

 ing features. 



An encampment of some people, probably 

 Romans, occupies a rather elevated part of the 

 parish, consisting of perhaps three acres of ground, 

 surrounded by a high agger, with no ditch, or a 

 very imperfect one, and probably was never de- 

 signed for protracted resistance : it appears to form 

 one of the, above-mentioned series of forts erected 

 by Ostorius, commencing at Weston, in Somerset- 

 shire, and terminating at Bredon in the county of 

 Worcester ours was probably a specula, or watch- 

 hill, of the larger kind. We can yet trace, though 

 at places but obscurely, the roads that connected 

 this encampment with other posts in adjoining 

 villages. A few years sweep away commonly all 

 traces of roads of later periods, and the testimony 

 of some old man is often required to substantiate 

 that one had ever been in existence within the 

 memory of life: yet these uniting roads, which, 

 as works, must have been originally insignificant, 

 little more than by-ways, after disuse for above 

 fourteen hundred years, and encountering all the 

 erasements of time, enclosures, and the plough, are 

 yet manifest, and an evidence of that wonderful peo- 

 ple, thieves and ruffians though they were, who con- 

 structed them. There is probably no region on the 



