ROMANO-BRITISH WARWICKSHIRE 



else seems to have been found but not recorded for instance, by boys at 

 Rugby school and there is more to find. When I visited the site 

 recently, I found frequent fragments of pottery and brick in the gravel 

 pit and in the fields on both sides of the road, but particularly on the 

 Warwickshire side. None of these objects are remarkable. The only 

 one that I have thought deserving of reproduction is an urn of common 

 red ware, almost of flower-pot texture, but somewhat curiously orna- 

 mented, which is now in the Rugby School museum (fig. 2). Still, the 

 bricks and tiles and rubbish pit, taken together with the abundance of 

 pottery, seem to indicate a permanent inhabitation of the spot in Roman 

 times. As elsewhere in Warwickshire, we must wait for excavations 

 before attempting to define the character of the occupation. We might 

 expect to find that the place was a posting station or a wayside hamlet 

 or perhaps a village. 



Obscure in character, the spot seems nevertheless to have a name. 

 The Antonine Itinerary (477, 2) mentions a ' station ' on Watling Street 

 called Tripontium, 12 Roman miles from Venonae and 8 from Banna- 

 venta. Many sites have been suggested for this ' station.' Camden 

 put it at Towcester, which he rechristened Torcester for the purpose, 

 in his usual arbitrary fashion ; but this is out of the question. Gale and 

 Morton more reasonably put it at Dowbridge on Watling Street, a mile 

 south of Cave's Inn ; Stukeley and Reynolds, at Lilbourne, still further 

 south ; Ward at Rugby ; and Salmon, eccentric as ever, at Edgehill. 

 None of these guesses are satisfactory. Except Towcester, they have 

 yielded no Roman remains ; except Dowbridge, they conflict violently 

 with the distances of the Itinerary. They are in reality guesses of 

 despair, due to an unfortunate confusion respecting Bannaventa. There 

 can be little doubt, in the present state of our knowledge, that Mr. 

 Bloxam was wise in identifying Tripontium with Cave's Inn. It is a 

 suitable distance from Venonae, which is High Cross (p. 232), and from 

 Bannaventa, which is near Norton, 1 and it is the only site which thus 

 agrees with the Itinerary and which has also yielded definite evidence of 

 some permanent occupation. 



Its name differs from most Romano-British place-names in that it 

 is Latin and not native. It denotes the ' Three Bridges,' or the ' Bridge 

 with three arches,' and is formed like such names as Septimontium, 

 Trifanum, or Trimontium, which last was the name of the Roman fort 

 near Melrose, close to the triple Eildon hills in Scotland. There was a 

 Tripontium in Italy, an obscure hamlet near Forum Appi on the Appian 

 Way, now Torre Treponti ; there was also, at least in the middle ages, 

 a Tripontium in southern France near Aries. 8 The appropriateness of 

 the name to the ' station ' at Cave's Inn is not clear. Possibly the 

 Roman bridge over the neighbouring stream had some peculiarity which 

 has now long since vanished. 



1 fictoria Hilt, tf Northamptonshire, \. 186. 



- Corpus Inscriptionum Latin, x. p. 642 ; Ducange. English writers on ancient geography have 

 ignored both places. 



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