A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



The actual point chosen for this garrison is characteristic of Roman 

 methods. It is no isolated impregnable peak, but a gentle eminence in the 



middle of the val- 

 ley, which a mo- 

 dern eye might 

 easily neglect 

 (fig. 8.) The 

 ground falls away 

 from it more or 

 less slightly on all 

 sides. On the 

 north-east, twenty 

 or thirty feet be- 

 low it, runs the 

 Noe. On the 

 north-west is the 

 gully of a little 

 nameless burn. 

 On the south-east, 

 a few score yards 

 away, is the Brad- 

 well Brook. Only 

 on the south-west 

 does the fall 

 change quickly to 

 a gradual rise to 

 higher ground. In 

 such a site in the 

 upper of two 

 fields called the 

 Halsteads, the fort 

 was planted, low 

 enough to be near 

 the water, high 



enough to command an outlook over almost all the valley, and guarded 

 by nature on three of its four sides. For Roman purposes this was 

 sufficient. It mattered not that the hills tower high on either side of 

 the valley, and command a view right into the Roman lines. Under 

 the conditions of ancient warfare they were too far away to weaken the 

 Roman defence. 



The site has long been recognized as ancient. For generations the 

 dwellers near have known the ruins as a convenient quarry, and the 

 names Brough (at least as old as the twelfth century) and the Castle 

 witness to a popular consciousness of antiquity. Archaeological recog- 

 nition came later. Camden may have had some notion of the Roman 

 associations of Brough when he mentions it as one end of the Roman 

 road Bathamgate. But its true character was not realized till the second 



SCALE 

 Yf 



/SMILE 



FIG. 8. SITE OF BROUGH FORT, ANAVIO. 

 (The heights are in English feet.) 



2O2 



