ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



nearly rectangular in shape, 8 feet long by 5 to 7 feet wide and 8 feet 

 deep, walled with eleven courses of good masonry, floored with cement, and 

 entered by eight steps (figs, i o, 1 1 .) The walling contained a fragment 

 of an inscribed slab, dated about A.D. 158, which had been broken up 

 and used as building material. The vault was therefore constructed or 

 reconstructed some years later than that time. When excavated it was 

 found to be full of mixed stuff. On the top were bits of building stone, 

 fragments perhaps of the vaulting or the structures above it. Lower 

 down were three other fragments of the inscribed slab, a drum of a column, 

 a stone trough, a few corroded coins ascribed conjecturally to the fourth 

 century, some potsherds, numerous bones, some of Roman date (bos longi- 

 frons, etc.) and some judged by Professor Boyd Dawkins to be later, and 

 at the bottom a wooden tub and broken concrete slabs, apparently the 

 original flooring. 



The meaning of the vault is not doubtful. It corresponds to various 

 vaults or sunk chambers which have been detected inside other forts in this 

 island and abroad. These vaults lie under or very near the shrine of the 

 headquarters building (p. 198), where the regimental standards and the 

 military chest were kept. They have been reasonably explained as strong 

 rooms, and in point of date appear to belong particularly to the late second 

 and early third centuries. In its details size, shape, steps, position, and 

 date the Brough pit agrees well with other specimens of these vaults, and 

 we may fairly consider that it was built as a strong room. It may have been 

 somewhat damp for its purpose, since in 1903 it filled quickly with water. 

 But when the Roman drains of the fort were in order it was probably 

 drier. Similarly the vault at Chesters, when first opened by the late 

 Mr. John Clayton, filled at once, and a drain was required to clear it ; 

 but it plainly was not below water level in Roman times. We may be 

 tempted, however to think that ultimately, either in late Roman days 

 or perhaps afterwards, it came to be used as a well, and the bucket at the 

 bottom may be a trace of this stage in its history. Finally it became 

 filled with rubbish and debris, and if Professor Dawkins has dated the 

 bones rightly, a good part, if not all, of this process, must have occurred in 

 post-Roman times. 1 



Of other structures inside the fort or without it we know little. 

 The excavators of 1903 revealed, but did not explore, a well-built 

 edifice, almost touching the headquarters building on the south-east. 

 Of other edifices in the fort nothing is yet known. Outside the fort we 

 have, however, indications (as it seems) of the usual bath-house, placed to 

 the south-east near Brough Mill and the union of the Noe and Bradwell 

 Brook. Here Pegge saw in 1761 an oblong building with brick walls 



1 Mr. Garstang, in his report, supposes that the pit was first built without steps ; then, long after 

 A.D. 158, the steps were added, the centre deepened, and the pit converted into a well. I do not under- 

 stand why the steps should not be here, as elsewhere, part of the original vault, or why they should have 

 been constructed when the pit was converted into a well. The fact that the four lower steps are built 

 up against the wall of the vault is not, in itself, conclusive of any view. The steps might at first have 

 been wooden. Or it might have been desirable, for strength or dryness, to build the lower part of the 

 walling round the vault continuously on all four sides. 



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