ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



and are principally important as indicating the existence of stone buildings 



with pillars and the like. One or two other pieces which might have 



been more noteworthy have disappeared. Pegge 



(p. 39) records a bust of Apollo and of another 



deity, and others mention a half-length or bust of a 



woman in gritstone with her arms folded across her 



breast. This was ploughed up in 1747, and is 



probably one of the two pieces seen by Pegge. It 



was sketched by John Wilson, but the sketch does 



not make its age or character very clear. 1 



_ . j . . jj .1 T, ric. 15. STONE FIGURE. 



It remains to our description to add the Roman BROUGH. 



roads on which Brough stood. They are two. The 

 Bathamgate ran up the Bradwell valley and thence across the moors to 

 Buxton, and its stones remain to this day. The Doctor Gate and the 

 Long Causeway two popular names for two parts of one road 

 connected Melandra and Brough and Templeborough. But the exact 

 approach of this route to the fort at Brough is uncertain (p. 250). 



Such are the details at present known concerning Roman Brough. 

 They are plainly too scanty to permit us to write its history. But we 

 can make the beginnings of a history. The fort was built or rebuilt 

 about 158 A.D. in connexion with other steps taken to coerce the northern 

 hill tribes, and at this time it was garrisoned by the Cohors I. Aquitanorum. 

 Later on it was rebuilt or in some fashion altered. The monumental slab 

 which recorded the work of 158 was broken up and its pieces used for 

 flooring or for walls, and this is the sign of some considerable structural 

 changes. We cannot, however, date these changes. Plainly they came 

 many years after 158, and various probabilities unite to suggest the 

 opening years of the third century. At that time there was much 

 military activity and much rebuilding in Britain, and that not merely in 

 the region of Hadrian's Wall. But further evidence can alone decide the 

 question. What followed is still obscurer. The coins found in the vault, 

 if they have been rightly attributed to the fourth century, tell us that the 

 place was then not wholly uninhabited. But we cannot tell whether the 

 inhabitants were soldiers or whether the fort had been dismantled earlier. 



One more historical item, concerning rather the district than the 

 fort of Brough, may be gleaned from an inscription found at Foligno in 

 Italy. It is on the tombstone of a man who, among other temporary 

 posts, was censitor Brittonum Anaii'ion\_ensium\^ ' census officer of the Anavio- 

 nensian Britons,' about 100 or no A.D. These Britons, as we shall see 

 in the next paragraph, lived round Brough, and it is likely enough that 

 the census taken of them about 100-110 was the first ever taken. It 

 might, indeed, be one of the ordinary more or less periodic censuses, but 

 in that case it would hardly have been worth mentioning on a tombstone. 

 If, however, it was the first census of these particular Britons it would be 



1 J. Whitaker, Hist, of Manchester, i. 143 ; Bray, p. 212 ; Wilson, in Bateman's Ten Tears' Digging, 

 p. 252, with sketch here reproduced. The stone, according to Wilson, was 2 feet high and 18 inches 

 broad. 



I 209 27 



