ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



obliterated the antique outlines, and have discovered or at least, have 

 recorded nothing of value. Archaeologists, on their part, have attempted 

 no excavation. Accordingly, we rely principally on Stukeley for plan 

 and for details. He was an inaccurate observer and surveyor. But his 

 account of Little Chester fits both antecedent probabilities and also the 

 scanty facts otherwise known to us. 



The Roman area 1 appears to have lain around the western half of Old 

 Chester Road (fig. 23). The meeting of this road with the footpath to 

 Breadsall represents roughly the centre of the ' station,' while the western 

 front was near the river and the south-east corner lies under the Great 

 Northern Railway. 2 The ' station ' itself, according to Stukeley, was an 

 oblong of 500 by 600 feet, 3 that is, of almost 7 acres, surrounded by a 

 wall and a ditch. The wall was 9 feet thick, and parts of it were 

 ' mortar full of pebbles as big as nuts ' presumably the concrete core 

 usual in Roman masonry. It had in places vaults alongside it, which, if 

 Roman work, we may interpret as the foundations of wall-turrets or of 

 the guardchambers of gateways. Stukeley adds that the wall was then in 

 process of demolition, and later observers 

 have noted little of it. Pegge, in 1759, 

 saw a piece 5 feet thick, 4 and a definite 

 part of it was perhaps noted long after, 

 in 1888. This stood in the garden of 

 the Manor House farm and in an ad- 

 joining cellar, about 740 feet east of the 

 river bank. It was a stretch of gritstone 



r .1-1 j ui r F IG - 2 4- PRE-ROMAN FIBULA FOUND AT 



masonry, 4 feet thick, and traceable tor LITTLE CHESTER. 



43 feet, running in a northerly direc- 

 tion ; with it was connected something like an ancient vault. But the 

 age of this masonry has never been ascertained, and as prebendal houses 

 and other buildings occupied the site during the Middle Ages, old walls 

 of post-Roman date might well occur. 6 



Of Roman buildings within or without the walls practically nothing 

 is known. Stukeley observed ' foundations of houses in all directions ' 

 inside the station and gravelled streets outside. Further, we have record, 

 either in or outside the ramparts, of broken columns, waterpipes, and 

 steyned wells, including two square ones, described by Stukeley as ' made 



1 A fibula is figured in the Intellectual Observer, xii. (1867), p. 345, and stated to have been found 

 at Little Chester with human bones. This fibula is unquestionably pre-Roman, and if really found at 

 Little Chester must be a very early importation from the Continent. That would imply that Little Chester 

 was inhabited long before the Roman occupation of Britain. See fig. 24. 



8 Watkin (Derb. Arch. Journ. vii. 78) says the railway skirts the 'station.' But, so far as I can 

 calculate, it crosses the south-east corner. 



8 Stukeley also gives the seemingly smaller dimensions, ' 80 by 1 20 paces, the same as Mandues- 

 sedum.' But that place, covering 6 acres, is about the same size as Little Chester. The paces, therefore, 

 are to be understood as long ones. Mr. Ward tells me that he thinks he has been able quite recently 

 to trace much of the wall and calculates the area to be about 540 by 615 feet, the wall to be 9 feet 

 thick, and its core of concrete. 



* Roman roads throughout the Coritani (Bibl. Topogr. Brit, iv.), p. 20. 



6 Ward, Derb. Arch. Journ. xi. 92 ; Bailey, Derb. Arch. Journ. xii. 170 ; J. Keys, Sketches of Old 

 Derby (1895), p. 8, not a very critical work. The illustrations to Mr. Bailey's article have not a 

 Roman look. Part of the Manor House itself dates back to mediaeval times. 



I 217 28 



