ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



suggest a somewhat similar period, that of the second century, though 

 one or two may belong to the late first century, and the Samian ware is 

 of a type which we are accustomed to associate with the period 

 100250 A.D. The large amount of deposit seems to show, as the 

 excavators emphatically assert, that the occupation was no short one. 

 It must have lasted many years. From time to time the rubbish on the 

 floor of the cave must have been swept out and tumbled down the slope 

 below. Further, the occupation was plainly a real occupation : fires 

 were lighted and animals were cooked and men lived here, and, if the 

 burials are Romano-British, also buried their dead. 1 



(b) POOLE'S HOLE, BUXTON 



Another cave situated in the same neighbourhood has yielded 

 similar remains. This is Poole's Hole or Cavern, which underlies the 

 massive hill that overhangs Buxton from the south-west. It has long 

 been known as a cave. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth (so the tale goes) 

 it was inhabited by one Poole, an outlaw, from whom it took its name, 

 and for the last two hundred years it has been a resort of the curious and 

 the tourist. It was first recognized as containing antiquities in 1854, 

 when, in the course of levelling the earth before its mouth, the workmen 

 found, at a depth of 4 feet, many human and other bones, staghorns, and 

 corroded metal buckles, nails, and the like. 3 Since then its archaeological 

 treasures have been more fully excavated by Messrs. Redfern, father and 

 son, its proprietors, chiefly during the third quarter of the nineteenth 

 century, and they are now preserved in a small museum adjacent to the 

 cave. They were mostly discovered in the upper strata of the cavern floor 

 near the entrance and in a chamber some 30 yards inside it. This floor 

 consists of alternate layers of brown clay and charcoal the old rubbish 

 and debris and of stalagmite ; that is, deposit of calcareous matter formed 

 on the floor of the cave by the drip of water impregnated with carbonate 

 of lime. 8 



The Roman remains consisted of six ' First ' and ' Second Brass' coins, 

 one each of Trajan, Verus (?), Faustina, Septimius Severus, and Philippus, 

 and one illegible ; four bronze bow-fibula? (Fig. 39), a circular fibula closely 

 resembling some found at Thirst House (Fig. 34) and still preserved, 

 as found, embedded in stalagmite, a penannular fibula, a chatelaine 

 (Fig. 39), some rings, abundant potsherds, including many bits of 

 Samian some from embossed bowls with the ovolo pattern or (in one 

 case) without it, and one with the name PATERCLINIO stamped inside 

 the hough much rough ware, three lamps, some bits of iron and lead, 

 much charcoal and blackened earth formerly the old Roman floor and 



1 Turner, Ancient Remains near Buxton (Buxton, 1899), pp. 63, 134 ; Derb. Arch. Journ., xii. 228, 

 xiii. 194, Refiyuary, April, 1879 ; Ward, Ancient Cave Homes in Derbyshire, p. 15; personal inspection. 



3 Bateman, Diggings, p. 246. 



8 The stalagmite accumulated tolerably fast. In one case at least, geologists calculate that a layer 

 over 30 feet thick might well have accumulated between the Roman and the present age. (Boyd Daw kins, 

 Cave Hunting, p. 40.) 



235 



