ROMAN-BRITISH ANTIQUITIES. 879 



Blackmoor House. He himself and other members of his 

 family have found more than twenty among the sittings of 

 gravel dug to repair the turnpike-road by the side of the 

 pond, four of which (being all that he has retained) he has 

 had the goodness to show me. They are much defaced, and 

 the legends are wholly obliterated ; but one can be recognized 

 as of the younger Faustina, and one as of Crispina, the Em- 

 press of Commodus. 



In 1865, having purchased the Temple and Blackmoor 

 estates, I chose for my residence the spot then occupied by 

 Blackmoor Farm House. The name " Blackmoor " properly 

 belongs to the western and northern parts of the sandy ridges 

 (raised considerably above the lower level of Woolmer Forest, 

 and themselves overlooked from the west by the escarpments 

 of the Upper Greensand and the still loftier chalk summits 

 behind them) by which the basin of Woolmer Forest, where 

 it is crossed by the main road between Petersfield and Farn- 

 ham, is enclosed. To the north-east and east the ridges of 

 Blackmoor connect themselves with those of Hoffmoor, 

 White Hill, and Wall Down, between which and the south- 

 eastern and southern ridges, dividing this forest-basin from 

 the valley traversed by the road between Greatham and Lip- 

 hook (on which stand fir-plantations belonging to the crown), 

 rises the conspicuous landmark of Holy- Water (or Holly- 

 Water) Clump. The intermediate low ground, covered with 

 rough heather, and interspersed here and there with pools of 

 water at certain seasons, is in breadth about a mile and a half 

 from north to south by about two miles in length from east to 

 west. In a depression at the narrowest point between the 

 government plantations to the south-east and the most southerly 

 part of the Blackmoor ridges lies Woolmer Pond, a shallow 

 lake, nearly always fordable by man or horse in every part, 

 and varying with the seasons from a large and broad sheet of 

 water to a bed of sand, almost entirely dry in times of pro- 

 longed drought. 



All these ridges, and the basins below them, are upon the 

 formation called by geologists the Lower Greensand, which 

 is naturally barren or covered only with furze and heath, 



