ANCIENT EARTHWORKS 



for or against Roman origin of this camp, or its claim to be the site of 

 Noviomagus, but we may say that the great area of the enclosure seems 

 too large for a Roman military station, while its hundred acres would 

 not be too much to accommodate the families, flocks and herds of a 

 British tribe. 



There is abundant evidence of occupation in Roman times, as will 

 be seen in the chapter devoted to the antiquities of that period, but 

 this of course does not prove construction at so late a date. 



Loose : Quarry Wood. — This work of doubtful age, suggesting 

 late rather than early construction, lies partly in the parish of Boughton 

 Monchelsea, on land sloping gently from the south and east, with no 

 special advantage of position. It may possibly be one of those referred 

 to by Hasted, cast 



y^WStSS^y 



Wood Camp, Loose. 



up in the sixteenth 

 century. 



Quarrying has 

 entirely swept away 

 the traces on the 

 north, and other 

 age ncies have 

 broken the contin- 

 uity of the line on 

 the south-west. 



On the east, 

 where the land 

 without is slightly 

 higher than the 

 ' camp,' there is a 

 shallow fosse or ditch 

 outside the rampart, 

 but on the west the 

 land slopes down from the enclosure, and there is no fosse, as probably 

 would have been the case had prehistoric man constructed the works. 



The quarries of Kentish rag-stone are of much value, and must 

 cause further destruction of this earthwork. 



Nackington : Iffin Wood. — According to Hasted there were in 

 his time vestiges of an ancient camp about eight acres in extent ; 



only two acres are level and connected, the rest being cut cross-ways, and in differ- 

 ent directions, into several separate mounts and ridges. There are numbers of different 

 intrenchments throughout this large wood, and one vallum especially which runs on 

 to the stone-street road.^ 



Now the vestiges are so broken and destroyed that it is hard to 

 realize that any true camp or defensive enclosure existed. 



Nettlestead : Milbay's Wood. — These entrenchments are six 

 miles south-west of Maidstone, standing about loo ft. above sea-level 

 and 80 ft. above the river Medway, which flows a mile away to the east. 



» Hist. Kent (1790), iii. 728. 



