A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



view.^ But the coins and alleged pottery are hardly conclusive evidence, 

 and Mr. Willis-Bund informs me that iron ore was largely brought down 

 the river to be smelted with wood in the sixteenth century : similar 

 scoria, which can be dated by documents, appear to exist at Powick. A 

 gold coin of Tiberius (Cohen, No. 1 5) was lately found in the Severn 

 near Pitchcroft. 



(4) Another object found in the northern part of the town is a 

 small and not ungraceful bronze vase from Sansome Fields, now in the 

 Worcester Museum. 



(5) The centre of the town has yielded fewer remains. Drain-laying 

 in Broad Street in 1797 and in High Street in 1853 and 1896 revealed 

 more scoria, apparently concreted with pebbles to form what was con- 

 sidered by the discoverers a roadway running north and south, but again 

 we have no clear proof of Roman origin. Some walling and tiles 

 thought to be Roman have been found in Swithin Street, but their 

 age is doubtful.* A fibula was dug up in Copenhagen Street in 1857. 



(6) An unquestionably Roman object from this quarter was found 

 in 1844, at a depth of 18 feet, under 12 High Street. It is a little bronze 



statuette (fig. 2) 2| inches long, of an undraped female 

 figure, with one hand on her lips, the other behind her 

 and her feet crossed. Several more or less similar 

 figures are known to archaeologists. They were for- 

 merly explained as representations of an obscure Roman 

 goddess of silence, Angerona, but this view has long 

 been abandoned and they are now recognized to be 

 amulets against the evil eye, the hand being placed on 

 the lips to prevent evil influences entering thereby. 

 Some specimens have a small loop or hole by which 

 they could be suspended.' 



(7) Roman remains are commonest at the south 

 end of the modern town. Noteworthy discoveries 

 were made about 1833 during the removal of the Castle 

 Mound, which used to occupy a site immediately south- 

 cJarm ^or Amulet. ^^^^ °^ *^^ Cathedral, near the river. This mound 

 was of Saxon or Norman origin, and at its base the 

 labourers found some eighty or ninety coins, including several of the 

 first century (seven of Claudius for instance), fibulas, bronze bells and 

 pottery, including Samian, and among the Samian one piece which might 



1 Treadway Nash, Collections fir the Hist, of Worcestershire, Supplement (issued 1799), p. 97; Andrew 

 Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, ii. (1698) p. 162, cited by Nash, ii. p. cviii. ; Val. 

 Green, Hist, of Worcester, i. 10 note. The 1698 issue of Yarranton's work, published posthumously, is not 

 in any library accessible to me, and I have cited it after Nash. The ' many thousand tons ' sounds an 

 exaggeration. 



8 Nash, Supplement, p. 97 ; Allies, p. 2 ; Bozward, in Berrow's Worcester Journal, Oct. Nov. 1889 ; 

 piece of concrete in Worcester Museum ; information from Mr. Willis-Bund. 



3 Allies, p. 13, with figure ; brief mentions, Archaological "Journal, ii. 74 ; Journal of the British 

 Archaol. Assoc, ii. 48. For the whole class of figures see Otto Jahn's paper IJeber den Aherglauhen des 

 bosen Blickes bei den Alten, in the Berichte iiber den Abh. des kon. sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 

 Z.U Lei/>zig,vn. (1855) 47-49 ; and Wissowa, in Roscher's Lexikon der Mytholo^e, s.v. Angerona ; compare 

 Frazer's Golden Bough (ed. 2, 1901) i. 313. 



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