ROMAN STATIONS 145 



A military expedition would naturally be encamjied 

 beside a stream, where the cavalry could water their 

 horses, in preference to a waterless district ; and 

 therefore, Newino^ton and Judde Hill, which both 

 stand beyond an easy reach of flo^\ing water, cannot 

 have such good claims to ha\'e been the site of Duro- 

 levum as either Sittingbourne, or Bapchild, whose 

 name, indeed, is a corruption of the Saxon Beccanceld, 

 " the pool of the springs." The flow of water through- 

 out the country must in those remote times have been 

 much greater than now, for dense forests then covered 

 a great part of the island, and induced rains and 

 moisture. In fact, the Dover Road was until recent 

 years remarkable for the number of considerable 

 streams and trickling rills that flowed across it, either 

 under bridges or across fords, and it is not so long 

 since those that crossed the highway at Sittingbourne 

 and Bapchild were diverted or dried up. They must 

 have been broad streams when Caesar led his legionaries 

 up the rough British trackway in pursuit of the Cantii, 

 and the still very considerable brook that crosses the 

 road at Ospringe would have then attained the 

 dimensions of a river. It might be well to look to 

 Ospringe for the original Durolevum, for the situation 

 must have been admirable from a military point of 

 view ; and, moreover, it was near, if not then actually 

 on, the head of a navigable creek leading directly to 

 the sea, where Faversham now stands. 



But when archaeologists leave the consideration of 

 Caesar's and his successors' military station and seek the 

 site of Durolevum to^Mi or city, they unaccountably 

 lose sight of the fact that this Roman province of 

 Britannia Prima was obviously Aery populous, and 

 that Durolevum, instead of being a small isolated town, 

 must needs have been the centre of a thickl}^ populated 

 district of smaller towns, hamlets, and outlying villas, 

 stretching for miles along the now solitary reaches of 

 the Dover Road, and reaching down to the Upchurch 

 marshes. 



