ROMAN STATIONS 147 



Romanized British, who speedily tell a prey to barbar- 

 ians when once the Roman garrison was withdrawn. 

 Archaeologists have remarked that the Saxons generally 

 occupied the Roman towns that were left after the 

 Romano-British fled from them ; but although they 

 sometimes did so, there are many instances where they 

 established towns on new sites closely adjoining the 

 old, but carefully separated from them. Such was the 

 case at AYroxeter, where the Saxons built an entirely 

 new town, adjoining, but not actually on, the ruined 

 and deserted city of Uriconium. Probably the 

 Saxons found Durolevum wrecked in the internal 

 struggles that rent Britain asunder after the legionaries 

 were withdrawn ; and, being a Pagan and superstitious 

 people, they shunned the almost deserted heap of ruins 

 as being the abode of evil spirits. The stagnant and 

 fetid wreck of a great city, whose fallen houses covered 

 the bodies of many slaughtered citizens, and whose 

 site was very likely overflowed with choked drains and 

 freshets from the swollen streams, was not exactly the 

 place to appeal to strangers, even though uncivilized, 

 as a suitable site for dwelling upon ; and, indeed, it may 

 readily be imagined that these rotting remains of a dead 

 civilization would be infinitely more awe-inspiring 

 to a barbaric race than to the few remaining Britons 

 who had seen the place in all the pride and circumstance 

 of better days. And, indeed, the black, polluted earth 

 of a long-inhabited town, and the will-o' -wisps and 

 phosphorescent bubbles bred from the corruption 

 below, that would float at night uj^on the surface of the 

 Avater, would have frighted most people of those 

 superstitious times. 



Newington stands on elevated ground, away from 

 such chances, but in its immediate neighbourhood have 

 been found many Roman relics, and all around, the 

 fields, the meadows, and the hillsides are rich in legends 

 and broken pottery. Standard Hill is so called from a 

 tradition that the Roman eagle was there displayed, 

 and a field adjoining is known as Crockfield, from the 



