Archaeology 93 



a time of increasing difficulty for the fenland cultivators. Alternatively, it 

 is possible that the disaster may have been due to a combination of tide 

 and wind causing a general breach in the natural silt defences which the 

 sea built against itself around the southern margins of the Wash. In any 

 case, matters had reached such a condition by the fifth century, that the 

 general abandonment of the region was due to take place whether the 

 Anglo-Saxons had coine or not. It is significant that the latter made no 

 attempt to settle anywhere in the fenland basin, and that they confined 

 themselves to the country round the edge. In view of their farming 

 habits it is unlikely that they would have failed to occupy a region that 

 had been intensively and successfully cultivated, if it still remained in any 

 physical condition favourable to their enterprise. The Saxons, for the first 

 time, subdued and occupied the scrub-clad uplands of the County, but they 

 had only been able to make a sparse setdement in favourable parts of the 

 Fenland by the time of the Domesday Survey, half a iTiillennium after 

 their first settlement. 



There are no large urban sites in Cambridgeshire. Roman Cambridge 

 was a subrectangular area about 26 acres in extent defended by a bank and 

 ditch of late date. It was a road junction of local importance, but no 

 architectural remains of any kind have ever been found in its area. We are 

 compelled to envisage Uttle more than a vUlage built of wood, clay, and 

 thatch. 



Conditions have not been favourable for finding out much about 

 Roman Cambridge because at various times a great thickness of top soil 

 has been removed from one of the most hopeful areas, but, as a result of 

 the finds made recently during the building of the new Shire Hall, it can 

 now be said that there was some occupation of the site in the middle of 

 the first century a.d. and that the former existence of a military camp 

 belonging to the period of the Claudian conquest is probable. No trace 

 of a wall has ever been foimd round Roman Cambridge, though Bowtell, 

 in the early nineteenth century, reported that some traces were then 

 visible in his judgment close to the Huntingdon Road's exit from the 



enceinte."^ 



The only other Roman town in the district was just over the Essex 

 border, at Great Chesterford. This was a more important centre with a 

 strong wall, much of which was still visible in Stukeley's time, though all 

 above ground has now vanished. The numerous and important finds 

 made here at different times suggest that it was an active local centre of 

 the smaller kind. 



' T. Bowtell, MSS. in Downing College Library, Cambridge, 



