172 REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1H07 



place of a Roman settlement. Many similar pits have been 

 discovered in the course of the excavations — not less than 

 forty-three having been dug out in this annex alone, and from 

 them a collection of relics has been recovered which is 

 remarkable not only for the picture it conveys to us of the 

 people of this frontier post, but for the extraordinary state 

 of preservation in which the objects have been found. One 

 of the most striking of these finds is the beautiful iron 

 helmet with its visor-mask, fashioned in the form of a young 

 beardless face, of which an illustration is to be found in 

 Plate X. 



To the West of the Fort lies the annex in which work was 

 in progress on the occasion of the Club's visit. In it there 

 has been uncovered the site of a very large block of buildings, 

 whose foundations occupied an area of about 300 feet in 

 length by about 100 feet in breadth. A line of jointed clay- 

 pipes brought water to the building, and well-constructed drains 



issued from it. The presence of hypocausts 

 Baths. and the general outline of the plan show that 



here were situated the Baths frequently met 

 with on the outskirts of a Roman fort. Here, as everywhere 

 else, liowever, stone-seekers have left little but foundations, 

 and in many places even these have disappeared. Still it 

 has been found possible, with some certainty, to work out 

 four phases of occupation, namely: — (1) a small bath-house 

 lying on a concrete foundation, which may be attributed to 

 the period of Agricola's advance ; (2) a greatly enlarged 

 building with spacious halls extending to the West ; (3) a 

 reduction in the size of the whole, in which this extended 

 building was abandoned and the block cut in two by a 

 ditch, while the portion nearest the Fort was surrounded by a 

 defensive earthwork lying on a cobble foundation; and (4) 

 a period in which the ditch was again filled up, but of which 

 the traces are much less definite. These excavations produced 

 many interesting things, among them a series of coins repre- 

 sentative of the Republican period down to the reign of 

 Marcus Aurelius, and several fibulae, notably one S-shaped 

 and decorated with blue and yellow champleve enamel. The 

 most important fiod, however, came from a great pit which 

 \^s^d ^0 doubt served as a well for one of the earner oocupatiops, 



