CELTIC AND ROMANO-BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE 



no peculiar advantages. It does not stand on a commanding position, being 

 dominated on its south side by the land outside where its defences had 

 to be strengthened by double and deeper ditches. It is on no important 

 river, for, although the Ver may have been larger than it now is, it could 

 never have been navigable for more than quite small boats. It was more 

 or less surrounded by uncultivated forest land and must have drawn its 

 supplies of corn from the fertile lands on the north and north-east of the 

 county. It is true it lies at the crossing of what were two important 

 roads, but whether the site was selected by reason of the roads or the roads 

 made to suit the town is unknown. Such deficiencies of position were the 

 reason why Verulamium, Calleva and other Romano-British walled towns, 

 which had no water communication and were unsuitable as trading centres, 

 were never re-settled after their abandonment by their Romano-British 

 inhabitants. Most of those Romano-British walled towns which had water 

 communication like London, Winchester, Chichester and others were 

 re-settled or some of them were perhaps never entirely abandoned. 



The town of Verulamium was surrounded by ramparts and ditches, 

 which are slight on the north-east side, where there was sufficient protection 

 from the lake formed here by damming up the waters of the River Ver. 

 The great dam was later used as a causeway and ran up to the south-east 

 wall. These earthworks, which were thrown up before the Roman period 

 but afterwards perhaps partially remodelled, have been already described.^" 

 There is no evidence when they were surmounted by a wall, but Professor 

 Haverfield has pointed out that town walls seem to have been erected in 

 the western provinces of the Empire after about a.d. 250, when barbaric 

 invasions were becoming frequent." On the southern, western and northern 

 sides the wall has a considerable ramp of earth against it on the inside to 

 strengthen it against siege engines and otherwise, while on the outside, 

 where the ground level is about 4 ft. lower than that on the inside, there is 

 a berm or platform some 15 ft. to 20 ft. wide between the wall and the 

 ditch. Both the ramp and the berm are particularly visible on the south 

 side. The wall itself is of flint rubble with bonding courses of tiles 

 varying in the number of tile courses, generally from two to three, but at 

 St. Germans block there is a course of four tiles. These courses do not 

 pass through the wall, being only one tile deep on each side. They are 

 not laid level, but follow the slope of the land. The distance between them 

 varies from 2 ft. 6 in. to 3 ft. The thickness of the wall is from 9 ft. to 10 ft. 

 except at one point on the west side, where it is apparently 13^ ft., but it 

 may be here broken down to the footings. The original height of the wall 

 is not now ascertainable, but the greatest height above ground is 10 ft. 

 Along the east or river side, where there was a lake, the earthworks are 

 slight and the thickness of the wall was apparently only 6 ft. with 2 ft. 

 footings."^ The most important pieces of the wall now standing are 

 St. Germans block *' 115 ft. long and i o ft. high near the south-east " 



^^ F.C.H. Herts, ii, no, with plan showing earthworks. " F.C.H. Somers. i, 228. 



*^ Journ. of Brit. Arch. Assoc, xxvi, 52, and plan ; St. Albans Arch. Soc. Trans. 1893-4, pp. 51-2. 



'^ A large hole at the ground level of this block which seemed to imperil its safety was filled up with 

 concrete by the St. Albans Arch. Soc. some years ago. 



** In this piece of the wall there are some holes about 2 in. in diameter, clearly made while the wall 

 was being built. Possibly they were for ring bolts for mooring boats on the lake outside. 



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