A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
no Roman remains nor distinctive Roman masonry appeared. Melted 
lead, iron nails and charcoal, and débris of brick were met with, show- 
ing that it was not pre-Roman. Inside the larger entrenchment a 
smaller one has been formed, which Chancellor Ferguson took to mean 
that at first a cohort was placed there to make the road, and then a cen- 
tury was left to guard it. In 1899 however, after revisiting Caermote, 
he withdrew his earlier opinion, and said that it might be omitted from 
the list of Roman sites. 
Mr. W. Jackson of St. Bees thought the irregular entrenchment 
on the top of the hill, 935 feet above the sea and about 60 by 70 feet 
wide, was the mons exploratorius or look-out station of the Romans. It 
is called the Battery, and was the site of a beacon. But the name and 
remains suggest a post-Roman occupation. _ 
Some of the hill-forts have only a single rampart. The much- 
discussed ring of boulders and earth on the top of Carrock Fell, oval in 
shape, with one end replaced by the easily defensible brow of a steep 
fell-side, and containing a cairn, may be an example, though some have 
doubted whether it is not partly natural and partly the result of miners’ 
trial diggings. On Little Mell Fell there is another ring embankment ; 
at Greencastle loch, east of the Maiden Way on Cross Fell, there may 
be found a semicircular fortification of earth on the top of Roderick 
heights—a name which suggests the famous king Rhydderch. At a 
point half a mile north of Burnmoor tarn, between Wastwater and Esk- 
dale, Maidencastle is the name given to a round enclosure, 21 feet in 
diameter, possibly a hill-fort of refuge, not necessarily to be connected 
with the Megalithic remains and cairns on the same moor. 
Another Maidencastle, also known as Caerthanoc, lies on Soulby 
Fell near Dunmallet. It is a circular entrenchment, 82 yards internal 
diameter, with an area of rather more than an acre. The entrenchment 
has two ramparts with a ditch, 18 feet wide in parts, between them ; 
and Dr. M. W. Taylor, writing in 1868, said that a few years earlier 
blocks of stone were visible in the entrenchment. Earlier still, Hutchin- 
son found within the ring an oblong square fort, measuring 20 by 15 
paces ; mentioned also in the eighteenth century by Father West. At 
present this is hardly visible, but the ring remains, so placed that it can 
scarcely be called a hill-fort, though it occupies an elevated position on 
the fell. It is more like the site of a British settlement, the caer of 
another chief. 
The peculiar form of this double rampart with the single ditch is 
seen also in two curious ‘camps,’ one on the east and one on the west of 
the county, far removed in position but very similar in construction. 
At Ousby there is the five-sided enclosure with double rampart and 
ditch, called Crewgarth, where foundations of walls have been seen, and 
an urn (type not stated), a quern, a mortar and a metal ball weighing 
2 or 3 lb. have been found at different times. Chancellor Ferguson 
thought it Anglo-Saxon or later; and no doubt it was an inhabited site 
in historical ages. 
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