By N. Story Maskehjne, Esq., M.P. 183 



and about 350ft. from E. to W. It is worth noticing how closely 

 these measures correspond to 300 and 360 Roman feet respectively. 

 A Roman foot is estimated as 0-9723 of an English foot, or, accor- 

 ding to Bockh, it is 0-9705. These give within Bin. the numbers 

 found. The first explanation suggested by the aspect of the ground 

 is that it was the site of an extensive Roman villa. More probably, 

 however, it may have been a small camp or castelhm, such as the 

 Romans would construct in the neighbourhood of a British oppidum, 

 intended only to bold perhaps a mcmipulus or a centuna of the 

 leo-ion that garrisoned the division of the province. Unfortunately, 

 there remain no traces of building except that some excavations 

 recently carried on there by myself, with the kind permission and 

 aid of Mr. H. Kemble, of Overtown, resulted in exposing a sarsen 

 stone foundation of a wall on the line of the ridge of the second 

 terrace. Some Samian and other ware turned up in the trenches 

 duo- confirms the Roman date of the work. 



Some other indications of former buildings are seen in a field of 

 Mr. Kemble's adjoining the road to Prior's Hill. They also are 

 rectangular in form, and can best be traced by the color of the 

 ground, or of the crops on it as seen from the camp. Broad bands 

 that seem to indicate the site of walls are comparatively white with 

 small scattered flint, the square or rectangular parts of the ground 

 which they enclose being dark in color and singularly free from the 

 ubiquitous flint flakes. They appear to have been the result of the 

 upturning of a layer of flint fragments that lie under the surface 

 soil, and probably came to the surface when some ditches were dug 

 on the sites of the present lines ; and on their being filled m again 

 the flint flakes became strewn on the surface. These foundations are 

 certainly of considerable antiquity, but there was nothing found in 

 cutting trenches across them to justify assigning a date to them. 

 They may have been the site of wooden palisades bounding an 

 ancient farmstead. Abundant fragments of rude pottery-some 

 with no glaze, some with a black and others with a bright red glaze, 

 and red throughout the material-are to be found on both the sites. 

 A blue bead was met with in the rectangular enclosure first described. 

 It was in imitation of Lapis-Lazuli, but with a white intermediate 



