Volume 1

The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fact, that some remain of antiquity, found in this neighbourhood, was a few years ago carried to a founder, who consigned it to the furnace, because no one present understood that such a thing was of the smallest value. — Carlisle Journal. [1807, Part II., p. 1105.] One of my sons, digging in my garden at Carlisle, found the accompanying Roman altar (Fig. 3), which I beg the favour of your ingenious correspondents to elucidate. Yours, etc., Alter Senex. [1824, Part II., p. 548.] A very ancient horse-shoe was recently found, embedded in solid clay, 4 feet deep, in Mr. Cowen’s brick-field, on the banks of the Eden, near Carlisle, little beyond where the Roman wall crossed that river. It is of an extraordinary size, weighing no less than twenty- eight ounces. There were originally thirteen nails in it (extending all round the front), eight of which still remain in an almost perfect state. It is much wider than the modern shoe; and the hollow is filled up by a thick plate of iron, as if destined to defend the foot of the horse from the spikes used in ancient warfare, and continued down to the Border contests, in order to check the operations of cavalry. The situation in which it was found, buried so deeply in pure clay, implies an antiquity much greater than the period of the moss-troopers, or the wars of the Bruces and the Edwards. [1829, Part II., p. 357.] As the cutting down of Callow Hill, near Carlisle, proceeds, many interesting remains of former ages are brought to light; but especially memorials of the dominion of the Romans, whose chief northern stations, as is well known, were in this district. A discovery was made lately of a well-executed and neatly designed Roman tomb, in fine preservation, 5 feet 4 inches long, and 2 feet 91 inches wide. It contained a female figure, in alto relievo, 3 feet in length, holding in her left hand a rudely sculptured flower; in her right a scarf, or some emblematical ornament, which is thrown over the shoulder. Under- neath is the inscription : “D. M. Avr. avrelia vixit annos xxxxi: ml. [telj Pivs Apolinaris conivgi carissime posuit.” [Huebner, p. 162.] Pro- bably :—Diis Manibus Aurelias. Aurelia vixit annos 41 : Memorial loco Pius Apolinaris conjugi carissimse posuit.” Near the stone was also discovered a roughly executed capital of a Corinthian column, 24 inches by 10, in red free-stone; also six Roman urns, of various dimensions (one of them full of ashes), a lachrymatory, and three jet rings, the largest three inches in diameter, and in an extraordinary perfect state.
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