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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    dangerous to the Roman provinces towards the days of Valens and Valentinian. If the discoveries at Bradwell have brought to light nothing very striking or novel as regards architectural remains or miscellaneous objects, such as are often found in such localities, they are neverthe- less not profitless to any but the unimaginative and unthinking. The vestiges of Othona are important when regarded, as they should be, in connection with the history of Roman Britain, and the bold and masterly system of defence adopted to hold the rich and fertile province against the growing strength of fierce and adventurous invaders, yearly more and more confident in their own power, and convinced of the increasing weakness of the Roman government. These fortresses, aided by fleets, were so situated that the coasts and mouths of the chief rivers were well protected against the piratical Saxons, as they were called, and as they really were; but such defences were invulnerable only so long as they were manned and directed by Roman energy. The instant the garrisons were with- drawn, Britain, with a population numerically far stronger than that of the invading hordes, became defenceless. The great towns, never allowed or taught to unite against the hour of danger, fell, one by one, victims of the splendid but selfish and narrow-minded rule to which for so long a period they had been subjected. The coins found during the excavations I have not yet examined. They are not very numerous; and, as might have been expected, are mostly of the latest times of the Empire. Two, a sceatta and a penny, are Saxon. The skeletons dug up within the area of the castrum are, of course, not to be considered as Roman. Nothing can be more complete and satisfactory than the mode adopted by Mr. Oxley Parker to lay open the walls and the inclosed ground. This he is doing at his own sole expense. If his enlightened liberality should not be rewarded with objects of much show or interest in a public museum or private collection, he will, I am sure, feel amply compensated in the gratitude of all who can properly estimate the historical value of such researches. C. Roach Smith. Chelmsford. [1840, Part II., fp. 258, 259.] In clearing away a hedge last autumn in Cherry Garden Lane, between Widford and Chelmsford, a quantity of small broken pieces of Roman pottery were discovered, but their size hardly exceeded four inches, and they were all crowded together in a mass occupying a space of about one or two cubic yards. They were chiefly frag- ments of rims, of about seventeen different forms and sizes. I con- jecture that there was a Roman manufactory of urns somewhere in the vicinity, which may hereafter be discovered, and that the broken
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