Bygone Hertfordshire / ed. by William Andrews.

Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bygone Hertfordshire / ed. by William Andrews. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/322 page 16
    ^Tbc 0nl^ IRoman theatre in 6rcat Britain. By Charles Henry Ashdown, f.r.g.s. PON the southern slope of the geiitle valley of the Ver, and facing the ancient town of St. Albans, clustering around its monastic nucleus the venerable Abbey, lie great masses of ancient masonry, the thin red tiles in which sufficiently indicate its Roman origin. These remains, to- gether with a deep fosse and a causeway across the valley, are almost the only relics we now possess to indicate the site of the great Roman city of Verulamium, itself an immediate successor of. the far-spreading British capital of the Cassii, and the home of Cymbeline and Cassivelaunus. Great Caesar and his legions trod this classic site, the farthest north of his second invasion, but a century elapsed after the death of the Conqueror ere the cry of the centurion was again heard within the ringed enclosure, d hen Rome came to stay. The wattled skin-covered defences of the British city gave place to a high and broad rampart, composed of the native flint embedded in
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