On the distribution of towns and villages in England / by Geo. G. Chisholm.

  • George Chisholm
Date:
[1897]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the distribution of towns and villages in England / by Geo. G. Chisholm. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    (Newcastle), Eburacum (York), Venta Icenorum (Norwich), and Camulodunum (Colchester). To these we may add Aqua3 Sulis (Bath), which, though it has long ceased to be a seaport, in all probability served all the purposes of a port for this district in Eoman times when no Bristol existed, and Luguvallium (Carlisle), which continued to be a seaport down to a comparatively recent date. Of the towns mentioned, Clausentum and Venta Icenorum do not appear to have occupied the exact site of their modern representatives, and the difference in situation, slight as it is in both cases, is not without interest. The exact site of the Eoman Clausentum is now occupied by the village of Bitterne, at the head, but on the east side, of the small estuary of the Itchen,* where Camden was shown ruins, walls, and ditches of an ancient castle about half a mile in circuit, and surrounded on three sides by the sea at flood tide, where, he adds, coins of Eoman emperors were frequently dug up. Through the care of the late Sir Stuart Macnaghten, the old Eoman boundaries of the station, which was an insular one, have been preserved, and can still be seen. The coins found here are chiefly of the later empire, those of Tetricus, one of “ the thirty tyrants,” being most numerous. A port at this spot would be the highest point that sea-going ships could reach on their way to Winchester, then the principal goal in this region. As traflic increased, the more extensive accommodation for loading and unloading on the peninsula between the Itchen and Test would give greater advantages to that site. Venta Icenorum appears to have occupied the site of the modern village of Caistor, which lies a little to the south of Norwich, on a small river called the Tese, probably navigable to this point in Eoman times, and would be the first navigable point reached in following the road to the Yare from the south. Besides Clausentum and Venta Icenorum, Portus Adurni (? Porchester), Tamara (near Tamerton, on the Plym), and Gariannonum (Burgh Castle, on the Yare), may also be mentioned as having their modern representatives as seaports at some little distance from the ancient towns. Whether Porchester is to be identified with Portus Adurni or not,t its name seems clearly to indicate the presence of some Eoman port here. It is now represented by Portsmouth, the foundation of which is ascribed by Camden to the removal of the inhabitants from Porchester to the island of Portsea, in consequence of “the gradual withdrawing of the sea.” At no period, however, can the harbour on which these ports stand have had anything like the commercial importance of Southampton, which is much better situated for communication with the interior, and does not suft’er from the disadvantage of the strongly flowing and ebbing tides, which at times render the navigation of the entrance to the other port extremely difficult. The commodiousness of the harbour as * The very plausible derivation given by Camden for the name Clausentum would seem to militate against this identification. Camden suggests that Clausentum means the harbour of the Entum, or Anton, claudh meaning in “ British ” a harbour formed by artificial banks of earth (Pugh’s AVelsh dictionary defines Claicdd as “ a dike, ditch, or trench, a pit or quarry; an embankment or wall thrown up; ” the primary meaning evidently being “something made by digging ”). The dh, or Welsh dd, pronounced like the th in this, would readily enough become an s (2) in the mouths of those who could not pronounce that sound. But Anton is the name of the river on the west side of the small peninsula on which Southampton stands. The name may very well have been given also, however, to what we call Southampton Water, and hence the name “port of Anton” would be suitable for any port at the head of that inlet. t “ Porchester Fort, possibly Portus Adurni.”—F. Ilaverfield, in the list of places contained in the map of Eoman Britain in the ‘ Historical Atlas of Modern Europe ’ (Oxford ; Clarendon Press, 1896). See also Archaeological Journal, vol. xlvi. p. 68. No. V.—November, 1897.1 2 m