of the duke of Bedford; in it several valuable works of Inigo Jones
left, particularly a curious grotto.
[Sidenote: +Durocobrivis.+]
[Sidenote: TAB XXIX. 2d Vol.]
From Dunstable the Itinerary leads us out of the road, going strait
to Verolam, and takes in another station by the way, _Durocobrivis_;
which demonstrates it was made not so much for travellers, as for
the soldiery or officers that were to visit the garrisons, therefore
comprehends as many as could conveniently be taken into that route.
About this station antiquaries have been much divided, when it
certainly ought to be placed at Berghamsted, commonly Barkamstead,
in Hertfordshire, which well suits the assigned distances from
_Magiovinium_, and the subsequent _Verolanium_, and has evidently been
a Roman town, as its name imports; and probably the castle there stands
upon a Roman foundation. It is certain Roman coins are frequently dug
up there: my friend Mr. Browne Willys has a Roman coin, found there:
young Mr. Whitfield, brother to the major at St. Alban’s, has many
Roman coins, great and small, found in the castle at Berghamsted. The
inside, within the walls where the lodgings were, is about two acres:
the entrance was not at the corner, where now, but in the front of the
south side: many chimneys remain in the wall, of the lodgings which
extended quite round, leaving a spacious court within; and all the
windows looked inward: the ground of the court is distinguishable,
being good soil, and there they find the Roman coins; the rest is
rubbish and foundations; so that the Saxon castle was made upon the
Roman: the chapel seems to have stood against the west wall, where
be signs of a stair-case: the walls are of flints gathered from the
highlands, very thick, and laid with strong mortar. This town fully
answers the distance in the Itinerary, and remarkably the import of
the name, according to Mr. Baxter’s derivation, though he erroneously
places it at Woburn, _civitas paludosi profluentis_; for here is a
large marsh, or bog, wherein the ancient British _oppidum_ was placed:
it is most sweetly surrounded with high, hard, and pleasant ground
all around, full of hedge-rows, pastures, and arable: the castle was
set very judiciously in the north side, upon a piece of dry ground,
incompassed with springs, by the Saxons made exceedingly strong. The
town is upon the south side of the marsh, stretching itself a good
length in handsome buildings, and a broad street: the church is a large
handsome building, a monumental _effigies_ of a knight and a lady; upon
his coat a bend or belt, and in the sinister chief a martlet; a lion
his crest under his feet: it is full of chapels and monuments old and
new. This town has been an old corporation; the kings of Mercia resided
here; Wightred, king of Kent and Mercia, anno 697, held a parliament
here; and here king Ina’s laws were published: all which further
confirm its being the place we assert.[104]
Near is Ashridge, an abbey, now the seat of the duke of Bridgewater;
a park finely wooded, especially with tall beech-trees full of mast.
Hereabouts I observed many great stones composed wholly of little
pebbles; others, of larger pebbles or flints petrified together
exceeding hard. Near Ricmeresworth, at Moor park, Mr. Styles, digging a
hill away, found veins of sea-sand with mussels in them, and many other
curious particulars.
[Sidenote: +Verolanium.+]
[Sidenote: TAB. XCV.]
[Sidenote: TAB XXX XXXI.]
We come again into the Watling-street at _Verolanium_. I need say
little here, after Mr. Camden, Chancey, Weaver, and others. This was
the famous _municipium_ of the Romans, destroyed by Boadicia. The form
of the city is depicted in plate 95. in one part the ditch is double,
but irregularly formed. I imagine the outermost was the only fence of
the first city, which Boadicia destroyed before the walls were built,
and these reduced it into a more square form; to which the inner ditch
belonged. In some measure the track of the streets is visible, when
the corn first comes up, or is nearly ripe: three years ago good part
of the wall was standing; but ever since, out of wretched
ignorance, even of their own interest, they have been pulling it up
all around, to the very foundations, to mend the highway; and I met
hundreds of cart-loads of Roman bricks, &c. carrying for that purpose,
as I now rode through the old city, though they may have stone cheaper,
because of the prodigious strength of the mortar, so that they cannot
get up one whole brick in a thousand. The composition of the Roman wall
is three foot layers of flint, and one foot made up of three courses
of Roman brick: there are round holes quite through the wall, at about
eight yards distance, in that corner still left by St. German’s chapel:
another great piece of the wall is left by the west gate, called Gorham
Block; it is always twelve foot thick. I saw a little brass _lar_, or
_genius alatus_; another curious antiquity, of a brass knife-handle
with odd faces and figures on it, now in possession of Sir Robert
Cornwall, baronet; a little urn of white earth two inches and quarter
high: part of a great wine-jar, 20 inches high, two foot diameter,
in St. Michael’s vestry; another such in St. Alban’s church. In St.
Michael’s church sleeps the great naturalist Bacon, who first revived
the experimental way of philosophy: his mansion-house or manor was
at Gorhambury, hard by, where is a statue of Henry VIII. and several
things worth seeing: it is now the seat of my lord Grimstone. Infinite
are the antiquities of all sorts that have been, and frequently are,
dug up at _Verolam_. When I was making an ichnography of it, I could
have taken several pecks of remainders of Mosaic pavements out of a
little ditch near St. German’s chapel; and there is one or two intire
yet under ground. As you walk along the great road that runs north and
south through the city from St. Michael’s church, you see foundations
of houses and streets, gutters, floors, &c. under the hedge-rows.
The ancient part of the monastic church and the steeple are intirely
built of Roman brick, fetched by the abbots from the old city. March
1718–9 a Mosaic pavement was found. The Roman bricks are generally
eighteen inches long, twelve broad, one and a half thick. I measured
one in the south-wall of the school-house, by the east end of the
abbey church, twenty-three inches long, three thick, which probably
was made for hypocausts. Upon the walls of old _Verulam_ grows the
_bee orchis_, a very curious plant. Many are the monuments, brasses,
tombs, and inscriptions, in the abbey church: the vault of Humphry duke
of Glocester was lately discovered: the high altar is a curious piece
of Gothic work, which I have represented in two plates. Hard by is
Sopwell nunnery, where they say Henry VIII. was married to Anna Bolen:
part of it is standing. But to say any thing particular of religious
antiquities, would be too tedious: they have lately been working hard
at pulling up the old foundations of the abbey, and it is now levelled
with the pasture, when three years ago one might make a tolerable
guess at the ichnography of the place. In the heart of the town of the
adjoining corporation stood another of queen Eleanor’s crosses, which
they likewise intirely demolished, not considering that such kind of
antiquities invite many curious travellers to come thither. This very
year they pulled down the stone tower or gate-house on the north side
of the abbey, within a month after I had taken a sketch of it. In St.
Peter’s church I found this old inscription on a stone,
*EDITHE : LE : UINETER : GIST : ICI : DIEU : DE
SA : ALME : EIT : MERCI.*
I shall add no more, than that my notion of the derivation of this
town, and several others compounded of like words, is, a fair
habitation, _Vrolân_, as it justly merits.
[Illustration: 29·2ᵈ. _Prospect of_ Berghamsted _14. Sept. 1724._
+Dvrocobrivis.+
_Stukeley delin._ _E. Kirkall sculp._]
[Illustration: 95 +Verolanivm+
Martino Folkes Ar. observantiæ ergo d. _W. Stukeley_
A. _To_ Suellaniacis
B. _The Monastrey_
C. _Sopwell a Nunnery_
D. _Sᵗ Stephens_
E. _Q. Elenors-cross_
F. _Sᵗ Michaels_
G. _A Bell-tower_
H. _Sᵗ Marys chap_:
_Stukeley delin._ _Parker Sculp_]
[Illustration: 30
_The high Altar at Sᵗ. Albans. 28. Dec 1720._ _Stukeley d._]
[Illustration: 31 _The back side of the high altar at Sᵗ. Albans_
_Stukeley d._]
[Sidenote: +Suellaniacis.+]
The Watling-street seems to have passed directly through the Roman
city, a little southward of St. Michael’s church and St. Mary’s chapel,
so by St. Stephen’s: nevertheless there is a road round about, without
the south side of the city-walls, for those that had no occasion to go
through the city: it goes by St. Julian’s, once an hospital; then by
Colney-street and Radway; thence almost disused, and scarce known but
from its straitness: it continues direct, but very narrow, the hedges
having incroached upon it on both sides, till we arrive at our next
station, _Suellaniacis_, upon Brockley hill, a little south of Elstre,
and near Stanmore. From this eminence, where Mr. Philpot’s summer-house
stands, is a sweet prospect across the Thames into Surrey: this is
by Kendale wood, where formerly they found an old flint wall laid in
terrace-mortar as they call it, meaning its strength, so hard that they
could not possibly dig it up with pick-axes: they found an oven in the
same place. Mr. Philpot, when digging his canal and foundations for his
buildings, which are upon the site of the old city, found many coins,
urns, and other antiquities. They have a proverb here,
_No heart can think, nor tongue can tell,
What lies between_ Brockley-hill _and_ Penny-well;
meaning the coins found thereabouts. In the wood over-against the
house, great quantity of Roman bricks, gold rings, and coins, have been
found in digging; many arched vaults of brick and flints under the
trees: the whole top of the hill is covered with foundations. Pennywell
is a parcel of closes across the valley beyond _Suellaniacis_, where
foundations are discernible: here likewise they say was a city: two or
three years ago they dug privately, in hopes of finding treasure at
this place. I am of Mr. Baxter’s opinion, that the name of this station
has some reference to the famous British king _Suellan_, or Cassibelan,
general of the Britons against Cæsar, and that his town was in this
neighbourhood; which I shall consider more particularly upon another
occasion. By the road side is a barrow lately dug away.
Hence the road goes through Edgworth; and so at Paddington, by Tyburn,
it crosses the other Roman road, called now Oxford-street, which was
originally continued to Old-street, going north of London one way;
the other way it proceeds by the back side of Kensington, and through
an unfrequented path, till it falls into the present great road to
Brentford, Stanes, &c. and it is a Roman road all the way, going pretty
nearly east and west: therefore our Watling-street must cross it with
an oblique angle; and by observation I found it to be about forty-five
degrees. Higden takes notice the Watling-street ran to the west of
Westminster, over the Thames, so through the middle of Kent: from
Tyburn I judge it goes over part of Hyde-park,[105] and by May-fair,
through St. James’s park, to the street by Old Palace-yard called the
Wool-staple, to the Thames. Here has been an old gate; one part of
the arch is still left, but not Roman. On the opposite side of the
river is Stane-gate ferry, which is the continuation of this street to
Canterbury, and so to the three famous sea-ports, _Rutupiæ_, _Dubris_,
and _Lemanis_. This Oxford road was originally carried north of London,
in order to pass into Essex, because London then was not considerable;
but in a little time became well nigh lost; and Holborn was struck
out from it, as conducting travellers thither, directly entering the
city at Newgate, originally called Chamberlain’s gate, and so to
Londonstone, the _lapis milliaris_ from which distances are reckoned:
and hence the reason why the name of Watling-street is still preserved
in the city, though the real Watling-street goes through no part of it,
but through Southwark; or, if we please, we may call this a vicinal
branch of the Watling-street.
[Illustration: 57 +Londinivm+ Augusta
_7. Nov. 1722._
Illustrissimo Comiti Penbrokiæ Moecenati Eximio Sacra Tabula.
_Stukeley delin._]
[Sidenote: +Londinium.+]
[Sidenote: TAB. LVII.]
According to method I should speak of _Londinium_ here: but because
the great deal that may be said thereupon will make a discourse by
itself, we content ourselves at present with giving the plan of it,
as we suppose it might appear in the times of the Romans; and so
continuing our tour into Kent, will finish the whole continuation of
the Watling-street with what few memoirs I could pick up at that time.
As Old-street went on the north of London, so the proper Watling-street
we have been upon, since High-cross in Warwickshire, went on the south;
from Stane-gate ferry across St. George’s fields, so south of the Lock
hospital to Deptford and Black heath: a small portion of the ancient
way pointing to Westminster abbey is now the common road on this side
the nearest turnpike; but the continuation of it is quite lost since
the bridge was made, and all roads meet at that centre as so many
_radii_. When London became considerable, the ferry over-against it,
from being better attended, rendered that at Stangate almost useless;
so passengers went through the city by Canon-street, Watling-street,
and Holborn: hence so little appears of it between Tyburn and the Lock
hospital; and probably its materials were long since wholly dug away to
mend the highways. Upon this way in Southwark many Roman antiquities
have been found, particularly a _Janus_ of stone, in possession of Dr.
Woodward: but our business shall be to prosecute the end of the second
journey and the whole third and fourth of Antoninus.
From Shooters hill the direction of the road is very plain both ways:
a mile westward from the bottom of the hill you find vestiges of it
just upon the common: some part of the _agger_ is left, made of gravel
near at hand: from the top of Shooters hill you see it butts upon
Westminster abbey, where it passes the Thames; and this demonstrates
its original direction, and that it was begun from the east; for the
turn of the river at Greenwich intercepts it, though not observed in
maps: so the way is forced to deflect a little southward there, and
then recovers its point: beyond that hill it is very strait as far as
the ken reaches. On Black heath a vast _tumulus_, now used as a butt
for _archers_, hereabouts in great request till Henry the VIIIth’s
time: and hence the name of _Shooters_ hill.
[Sidenote: +Noviomagus.+]
[Sidenote: +Northfleet.+ Ro. _town_.]
It is to be noted that in the second journey of Antoninus, _Madviacis_,
Maidstone, and _Durobrovis_, Rochester, are transposed; therefore
in the whole between London and Rochester it is twenty-eight miles,
as in both the next journeys called twenty-seven, (but more rightly
the former:) so that, as the Watling-street leads directly over
Shooters hill between London and Rochester, and seeing the whole
distance is answerable to fact, we need be in no pain for finding
out the intermediate station, _Noviomagus_: doubtless it was about
Wellend or Crayford,[106] as Mr. Somner judges, where the respective
distances on each side point it out: notwithstanding, as to matters
of antiquity, we have nothing to say. So with good reason Dr. Plot
settles _Pennocrucium_ at Stretton in Staffordshire, because it is upon
this same Watling-street, and answers the distances, though no Roman
antiquities are there discovered; and the like must we do of other
places. No doubt there were two stations between London and Rochester,
though only one mentioned in the Itinerary: Northfleet seems to be the
other, where many antiquities are found. I heard much talk of an old
town at Plumsted, nearer the Thames, and to which they say the river
came up originally: if true, perhaps this was the _Noviomagus_, and
the _Trinobantum_, or _Trenowydh_ of the Britons, i. e. the town of
the _Novii_ or _Novantes_, of which their old writers make a din, and
would affix it to London: they say there are much ruins there. East
of Crayford, all along upon the heath, as well as on the other side
from Shooters hill, the ridge of the Watling-street is very visible;
but beyond Dartford the common road leaves it quite on the south side,
which induced me to follow the Roman: it becomes a lane presently, and
passes in a very strait line, for five or six miles, through little
valleys, woods, and inclosures; and about that distance I lost both
it and myself in a wood by Southfleet; which obliged me to endeavour
again to recover the great road: by the quantity of ground I went for
that purpose, I guess this is a branch of the main road directly to
Maidstone, for the convenience of such as intended to go strait to
_Lemanis_ by _Durolenum_. The soil from London to Dartford is gravel,
but the highest ground has sand: beyond to Rochester it is chalk full
of flints and gravel: the flints lie in _strata_, very black, and
squeezed flat like mortar in the course of a wall; and above the chalk
is pure sand.
[Sidenote: +Durobrivis.+]
[Sidenote: TAB. XXX. 2d Vol.]
[Sidenote: TAB. VI.]
The river Medway at Rochester is very broad and rapid, foaming most
violently: there is a stately bridge built across it: below bridge lie
about fifty of our biggest first rate men of war unrigged, such as
the Royal Sovereign, Britannia, Barfleur, &c. The Roman city was very
strong, being walled about and ditched:[107] near that angle below the
bridge, incompassed by the river, is a large piece of Roman building
of the wall, made of rubble-stone laid sloping side-ways, here and
there Roman bricks: houses are built upon it, and it is broke through
for a passage; in the inside much flint. Dr. Thorp has great numbers
of antiquities found hereabouts. This city stands in an angle of the
river: it seems to have been of a square form, the Watling-street
running directly through it: most of the walls still remain, but
repaired. The castle was built out of one angle by William the
Conqueror, which together with the cathedral has altered the regular
ground-plot of the city, as at Lincoln: the walls of the great tower
now left are four yards thick. The body of the cathedral is of the
original structure before the Conquest, repaired by bishop Gundulf an
architect, who likewise built the castle: the great tower is now called
Gundulf’s tower. The chalky cliff under the castle-wall next the river
is a romantic sight: the rapidity of the river wastes it away; and then
huge tracts of the wall fall down: in some places you see the bottom of
the broad foundation, and which in others is carried down to the water.
On the north side of the north-west tower of the church is Gundulf’s
_effigies_.[108] The front of the church is of the old work, but a new
window put in the middle. The eastern gate of the city was pulled down
not long ago: I saw many of the stones distributed among the adjacent
buildings, being of a Roman cut.
[Sidenote: +Vaginacis.+]
[Sidenote: TAB. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. 2d Vol.]
We must now, according to the Itinerary, leave the Watling-street, and
go to Maidstone. The road hither passes by that famous British monument
called Kits-coty-house. It cannot be disputed but that Maidstone is the
next Roman station. _Mædwæg_ I apprehend signifies the meadows upon
the river _Vaga_, which are here beautiful: whether the Latin word be
_Madviacis_, or _Vagniacis_, I see no difficulty in forming it from the
British.[109] The archbishop of Canterbury had a palace here, founded
by John Ufford, finished by Simon Islip: a college or hospital was
erected by A. B. Boniface, and a chantry by Thomas Arundel, now the
free-school. About 1720, they dug up several canoos, made of hollowed
trees, in the marshes of the river Medway above Maidstone: one is used
for a boat to this day. I saw, in the hands of Dr. Dodd, a British
coin of _electrum_, found at Addington near Malling, anno 1720, in the
foundation of a stone wall: on the concave side a British horse, rude
enough; the convex was plain.
[Illustration: 30·2ᵈ. _A Piece of the Roman Wall at Rochester 7. Oct.
1724._
_Stukeley delin_ _Toms Sculp._]
[Illustration: 6 Rochester _Castle 4 Oct. 1722._
Dno J. ohi Elwill Barᵗᵗᵒ. dd. _W. Stukeley._]
[Illustration: 31·2ᵈ. _A Prospect of Kits Coty:house Kent Oct: 15.
1722._
_Illustrissimo_ Heneagio _Comiti Winchilsea Animi fortitudine &
eruditione singulari plusquam titulis nobili, Antiquitatem hanc_ D.
Wˢ. Stukeley. _E. Kirkall sculp._]
[Illustration: 32·2ᵈ. Kits Coty house _15. Oct. 1722. The N. E.
Prospect._
_The View_ _The Groundplot_
_Stukeley delin:_ _The lower_ Coty _house_ _E: Kirkall sculp:_]
[Illustration: 33·2ᵈ. _A Prospect of the Country from_ Kits Coty
house _15 Oct. 1722_.]
[Illustration: 34·2ᵈ. _View of the Ruins of the Lower Coty house._ A.
_The Upper Coty house._]
[Illustration: 27 Dno. Samueli Lennard _Barr. ᵗᵒ Tabula Votiva_.
_Stukeley delin._ _E. Kirkall sculp_
_5 Oct. 1722. Prospect of the Remains of_ Feversham Abby _where K.
Stephen was buried_.]
[Sidenote: +Durolenum.+]
From thence the Itinerary leads us to _Durolenum_. The learned Talbot
first guessed it to be Charing; and to me he seems to be in the right.
It is upon a spring of the river Len. The present name is derived from
the British _Caer_, as they called all Roman towns in after-times:
anciently it was wrote _Cering_ with a Saxon termination, intimating
the meadows it stands upon. Roman antiquities are found all about, but
nothing I have yet met withal, that particularly fixes the spot the
Roman city stood upon. Near is a manor called Broughton; Chart[110]
is the name of the hundred, from two little adjoining villages: but
at this place the distances answer well, and the roads in many parts
appear: that from hence to Canterbury passed by Chilham; so over the
river Stour by Sharnford, which retains the British name of a causeway.
The archbishops of Canterbury had a castellated palace at Charing,
probably given them by some of the first Saxon kings, as a royal
demesne of theirs: there are large ruins of it still left. Here was a
chantry founded by Sir John Burley. All the ground upon the river Len
at the bottom of the great ridge of hills is sand, sometimes exceeding
white; between that and the bottom of the hills it is flinty: the hills
themselves are pure chalk. All Kent consists of large tracts of ground
gradually rising from the east to a western ridge steep that way, so
succeeded by another of like manner; but any of these tracts are made
up of little hills and short valleys, quite of a different nature from
those on the west side of the island: and Mr. Camden has observed this
before us, as to the northern part of the island, p. 533. _Britannia_.
We may gather an idea of the natural reason of it from what we spoke at
first, of the ground hardening upon the instant of the earth’s rotation.
After we have made this excursion with Antoninus, to take in these
two stations, which seems to have been done to conduct travellers the
nearest way to the _portus Lemanis_, we return again to Rochester, that
we may finish the progress of the Watling-street.
[Sidenote: +Feversham.+]
[Sidenote: TAB. XXVII.]
[Sidenote: +Newington.+]
[Sidenote: Ro. _town_.]