FRENCH archeologists point out the "Hotel du Pavillion et des Bains de
Mer," facing the sea-bathing place at Boulogne, as occupying the site
from which Caligula's tower, Nemthur, once lifted its head into the
heavens and shed its light over land and sea. On the frowning cliff
which casts its shadow over the hotel there is a mass of hard brick
ruins--the last remnants of the fortifications built round Nemtor when
Boulogne was captured by the British troops in 1544.
Calphurnius's villula was evidently situated somewhere on the plateau,
called Tour d'Ordre, between the tower and the town, for St. Patrick,
in his "Confession," assured us that his father's home was near to
("prope") Bonaven, a statement which he would not make if the villula
stood on the sea-coast beyond the tower. It is, therefore, certain that
the site of the villula still exists somewhere not far inland from the
ruins alluded to.
[Picture: THE PRESENT FORTIFICATIONS AND SITE OF THE ROMAN ENCAMPMENT
AT BOULOGNE.]
Although Nemtor was undermined by the sea and fell into the waves in
1649, a picture of the tower as it once stood in all its glory is still
to be seen in the museum of Boulogne, and the curator very kindly
permitted the writer of this little history to get the drawing copied,
so that the sons of St. Patrick might be permitted to view Nemtor,
which Calphurnius lost his life in defending, and which gave a name to
the district in which St. Patrick was born.
If this brief history of St. Patrick's native town has succeeded in
identifying ancient Bononia, now Boulogne-sur-Mer, as St. Patrick's
birthplace, then the whole plateau of Tour d'Ordre, on the north-
eastern cliffs of Boulogne, where the villula of Calphurnius once
stood, will become sacred in the eyes of the spiritual sons of St.
Patrick throughout the wide world.
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