13 NOVEMBER 1869, Page 13

still be discovered in some places, and on the side

of the road (which have been by some identified with Coccium) are described between Overborough and Lancaster, a milliare or Roman milestone as being those of a station about 219 yards one way, and about was preserved. 200 another. Part of it is called the Castle Croft, where the ground Lan-caster, as its name indicates, is evidently the site of is still very irregular, and part of the ditch is visible. The high a Roman station, the camp on the Lune or Lope. Leland, in road from Manchester to Preston goes right through the middle of the time of Henry VIII., tells us, "The old town, as they say it. Pieces of ancient brick and pots are said to have been found there, was almost all burned, and stood partly beyond the Blak near it. Other antiquaries tell us that remains of Roman roads Freres. In those parts, in the fields and foundations, hath been radiating in several directions from this spot can be traced. Coins found much Roman coin." In 1772 an altar-stone four feet long and other antiquities have been found at Cliviger, near Burnley, and two feet ten inches wide was discovered in digging a cellar, and there are scattered throughout the county numerous similar in an ancient part of the town, with an inscription from which it traces of the Roman occupation.

appeared to have been dedicated to the Di Mandes by L. Julius Lancashire long continued to assert its Roman-British character Apollinaria ; and that the Augustan wing of the Roman Army against the Saxon invaders, as part of the State of Strathclyde ; and was stationed here in the time of the Emperor Gratian. Five its extreme north-western parts afterwards remained attached to the years after this discovery, in sinking a cellar in the upper part of independent British State of Cumberland, when the rest was divided

Church Street, a Roman sepulchre was found about three feet between the Saxon states of the Mercian Confederacy (the portion from the surface. Half-burnt fragments of wood, bones, and south of the Ribble) and the Northumbrian principality of Deira.

ashes, with broken paten; urns, Roman bricks, coins, horns of Twenty-six of the marks or original settlements of the Anglo- animals, &c., and two fragments of a thick wall, at about five Saxons have been traced in the names of places in Lancashire. yards' distance from each other, were found within. In addition The county, of course, shared the general fate of the Saxon king- to other remains, an earthen sepulchral lamp entire, with the doms between which it was partitioned during the Northman nozzle at which the wick had issued burnt black, and a large invasions, and becamefor some time Scandinavian in its government. human skull were also discovered. At the back part of this In the Saxon Chronicle we may still read, under the year A.D. 923,

site there is a descent of about seventy or eighty yards, that in this year, after harvest, King Edward went with his forces to where it is thought the river Lune anciently ran ; but it is Thelwall, and commanded the burh to be built, and occupied, and now built upon, and in levelling the ground towards this descent, manned ; and commanded another force, also of Mercians, the while a number of similar remains were found, which constituted a that he sate there, to take possession of Mameceaster(Manchester),in

regard these without direct reference to the sun's magnitude. stratum of ashes and bones from a foot to about five feet in thick- How many of us really appreciate the enormous volume of the ness. On digging a drain on the opposite side of Church Street, sun ? We read certain figures in books of astronomy, but do we at about six feet from the surface, the same sort of stratum of grasp their full significance ? There is, however, a simple way of ashes and bones was found, with boars' tusks, and a small brazen viewing the matter which at once opens our eyes to the vastness head, resembling a dog's, and also the pedestal and front part of a of the solar globe. If we remember that the earth on which we small image. There was a coin in brass of Marcus Aurelius, and move, the scene of all those interests which we deem so important, another small one in silver of Faustina, his wife. On the other bears so minute a proportion to the sun, that if he were represented side of Church Street there was discovered a few years afterwards by a two-feet globe the earth would on the same scale appear no a large hewn stone, six feet under the surface, about three tons' larger than a cherrystone, we see what wonderful processes of weight, and under it were found a number of coins of Vespasian, action those must be which are at work upon the solar surface. Domitian, &c. A hypocaust of Roman pottery was found on the We recognize in our hurricanes the action of nature in her fiercest estate of Mr. Clifford, at Quernmoor, and a great variety of moods, but the solar hurricanes would in an instant destroy the bricks, tiles, and earthen vessels were taken from the ovens. A whole globe on which we live. We wonder at the volcano which tile with elevated edges and a number of the bricks bore the in- lays a whole city in ashes, but our earth would be swept like a scription of "Ala Sebusia." In 1794 a group of Roman antiquities mote before the rush of a solar-volcano. We see, lastly, in the was found in a field near the road from Lancaster to Cockerham, earthquake which upheaves a continent the most energetic of all viz., a headless figure of Ceres, about ten feet in height, four the forces at work upon our earth, but the least of the throes which sculptured heads, and two sea-lions cut in freestone. A monu- convulse the solar surface would toss a globe like ours as the waves mental stone was found in 1830 in digging a cellar on Castle Hill.

of ocean toss the lightest sea-drift. In making an alteration in Lancaster Castle in 1797, a perfect and beautiful altar dedicated to the god Mars, Cociditm, was found. Another altar has been discovered in a garden in the Vicarage

THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Fields. Some pottery WAS also discovered under Church Street, on one piece of which was represented Apollo play- CXXIL—LANCASIIIRE :-EARLY HISTORY (Continued). ing on a lyre. A high flood brought down a fine milliary THE site of the Roman station of BREMETOSACIS is now stone, six feet in height, of the date of the third consulate of usually placed, as we have already mentioned, at Oyer- Hadrian, and inscribed " Centuria Secunda Mill. pass. quinque." borough, otherwise called Orer-Burrow, or Burrow simply, a village Other milliary stones have been discovered from time to time, one about five miles north of Hornby, and two miles south-east of in cutting the Lancaster Canal in the line which passes through Kirkby Lonsdale. The evidences of a station here are an encamp- Burrough, with the name of the Emperor Philip (A.D. 244-249). ment situated at the confluence of two streams, and tesselated From a fine tablet found near the top of Church Street, it appears pavements, inscriptions upon stones, old medals, ,&c., which have that Flavius Ammausius, the prefect of the Sebussian (Sambre) been found at different times. It is also about eighteen English wing of horse, restored the bath and basilicum in the time of the miles from Ribchester, which, if the latter place be identified with Emperor Marcus Aurelius. A monumental stone was discovered Cocain!, would nearly enough correspond to the twenty Roman in 1830 on the Castle Hill, and large quantities of Roman coins miles assigned as the distance between the two stations by have since been dug up, one of the most curious of which is a the Antonine Itinerary. Mr. Rauthmell, who in 1746 published a small silver piece of the Emperor Otho, discovered a little below treatise on the subject, observes that like the generality of Roman the parish church. Above a hundred coins have been found stations, this was formed near the junction of two rivers, having the of Constantine and Probus. Both the church and the castle were Lac washing its southern banks, and the Lune running on the built on the site of the Roman station. The Roman origin of the -western side. On the eastern and southern sides the ramparts old wall called the Wery Wall has been disputed, but Stukeley were then quite visible, but the others had been nearly obliterated and others are in favour of that origin. Stukeley says, "I found a by modern improvements. Among the fragments of antiquity great piece of the wall made of the white stone of the country, and found here, Mr. Rauthmell describes an altar which he says was very hard mortar, and still very thick, though the facing on both dedicated to Magon by a Roman lady upon the recovery of her sides has been peeled off for the sake of the squared stone which health. It was inscribed on one face, and on another was a they used in building. A year or two ago a great parcel of it was basso-relievo of an owl ; whilst the third face was marked destroyed with much labour. This reached quite to the bridge with representations of two instruments used in the sacrificial lane, and hung over the street at the head of the precipice in ceremonies. The other relics were a bulla aurea, a patera, a dreadful manner ; it went round the verge of the close three urns, a coin of Flaying Vespasian in copper, a stylus, north of the church, and took in the whole circuit of the to. At some distance east of Overborough, at a place called hill, and the ditch on the north side of it now to be seen. Gargrore,is a camp, which Mr. Rauthmell calls a castrum astivum. I suppose it originally enclosed the whole top of the hill Near this place a Roman tesselated pavement has been since dis- where the church and castle stand." This is exactly the cha- covered. The Roman roads connected with this station might then racter of the remains of Max eusituar. The remains at Blackrode

still be discovered in some places, and on the side of the road (which have been by some identified with Coccium) are described between Overborough and Lancaster, a milliare or Roman milestone as being those of a station about 219 yards one way, and about was preserved. 200 another. Part of it is called the Castle Croft, where the ground Lan-caster, as its name indicates, is evidently the site of is still very irregular, and part of the ditch is visible. The high a Roman station, the camp on the Lune or Lope. Leland, in road from Manchester to Preston goes right through the middle of the time of Henry VIII., tells us, "The old town, as they say it. Pieces of ancient brick and pots are said to have been found

North-Humbria, and repair and man it." In the division of the kingdom into great earldoms, under Edward the Confessor, the Ribble at first constituted the boundary of the earldoms of Leofiic and Siward of Northumbria ; afterwards, Morkere and Eadwine divided the county between them. The isolated part on the extreme north-west, however, still remained disconnected from Saxon England. As we have already intimated, the name of Lan- cashire does not once occur in Domesday Survey. What is now known as South Lancashire, including, however, Leyland and Blackburn, is surveyed under Cheshire by the title of "Inter Ripam et Mersha," i.e., "lands between the Ribble and the Mersey." The northern part of the county (Amounderness and Lonsdale, north and south) is comprehended in the survey of Yorkshire. "Of the six hundreds into which Lancashire south of the Ribble was divided at the time of the Survey, Salford is, per- haps, the only one which retains its ancient area unchanged, those of Newton and Warrington being absorbed into West Derby, and those of Leyland and Blackburn undergoing some change. In the Survey, High Furness is called Hovgvn, or the Hill. The name Furness (Fudernesia) first occurs in a charter of the year 1126. In the early part of English history, the Fells of Furness formed the boundary between the kingdoms of England and Scotland.