An extraordinarily interesting piece of excavation is being undertaken at
Richborough. Richborough, as we found in the War, is a natural port of Kent, and the Roman Ritupiae on whose site it was built must evidently have been a most important station in the South East. It was Mr. Chesterton who epitomized the Roman occupation of Britain in two lines :
" The Ra.nan thraw us a road--a road And sighed and strolled away."
Their great roads are their only monuments in use to-day, but we may find something very unex- pected in the huge concrete block which rests in the middle of the great wall at Richborough. It was through this port that the legions must have streamed back to defend their menaced capital, and on it the ever-encroaching wave of Saxons must have beaten. The excavations, we are told, will take at least six years, but it is good news to hear that they have been under- taken jointly by the Office of Works and the Society of Antiquities in so comprehensive a way.
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