SOME TRACES OF ROMAN AND SAXON OCCUPATION OF THE DISTRICT OF RISBURY.

By T. DAVIES BURLTON, ESQ.

THIS paper, which has been undertaken at the request of the Committee of our Club with some diffidence, merely aims at placing on record some local facts that have been observed, which, as time goes on, it might be more difficult to collect, but to which now perhaps persons present may be able to add.

The early history of England up to the period of its complete subjection to Ecghbert in the beginning of the ninth century (A.D. 829) is involved in much obscurity, as is shown by Mr. Green in "The Making of England." It is nevertheless of the highest interest and importance, for "it forms," he says, the period during which our fathers conquered and settled over the soil of Britain, and the age in which their political and social life took the form which it still retains.”

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The Romans had occupied the country as aliens and conquerors, as the English have occupied India; neither killing nor driving off such natives as would live peaceably under their rule, but encouraging their presence, giving them the blessings of security and peace, and introducing amongst them their own high civilization; incorporating them as much as possible with themselves, and sending them to fight for the Empire in other parts of the world, as the natives of Thrace, Gaul, and Africa, fought the Roman battles here.

After an occupation of some four centuries the Roman military and official classes were withdrawn from Britain (A.D. 411), owing to the difficulties brought upon the Empire by the advance of the Barbarians on Rome. The succeeding four centuries, of which the written record is so slight, are those with which our discoveries have to do, and in connection with which Mr. Green says::-"Archæological researches on the sites of villas and towns, or along the line of road, or dyke, often furnish evidence more trustworthy than written chronicle; while the ground itself, where we can read the information it affords, is, whether in the account of the conquest, or that of the settlement of Britain, the fullest and most certain of documents.'

There can be no question from its direct course on the map, and also from its structure, as ascertained in several places, that the road is Roman which leads from Bowley's Field by Patty's Cross, Stretford, Shuttock's Field, Broadstone, Blackwardine, Hollywall, Hill Hole, Bowley, Bodenham, Preston Wynne, past Lugwardine, and so on by Mordiford to Ariconium, near Ross—which was the Merthyr Tydvil of the Romans. This road is named in the Itinerary of Antonine, and was probably formed at a later period. It passed through the town now to be considered.

Blackwardine is the only name that history gives to the place on which tradition has ever stated that a town formerly existed. Its remains still blacken

the soil, and the number of Roman coins and pieces of pottery that have been turned up by the plough fully bear out the tradition.

The Rev. Jonathan Williams, in a book (Leominster Guide), published in 1808, says (page 337) :-" About a mile and a half from Eaton on the Bromyard road is a spacious tract of land, formerly common but now enclosed, called Blackcaer-dun, on which, as tradition reports, formerly stood a populous and flourishing town; and some attestations, more solid and important than a vague report, can be adduced in favour of the tradition. Several Roman coins of Romulus and Remus suckled by a wolf, of Augustus, Cæsar,* Trajan, Constantine, &c., cast in silver, copper, and gold; numerous pieces of pottery, bones of men and animals, and numberless other relics have been found upon the spot; its soil is of a much darker hue than that of which the adjoining fields are composed, and justifies the epithet black." Mr. Williams supposes that he has found the derivation of the word of Blackwardine in Black-caer-dun. Probably no one now does.

The Leominster and Bromyard Railway was carried through Blackwardine in 1881. In the cutting made a large number of Roman remains were discovered, though, as no one acquainted with such things was present at the time, most of them have been destroyed or taken out of the neighbourhood, and the information which might have been gained, from the way or position in which they were found, hopelessly lost. Men who were at work in this cutting reported that a 'navvy," who had then left the district, found a gold bracelet and ring-that a great many human bodies were discovered buried-and quantities of coins, which the finders sold to anyone who would buy them. A considerable purchaser was a gentleman who wanted some to take back with him to New Zealand!

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It was said that the skeletons found were all buried doubled up in a sitting posture at different distances from the surface-one grave was as much as thirteen feet below the present face of the ground, but most were much less. Mr. Wadeley, grocer, Stoke Prior, who was present at some of the disinterments has since told me that this was not so.

On enquiring how and where the coins were mainly found, a workman replied that when they came to a skull they began to look out for coins, and they usually found them when they had dug down to the place where the man's pocket would be (a navvy's idea of money being intimately associated with his breeches pocket.)

A hypocaust, or kiln, was found (described as "like about 30 ovens, full of ashes") built of worked stones, which were broken up and used in a drain beside the railway, or "tipped up " on the embankment below.

The workmen met with quantities of coarse red and yellow ware; also some of blue and black colour, and a little fine red Samian; several querns, or handmillstones, numerous bones, and cartloads of oyster-shells.

*With reference to the coins found of "Augustus, Cæsar," we are of opinion that this is a mistake on the part of either Mr. Williams or of his informant. Coins of Julius Cæsar and of Augustus are very rare in England, but searchers who read AUG or CAES on a coin, often put it down to Augustus or to Cæsar, of course wrongly. After Diocletian's reforms (A.D. 292) the titles Augustus and Cæsar had different values. According to Diocletian's scheme the Roman Empire was to be ruled by two Augusti and two inferior Emperors styled Casares. The scheme in its entirety did not last long, but the meanings attached to the two titles survived to the end of the Empire. (EDD.)

Some twelve coins from Blackwardine were pronounced by Mr. Ready, of the coin and jewellery department of the British Museum (in 1883), to be all very late Roman. Amongst them were-Constantine Urbs Roma, Agrippina s.c. (2nd brass), Crispus Cæsar,* Honorius, Constantine III., Tetricus, &c.

Other coins in the possession of Mr. Wadeley, grocer, Stoke Prior, were identified by Mr. Ready, jun., at the British Museum on June 10th, 1884, as: silver, Denarius of Vespasian; copper, Constans. Two Constantinus iun (ior) Nob (ilis) C(æsar), and others were too much injured to decipher.

Mr. Franks, M.A., F.R.S., F.S. A., F.G.S., F.R.G.S., &c., of the British Museum, at the same time remarked upon the unusual shape of a flower-pot-like piece of pottery with a handle, which he sketched. I have since seen examples from Uriconium in the Shrewsbury Museum exactly similar. Mr. Franks also copied the inscription, or potter's mark, on the handle of the Amphora :

QICSEG,

as he thought it was unrecorded+; and he suggested that the large jar in the photo-sketch exhibited must have been made upon the spot, as the neck is imperfect-i.e., has fallen in, and is not straight round the top, like perfect Roman pottery, and therefore would not have been considered worth transport; and he thought the "thirty ovens "discovered were probably for baking the pottery, and not a hypocaust. He also remarked upon an Annulet of Kimmeridge coal from Blackwardine.

Dr. Bull, in his paper on Credenhill Camp, draws the inference that after the battle of Deorham (577) and the taking of Uriconium by Ceawlin (583), the West Saxons, under Crida, or Creoda (583 to 606), destroyed the Roman towns in Herefordshire. The Mercians, we are told, were here in 658, when Merewald, brother of Wulphere (whose name the hundred we are now in still bears) and son of Penda, founded a monastery at Leominster, and lived at Cwm fort-vulgarly at Comfort, there-as I hope we may do now.

Crispus, eldest son of Constantine the Great, was given the title of Cæsar in 317 A. D. at the same time as his brother Constantine (afterwards the Second), and was put to death 326 A.D. This mark is unrecorded in the British Volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.

(EDD.)

THE BOTANY OF THE HONDDU AND GRWYNE

VALLEYS.

By the REV. AUGUSTIN LEY, M.A.

THE extreme south-west district comprehended in the "Herefordshire Flora" consists of hill and valley, which possess a higher average level than any other district of the county. The hills form a rudely lozenge-shaped parallelogram, and consist of ranges having a general direction of S.E. and N.W. These ranges are all connected into a single plateau of high ground at their N.W. extremity, where they suddenly cease, giving place to the valley of the Wye as it flows for five miles N.E. from Three Cocks to Hay; and to that of the smaller stream, the Llynfi, which drains Llangorse Lake, and joins the Wye at Glasbury. The flank thus formed is the finest and most abrupt in all the hills; and the bold bluffs, alternating with shallow depressions on "cols," when viewed from the neighbourhood of the Three Cocks or Hay, give a very fine effect indeed, especially upon a winter's day, when tipped or eyebrowed with snow.

The shallow "cols" alluded to indicate the heads of the valleys, which, parallel like the ranges of hills, all take their rise in the N.W. boundary of the high ground, whence their streams flow S.E. until they reach the S. E. boundary of the mountains, when they turn abruptly, two of them (the Grwyne fawr and Grwyne fechan) S. W. to join the Usk; two (the Honddu and Monnow) N.E. to join the Dore from its Val d'Or, or "Golden Valley," and flow down to Monmouth under the joint name of the Monnow. These valleys are all (at least all that I know, for the valley of the Grwyne fechan I do not know) very similar in geological structure, in outward features, and in their Flora and Fauna. I suspect the latter as well as the former to be full of interest—indeed, as far as the birds are concerned, I know it to be so; but I must leave that subject to be handled another day by some one more competent than myself, and limit myself now to the flowering plants and ferns only of the two interior of these valleys, the Honddu and the Grwyne fawr, including the intervening ridge of the Ffwddog.

To compare for a moment these two valleys: that of the Honddu (Afon ddu, the Black Stream) is the larger, the longer, the deeper, but not the wider. Its length from Bwlch-y-fingel, the col at which its N. branch rises, to Llanvihangelcrug-corney, where it turns N.E., is about 10 miles as the crow flies. The average breadth of both it and the Grwyne fawr is, from edge to edge of the hill, about 1 mile. It is cultivated up to its division into two heads at Capel-y-ffin, or about 8 of its 10 miles of length; and above this also much of the land is enclosed, so that the actual moorland in the valley forms an insignificant proportion of its surface. The valley of the Grwyne fawr, the signification of which name I must leave to Welsh scholars to elucidate, is somewhat shorter and much shallower, though of nearly equal breadth. Its length from Blaen Grwyne, its N.W. col, to

Ponty-y-spig (or rather Pont-Esgob, the Bishop's Bridge), the point where it turns S.W. to join the Usk, is not quite 9 miles. The average breadth of the intervening hill is, in a straight line from stream to stream, 11⁄2 miles; but it varies much, being nearly 3 miles in the extreme measurement at the N.W. col, and diminishing at one point called Dial Garreg, near the bottom, to a little over half-a-mile, and again somewhat widening. Of cultivation proper in the Grwyne Valley there can scarcely be said to be any at the present time, though a few oatfields and patches of potato land occur about Partricio, and perhaps for a mile or two further up. I say at the present time, because the whole valley was in the recent past clearly far more densely populated than now. Ruined cottages are thickly strewn in its lower parts. The land is enclosed for 5 miles up from Pont-Esgob; the remaining 4 miles which lie above this limit consist of unenclosed moorland.

The botany of these two valleys is varied and interesting-decidedly more so, I think, than that of ordinary hill valleys possessing the same outward features and extent-and Herefordshire naturalists owe a debt of thanks to the ancient Lords of Ewias that they discerned (it may be) the merits of the Grwyne Valley as a hunting ground, and added it to their manor, and thereby to the county of Hereford. Mr. Purchas, in laying out the scheme of the Herefordshire Flora, took in also the Honddu Valley, so far as it lay in Monmouthshire, so that now a great deal of the riches of both these valleys goes to adorn the pages of your forthcoming Flora.

I do not find that the fact of the two valleys belonging respectively to the watershed of the Wye and Usk makes any observable difference between their Flora. Differences there are of course, some of which will be noted further on; but not such as can with any confidence be attributed to this circumstance.

I now proceed to a few botanical notes. One of the plants most likely to strike the eye during a walk into this district in spring is the Bird Cherry, Prunus padus, with its long pendant racemes of white blossom. In the lowlands of Herefordshire it is a rare shrub, lingering only in a few neglected spots; but in the Llanthony district it adorns most of the hedges, growing in great luxuriance up to the limit of about a thousand feet, but scarcely higher. The Mountain Ash too, Pyrus Aucuparia, another tree belonging to the same natural order, is common throughout the district, and is a great ornament, whether in spring or autumn. This is not so common in the hedges of the cultivated land as at a higher level, where it fills the glens, and clings to the rocky sides of the hills, up to at least 1,800 feet, probably higher. One of the prettiest of these glens, Cwm Bwchel, opens out immediately opposite Llanthony Abbey; and it was here, in the mossy recesses with their miniature waterfalls and pools overtopped by berry-laden Mountain Ashes, that love of mountain scenery was first wakened in me, when a boy of six. The fruit of this tree is the favourite fruit of the Ring Ouzel; so much so, that it is said a Mountain Ash tree, planted in a lowland garden, will attract the Ring Ouzel to make a sojourn there during their migration: and the frequency of this rare bird in the Honddu Valley may well be connected with the frequency and luxuriance there of this tree.

Of common trees, the Lowland, or Common, Elm, Ulmus suberosa and

a