We have seen that the Romans had a bank all along this coast to keep out the sea, and besides their five roads from Lincoln, one of which went to Horncastle, they had a road from Horncastle to Wainfleet; and a road, part of which we have noticed, from Ulceby to Burgh and Skegness. Skegness lies midway between Ingoldmells, which is the most easterly point of the county, and _Gibraltar Point_, from which the coast sweeps inland and forms the northern shore of the Wash. Across, on the further side of this, was the Roman camp at Brancaster (Branodunum), and here at Skegness there seems to have been a Roman fort which has now been swallowed up by the sea. [Sidenote: OLD POTTERIES] Near Ingoldmells, about fifty years ago, the sea, at low water, laid bare some Roman potteries, so called, from which the Rev. Edward Elmhirst got several specimens of what were called “thumb bricks.” These were just bits of clay the size of sausages, but twice as thick, some as much as two and a half inches thick and four inches high, which had been squeezed in the hand, the impress of the fingers and thumb being plainly visible; the extremities, being more than the hand could take, were rather bigger than the middle. They were flat enough at each end to stand, and had doubtless been used to place the pottery on when being burnt in the kiln. It is more than probable that these potteries were pre-Roman. They are about a quarter of a mile south of the Ingoldmells outfall drain, and half way between high and low-water mark. They are only exposed now and then, and appear to be circular kilns about fifteen feet in diameter, with walls two feet thick, and now only a foot high. The reason of their existence is found in a bed of dark clay which underlies all this coast. The only pot found has been a rough, hand-made jar with rolled edge and marks of the stick or bone with which the outside had been scraped and trimmed. Now, doubtless the Romans used the wheel. Moreover, these kilns are far outside the Roman bank, and not likely, therefore, to be for Roman use. Tree roots are found in the walls and inside the circle of the kilns, of the same sort as those of which at one time a perfect forest existed, the stumps of which are sometimes visible at low tide. At the time the Romans made their sea bank the sea must have come right over this forest, so that we may perhaps say that those thumb-bricks bear the impress of the fingers of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, and are therefore of extraordinary interest.