From Dunstable the Itinerary leads us out of the road, going strait to Verolam, and takes in another station by the way, _Durocobrivis_; which demonstrates it was made not so much for travellers, as for the soldiery or officers that were to visit the garrisons, therefore comprehends as many as could conveniently be taken into that route. About this station antiquaries have been much divided, when it certainly ought to be placed at Berghamsted, commonly Barkamstead, in Hertfordshire, which well suits the assigned distances from _Magiovinium_, and the subsequent _Verolanium_, and has evidently been a Roman town, as its name imports; and probably the castle there stands upon a Roman foundation. It is certain Roman coins are frequently dug up there: my friend Mr. Browne Willys has a Roman coin, found there: young Mr. Whitfield, brother to the major at St. Alban’s, has many Roman coins, great and small, found in the castle at Berghamsted. The inside, within the walls where the lodgings were, is about two acres: the entrance was not at the corner, where now, but in the front of the south side: many chimneys remain in the wall, of the lodgings which extended quite round, leaving a spacious court within; and all the windows looked inward: the ground of the court is distinguishable, being good soil, and there they find the Roman coins; the rest is rubbish and foundations; so that the Saxon castle was made upon the Roman: the chapel seems to have stood against the west wall, where be signs of a stair-case: the walls are of flints gathered from the highlands, very thick, and laid with strong mortar. This town fully answers the distance in the Itinerary, and remarkably the import of the name, according to Mr. Baxter’s derivation, though he erroneously places it at Woburn, _civitas paludosi profluentis_; for here is a large marsh, or bog, wherein the ancient British _oppidum_ was placed: it is most sweetly surrounded with high, hard, and pleasant ground all around, full of hedge-rows, pastures, and arable: the castle was set very judiciously in the north side, upon a piece of dry ground, incompassed with springs, by the Saxons made exceedingly strong. The town is upon the south side of the marsh, stretching itself a good length in handsome buildings, and a broad street: the church is a large handsome building, a monumental _effigies_ of a knight and a lady; upon his coat a bend or belt, and in the sinister chief a martlet; a lion his crest under his feet: it is full of chapels and monuments old and new. This town has been an old corporation; the kings of Mercia resided here; Wightred, king of Kent and Mercia, anno 697, held a parliament here; and here king Ina’s laws were published: all which further confirm its being the place we assert.[104]