Before we come to Little Chester is a most noble column, or milestone, set upon the road: it is of a large bulk and height, with an inscription, but only not quite defaced. Mr. Gale thought he could read TVNG. upon it: it is the finest stone of this sort I have seen, and would have informed us who made the road. LITTLE CHESTER. [Sidenote: TAB. LXXV.] We saw the _castrum_ here, of a square figure, hanging on a precipice over a little river on the south side of the Roman road, and at some distance from the Wall: it had been walled about, as others: great _vestigia_ of buildings, altars, carved stones and antiquities innumerable, have been found here, but now dispersed and gone. We saw the mouths of vaults with great stones lying over them. The fences of the pastures are made of the stones of the castle-wall. The man who lives here showed us a few fragments of Roman work; a pine-apple, which had been a pinacle on the top of a circular _tholus_; a piece of an inscription within a civic garland, finely cut; a brick, with LEG. VI. V. He has found many coins; but his children threw them away. In a corner of a field below, by the side of the brook, and as the military way turns, up the hill, is another such milliary stone, but no inscription legible. The moory country hereabouts has coal under it. Upon the tops of the hills are several cairns, or sepulchral heaps of stones, made by the old Britons. A little eastward of Great Chester, where the ditch ends, at the bottom of a cliff, we saw the foundation of the Wall, which the country people are digging up for building: we measured the true breadth of it, just seven Roman feet. HOUSESTEEDS. [Sidenote: TAB. LXXVI.] The next station we visited, about two miles from the former, and by the Wall, is deservedly called Housesteeds, from the _vestigia_ of the houses therein, which are as easy to be seen and distinguished as if ruined but yesterday. Approaching the farmer’s house there, I saw a mill or two, i. e. the recipient stones of the hand-mills which the Roman soldiers used to grind their corn with; likewise some tops of altars: over the door of the house, a large carved stone, but defaced. Going a little further, in a corner of a dry wall is a large stone that has been curiously cut, but now broken and much injured: three figures in it, in high relievo; two with sacrificing cups in their hands: I believe it has belonged to some temple, and means the _Genii_ of three cities: it is in my learned friend Mr. Horsley’s 20th table, but poorly represented: they seem to stand before steps. Near it, in the wall, is the bottom part of a very large altar, or pedestal of a pillar, a yard square: near that a long carved stone, somewhat like the shaft of our later crosses. [Illustration: 75·2ᵈ. _Prospect of Chester on the Wall & the Picts Wall. Septʳ. 1. 1725._ _Stukeley delin._] [Illustration: 76·2ᵈ.