Great Britain -- Antiquities, Roman; Romans -- Great Britain
(24) In the December number of the _Journal of the British
Archaeological Association_ (xx. 307) Mr. F. Lambert, of the Guildhall
Museum, prints pertinent criticisms of Sir L. Gomme's volume, much
in the direction of my preceding paragraphs. He also makes useful
observations on Roman London. In particular, he attacks the difficult
problem of the date when its town-walls were built. Here he agrees with
those who ascribe them to the second century, and for two main reasons.
First, he thinks that the occurrence of early Roman potsherds at certain
points near the walls proves the town to have grown to its full extent
by about A.D. 100. Secondly, he points to the foundations of the Roman
gate at Newgate; as they are shallower than those of the adjacent
town-walls, he dates the gate after the walls and thus obtains (as
he hopes) an early date for the walls. Both points were worth raising,
but I doubt if either proves Mr. Lambert's case. For (_a_) the potsherds
come mostly from groups of rubbish-pits--such as those which Mr.
Lambert himself has lately done good work in helping to explore--and
rubbish-pits, especially in groups, lie rather outside the inhabited
areas of towns. Those of London itself suggest to me that the place had
_not_ reached its full area by A.D. 100 (see above, p. 23). (_b_) The
Newgate foundations are harder to unravel. As a rule, Roman town-gates
had large super-structures and needed stronger foundations than the
town-walls. At Newgate, where the superstructure must have been
comparatively slender, the published plans show that under a part, at
least, of the gate-towers the undisturbed subsoil rises higher than
beneath the adjacent town-walls. According to the elevation published by
Dr. Norman and Mr. F. W. Reader in _Archaeologia_ lxiii, plate lvii, the
wall-builders at this point stopped their deep foundation trenches for
the full width of the gateway (98 feet), or at least dug them shallower
there. No motive for such action could be conceived except the wish to
leave a passage for a gate. There would seem, therefore, to have been an
entrance into Roman London at Newgate as early as the building of the
walls, and there may have been such an entrance even before the erection
of these walls. Dr. Norman has, however, warned me that plate lvii goes
much beyond the actual evidence (see plate lvi); practically, we do not
know enough to form conjectures of any value on this point.
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