The story of how this pillar came to be erected here is told in the Proceedings of the Warwickshire justices in the Easter Sessions of 1711. As the Watling Street divides that county and Leicestershire, a conference of the justices of the two shires was called, when it was resolved to “build something memorable in stone” on this site, not only to mark the whereabouts of _Vennonæ_ and to direct travellers, but “also for that it was esteemed the centre of England.” The cost of this “something memorable” was £83, contributed in equal shares by the two shires. The inscriptions were composed by a Mr. Greenway, a schoolmaster of Coventry. Englished, the principal one runs:— Traveller, if you seek the footsteps of the ancient Romans, here you may find them. Hence their most famous military ways, crossing one another, proceed to the utmost limits of Britain. Here the Vennones had their settlement, and at the first mile hence along the street, Claudius, the commander of a cohort, had his camp, and at the same distance along the Fosse, his tomb. “Cleycester” the Saxons named the deserted Roman camp of _Vennonæ_, that stretched along the road towards Wibtoft. Even yet the whistling ploughman occasionally turns up relics of it, in the form of broken pottery and defaced coins. The tomb of Claudius remained, until quite modern times, along the Fosse Way. It was a tumulus, overgrown with brambles, and known as “Cloudsley Bush.” No traces of it are now left. Ahead, rather more than a mile off the road, the smoky chimneys of Hinckley and Burbage make inky and fantastical wreaths in the sky. Smockington is the name of a hamlet in a bottom, with some reminiscences of a coaching age. Beyond is the “Three Pots” public-house; and again, beyond that, a deserted Primitive Methodist Chapel, standing woe-begone by a canal. Caldecote lies off to the left in another few miles, opposite to the “Royal Red Gate” inn; its name inviting an exploration of the place, for there are those who explain the frequently recurring name of “Caldecote” along the line of Roman roads to mean “cold cot”—a variant of “Coldharbour,” that equally common place-name in such situations. The cold cots and the cold harbours had once been, according to this theory, ruined and deserted Roman villas, in whose rootless and chilly recesses the first people who dared to travel after Roman Britain was ravaged by savage tribes took such cold comfort as they might; not daring to light a warming fire, lest its blaze should bring lurking bandits and murderers to their cheerless refuge.