The two exceptions at Oakley and Anderwood are situated just at the junction of the Upper Bagshot Sands and the Barton Clays, which did not suit so well, and where the potteries are very much smaller, and the ware coarser and grittier. The date of the Crockle potteries may be roughly guessed by the coins, found there by Mr. Bartlett, of Victorinus.[257] These were much worn, and, as Mr. Akerman suggests, might be lost about the end of the third century; but the potteries were probably worked till or even after the Romans abandoned the island. There is nothing to indicate any sudden removal, but, on the contrary, everything shows that the works were by degrees stopped, and the population gradually withdrew. None of the vessels are quite perfect, but are what are technically known as “wasters.” The most complete have some slight flaw, and are evidently the refuse, which the potter did not think fit for the market. The size of the works need excite no surprise, when we remember how much earthenware was used in daily life by the Romans—for their floors, and drinking-cups, and oil and wine flasks, and unguent vessels, and cinerary urns, and boxes for money. The beauty, however, of the forms, even if it does not approach that of the Upchurch and Castor pottery, should be noticed. The flowing lines, the scroll-work patterns, the narrow necks of the wine-flasks and unguent vessels, all show how well the true artist understands that it is the real perfection of Art to make beauty ever the handmaid of use. [Illustration: Patterns from Fragments.] [Illustration: Patterns from Fragments.] Another thing, too, is worthy of notice, that the artist was evidently unfettered by any given pattern or rule. Whatever device or form was at the moment uppermost in his mind, that he carried out, his hand following the bent of his fancy. Hence the endless variety of patterns and forms. No two vessels are exactly alike. In modern manufactures, however, the smooth uniformity of ugliness most admirably keeps down any symptoms of the prodigal luxuriance of beauty.[258] We must, however, carefully beware of founding any theory, from the existence of these potteries, that the Forest must therefore have been cultivated in the days of the Conqueror. The reason why the Romans chose the Forest is obvious,—not from its fertility, but because it supplied the wood to fire the kilns; the same cause which, centuries after, made Yarranton select Ringwood for his smelting-furnaces. We must, too, bear in mind that after the Romans abandoned the island the natives soon went back to their primitive state of semi-barbarism; and further, that the interval between the Roman occupation and the Norman Conquest was nearly as great as that between ourselves and the Conqueror—a period long enough for the Kelts, and West-Saxons, and Danes to have swept away in their feuds all traces of civilization.