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political life, especially where the site selected for the fort was near a British road, or at a previously-existing British town. With such a centre the fort at Chesterton was associated; the Roman town of Durobrivæ, with its surrounding pottery district, being in direct connection and continuous with it. Your local guides will point out to you to-morrow, as you pass through the village of Castor, the Roman walls with their characteristic herringbone masonry, which crop out in many places on the roadside by the west end and the north side of the church; for a full history of the reasons for identifying Castor with Durobrivæ, the seventh station of the fifth Itinerary of Antoninus, I must refer you to Gibson's Castor, and merely state that this view is now not disputed. You have only to glance over the volumes of Artis' plates to appreciate the treasures which lie hid below the soil of this district. The name of the town Durobrivæ being of British origin-Dur water, and Brivé bridge, or passage over-points to the probability of the existence of a British town, which became Romanised; and it is probable that some of the roads which met here and crossed the river by a bridge whose foundations a friend of mine, now deceased, a painstaking archæologist, in one very dry season distinctly traced in the bed of the stream-were British roads. Baron von Hügel, of the Cambridge University Archæological Museum, tells me that their only specimen obtained from this neighbourhood is a late Celtic jar from Waternewton, which village, lying between Chesterton and Castor, is in the centre of the Roman potteries; other specimens of British manufacture are reported to have been found in this district: altogether, the evidence points to the conclusion that the Romans took possession of a previously-existing British town, in which, in all probability, the pottery industry was already established, the Romans only developing and improving it. Of the importance of the town as a military and commercial centre, some idea may be formed from this plan (Plate I) of the roads, kindly prepared for me by Mr. Irvine. Of these, the most important was Ermine Street, the " Forty-foot way" of Camden, which, passing from Essex (Colchester),

through Cambridge and Godmanchester, crossed the Nene here and went on to Lincoln-Lindum Colonia. On a short piece of this road you will travel to-morrow, between Castor and Wansford, and you will observe the green embankment-marking the further course of the road north and south-stretching over the fields.

Those who join the Gidding excursion on Tuesday will also make use of the same road where it forms part of the great north road. Branching from Ermine Street, King Street went boldly across a little bay of the fens to West Deeping, Bourne, Sleaford, and so towards the wolds of Lincolnshire; another road ran in a more easterly direction, passing through the present site of Peterborough, to Denver in Norfolk. Only last year, a friend of mine pointed out to me, as we were driving through the fen some ten miles south-east of Peterborough, how the line of this road was clearly shown by the different tint of the ripening corn which grew upon it, as it coursed in a long, straight line over the heavily-cropped fen fields. At what particular date these roads were constructed we cannot say; some of them may, as I have already said, have been British; but that others were made long after the settlement of the Romans in this country, is proved by the fact that beneath the raised causeway have been found the remains of disused Roman potteries, and the foundations of other Roman buildings. The potteries around Durobrivæ were very extensive, the kilns are found for miles on either side of the river. In Artis' work, a map is given showing the sites of many of these kilns, and there are excellent views of those which he examined.

The ware made here was widely distributed, Castor ware being found all over the country. A few miles from Castor to the west and north, have been found the remains of iron works of Roman origin; the valuable

1 This road is represented in the plan as running in a direct line to the north of Peterborough, crossing the river about three miles below the town. This, I believe, is wrong: the river in the Roman period ran in its natural channel, and not in the artificial cut made by Abbot Morton. The road would turn south at Peterborough, cross the river, and then run along its south bank to Eldernell.

ironstone of the district was not worked from the time the Romans left until the present century. Artis gives, in his illustrations, details of many buildings uncovered and examined by him they were all private dwellings. No discovery of the public buildings of the town has been recorded. Of its extent you will form an idea when I tell you, that at least three-quarters of a mile from the Roman masonry which you will see close to the church, I have picked up tesseræ, portions of a tesselated pavement, which had been turned up by the ploughshare; fragments of Roman pottery are scattered about the surface, and various interesting objects are frequently found over the space of a mile or two between Chesterton, Waternewton, and Castor.

For the information of those of you who are specially interested in this branch of archæology, I may mention that a beautiful mosaic pavement, discovered some eighty years since, was removed and relaid in the dairy at Milton, the seat of Mr. Fitzwilliam, where you will have the opportunity of inspecting it to-morrow. Innumer

able coins, earthenware and glass vessels, and beautiful ornaments and utensils of gold, bronze, and other material, have at various times been found in and around Castor; while what may be called this district of England has furnished the two most beautiful statuettes in the British Museum. In our own museum you will find a splendid collection of relics obtained from Castor, Waternewton, Chesterton, and neighbouring places, which all tend to prove how important and thickly-populated a district this was. Of these relics the most interesting to myself are those which have been obtained actually within the limits of this town; and I shall now ask your attention for a few minutes to the evidences of the Roman settlement, within what is now included in the limits of this borough (Plate II). I may at the outset state that no Roman buildings have ever been unearthed: not at least since attention was given to such discoveries. If any such buildings ever existed, they would almost certainly be in the oldest part of the town, clustered round the eastern and northern parts of the Abbey, in which direction almost all the Roman relics found in Peter