DANVM. Doncaster.
Just before we came to Robin Hood’s well, we met the Hermen-street with a very high and perfect ridge coming from Castle-ford; it bears north-west and south-east precisely: presently after, it makes an angle, and goes southward. Robin Hood’s well stands upon the road in a valley: there is a new cover made to it lately by Sir John Vanbrug. Then the Roman road leaves us on the right a little, till at Doncaster town-end. At the marsh-gate is an old chapel and a cross of stone, triangular, with three niches. Doncaster church and steeple is large and beautiful: at the east end is an old chapel, now converted to secular uses. Near the market-place another older chapel, of St. Magdalen, which the corporation use for their place of assembly. I believe the Roman castrum was by the river side, where the church and parsonage-house stand. Coming out of the town is another cross upon the road, where they fable a Roman emperor was buried. The Roman road a little farther is very apparent, going over a fine heath, so to Bawtry, upon the river Idle, slowly conducting its waters through a large level moor to the Humber. Probably here was a camp formerly. They have some trade here in lead from Derbyshire, mill-stones, and Roch-abbey stone of a good kind. Hither comes the Hermen-street, which I call the new branch, from Agelocum. We passed over a deep valley at Went, beyond Robin Hood’s well: the northern precipice of it is rocky, as that of Gateshead.
Having brought this journal to the edge of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, of which parts I gave my observations in former Iters, I conclude this with the following reflections. The amazing scene of Roman grandeur in Britain which I beheld this journey, the more it occurred with pleasure to my own imagination, the more I despaired of conveying it to the reader in a proper light by a rehearsal. It is easy for some nations to magnify trifles, and in words gild over inconsiderable transactions till they swell to the appearance of an history; and some moderns have gone great lengths that way: but if in any people action has outdone the capacity of rhetoric, or in any place they have left historians far behind in their valour and military performances, it was in our own country; and we are as much surprised in finding such infinite reliques of theirs here, as that we have no history of them that speaks with any particularity of the last 300 years that the Romans dwelt in Britain, and rendered it perfectly provincial. The learned memoirs are very short; and it is well they were guided with such a spirit, as left monuments sufficient to supply that defect, when handled as they deserve: though I have no hope of coming up to that, yet I hold myself obliged to preserve, as well as I can, the memory of such things as I saw; which, added to what future times will discover, will revive the Roman glory among us, and may serve to invite noble minds to endeavour at that merit and public-spiritedness which shine through all their actions. This tribute at least we owe them, and they deserve it at our hands, to preserve their remains.