GABROCENTVM.
Was Gateshead, as its name imports in British, I suppose, from the sign of some inn: a Goat still stands upon a sign of the Golden Lion, crowned. I guess this was a fortified town in the times of the Romans, where a ferry was for passage northward; but by reason of the buildings no traces of it are left: it stands on a deep rocky descent Westward. The Roman road here, which is the true Hermen-street coming from Sussex, coming down Gateshead fell, passes in a strait line to the bridge. I saw several Roman stones here, the recipient part of their hand-mills. In this place, in the time of the Notitia, lay the second cohort of the Thracians in garrison. There is an odd mausoleum in the church-yard.
Lord Hertford’s workmen, digging up the Roman city by Marlborough, found a piece of brass with an inscription in Romano-barbarous letters, a quarter of an inch high, thus: ʌ.MʌIS