It is obvious that Mr. Acton's detailed report on Holt will be full of important matter, and that further excavation of the site, whenever it may be possible, will also yield important results.
(xiii) Cardiff. The widening of Duke Street, which fronts the eastern half of the south side of Cardiff Castle, has revealed the south-east angle of the Roman fort, on the top of which the castle stands, and has revealed it in good preservation. Nothing, however, has come to light which seems to increase or alter our previous knowledge of the fort. Many small Roman objects are stated to have been found, Samian ware, coins, brooches, beads, in the course of the work; these may belong to the 'civil settlement' which, as I have said elsewhere, may have lain to the south of the fort (Military Aspects of Roman Wales, p. 105). When they have been sorted and dated, they should throw light on the history of Roman Cardiff.
(xiv) Richborough. This important site has been taken over by H.M. Office of Works, and some digging has been done round the central platform, but (Mr. Peers tells me) without any notable result. The theory that this platform was the base of a lighthouse is still the most probable.
xv-xxv. Finds relating to Civil Life
(xv) Wroxeter (Viroconium). The systematic excavation of Wroxeter begun in 1912 by Mr. J. P. Bushe-Fox on behalf of the London Society of Antiquaries and the Shropshire Archaeological Society, was carried by him through its third season in 1914. The area examined lay immediately north of the temple uncovered in 1913. The main structure in it was a large dwelling-house 115 feet long, with extensions up to 200 feet, which possessed at least two courtyards, a small detached bath-house, various mosaic and cement floors, hypocausts, and so forth. It had been often altered, and its excavation and explanation were excessively difficult. Mr. Bushe-Fox thinks that it may have begun as three shops giving on to the north and south Street which bounds its eastern end. Certainly it became, in course of time, a large corridor-house with a south aspect and an eastern wing fronting the street, and as such it underwent several changes in detail. Beyond its western end lay a still more puzzling structure. An enceinte formed by two parallel walls, about 13 feet apart, enclosed a rectangular space of about 150 feet wide; the western end of it, and therefore its length, could not be ascertained; the two corners uncovered at the east end were rounded; an entrance seems to have passed through the north-east corner. It has been called a small fort, an amphitheatre, a stadium, and several other things. But a fort should be larger and would indeed be somewhat hard to account for at this spot; while a stadium should have a rounded end and, if it was of orthodox length, would have extended outside the town into or almost into the Severn. Interest attaches to a water-channel along the main (north and south) street. This was found to have at intervals slits in each side which were plainly meant for sluice-gates to be let down; Mr. Bushe-Fox thinks that the channel was a water-supply, and not an outfall, and that by the sluice-gates the water was dammed up so as, when needed, to flow along certain smaller channels into the private houses which stood beside the road. If so, the discovery has much interest; the arrangement is peculiar, but no other explanation seems forthcoming.
Small finds were many and good. Mr. Bushe-Fox gathered 571 coins ranging from three British and one or two Roman Republican issues, to three early coins of the Emperor Arcadius, over 200 Samian potters' stamps, and much Samian datable to the period about A.D. 75-130, with a few rare pieces of the pre-Flavian age. There was a noticeable scarcity of both Samian and coins of the post-Hadrianic, Antonine period; it was also observed that recognizable 'stratified deposits' did not occur after the age of Hadrian. Among individual objects attention is due to a small seal-box, with wax for the seal actually remaining in it.
It appears that it will probably not be possible to continue this excavation, even on a limited scale, next summer. Mr. Bushe-Fox's report for 1913 is noticed below, [p. 52].
(xvi) Lincoln. At Lincoln an inscribed fragment found in 1906 has now come to light. It bears only three letters, IND, being the last letters of the inscription; these plainly preserve a part of the name of the town, Lindum. See below, [p. 34].
(xvii) Gloucester. Here, in March 1914, a mosaic floor, 16 feet square, with a complex geometrical pattern in red, white, and blue, has been found 9 feet below the present surface, at 22 Northgate Street. Some painted wall-plaster from the walls of the room to which it belonged were found with it.