A Roman cemetery, with a large number of sepulchral urns, dishes, and bottles, and coins of Severus, Carausius, Constantine, and Alectus, was turned up a few years ago on the top of the hill on the opposite side of the town, in a part of the open fields called 'The Fox-holes' [640]—a plot of useless ground being often used for burials by the Romans.
Another Roman cemetery, with very similar pottery and coins, has been found on Bury Mead, near the line where the arable part ceases and the [p431] Lammas meadow lands begin. Bury field itself (i.e. the arable) has been deeply drained, but yielded no coins or urns.
Occasional coins and urns have been found in the town itself.
This, so far as it goes, is good evidence that Hitchin was a British and a Roman before it was a Saxon town.
In the sub-hamlet of Charlton, near Wellhead, the source of the Hiz, small coins of the lower Empire have been found. As already mentioned, a coin of Cunobeline was found in the village of Walsworth. In even the hamlets, therefore, there is some evidence of continuity. At Ickleford, where the Icknild way crosses the Hiz, Roman coins have been found.
Much Wymondley.
The next parish to the east, divided from Hitchin by the Purwell stream, is Much Wymondley.
The evidence of continuity, as regards this parish, is remarkably clear. The accompanying map[641] supplies an interesting example of open fields, with their strips and balks and scattered ownership still remaining in 1803. These open arable fields were originally divided off from the village by a stretch of Lammas land.
Roman holding perhaps of a retired veteran.
Between this Lammas land and the church in the village lie the remains of the little Roman holding, of which an enlarged plan is given. It consists now of several fields, forming a rough square, with its sides to the four points of the compass, and contains, filling in the corners of the square, about 25 Roman [p432] jugera—or the eighth of a centuria of 200 jugera—the extent of land often allotted, as we have seen, to a retired veteran with a single pair of oxen. The proof that it was a Roman holding is as follows:—In the corner next to the church are two square fields still distinctly surrounded by a moat, nearly parallel to which, on the east side, was found a line of black earth full of broken Roman pottery and tiles. Near the church, at the south-west corner of the property, is a double tumulus, which, being close to the church field, may have been an ancient 'toot hill,' or a terminal mound. In the extreme opposite corner of the holding was found a Roman cemetery, containing the urns, dishes, and bottles of a score or two of burials. Drawings of those of the vessels not broken in the digging, engraved from a photograph, are appended to the map, by the kind permission of the owner.[642] Over the hedge, at this corner, begins the Lammas land.[643]