Before referring to the other roads from Manchester to the North and to the West, it will be well to glance at the Mancunium of the Romans, and it is needless, perhaps, here to remark that the building of the modern Manchester and Salford must of necessity have almost obliterated every material trace of this ancient stronghold.
Somewhere about the time of Agricola (A.D. 78–85), or possibly a little earlier, the Romans erected a castrum on a tongue of land made by a bend of the river Medlock. Whitaker, the Manchester historian,[19] thus describes what remained of this in 1773:
The eastern side, like the western, is an hundred and forty [yards] in length, and for eighty yards from the northern termination the nearly perpendicular rampart carries a crest of more than two [yards] in height. It is then lowered to form the great entrance, the porta prætoria, of the camp: the earth there running in a ridge, and mounting up to the top of the bank, about ten in breadth. Then, rising gradually as the wall falls away, it carries an height of more than three for as many at the south–eastern angle. And the whole of this wall bears a broken line of thorns above, shews the mortar peeping here and there under the coat of turf, and near the south–eastern corner has a large buttress of earth continued for several yards along it. The southern side, like the northern, is an hundred and seventy–five [yards] in length; and the rampart, sinking immediately from its elevation at the eastern end, successively declines, till, about fifty yards off, it is reduced to the inconsiderable height of less than one [yard]. And about seventeen [yards] further there appears to have been a second gateway, the ground rising up to the crest of the bank for four or five at the point….
One on the south side was particularly requisite … in order to afford a passage to the river; but about fifty–three yards beyond the gate, the ground betwixt both falling away briskly to the west, the rampart, which continues in a right line along the ridge, necessarily rises till it has a sharp slope of twenty [yards] in length at the south–western angle. And all this side of the wall, which was from the beginning probably not much higher than it is at present, as it was sufficiently secured by the river and its banks before it, appears crested at first with an hedge of thorns, a young oak rising from the ridge and rearing its head considerably over the rest, and runs afterwards in a smooth line nearly level for several yards with the ground about it, and just perceptible to the eye, in a rounded eminence of turf.
As to the south–western point of the camp, the ground slopes away on the west towards the south, as well as on the south towards the west. On the third side still runs from it nearly as at first, having an even crest about seven feet in height, an even slope of turf for its whole extent, and the wall in all its original condition below. About an hundred yards beyond the angle was the Porta Decumana of the station, the ground visibly rising up the ascent of the bank in a large shelve of gravel, and running in a slight but perceivable ridge from it. And beyond a level of forty–five yards, that still stretches on for the whole length of the side, it was bounded by the western boundary of the British city, the sharp slope of fifty to the morass below it. On the northern and the remaining side are several chasms in the original course of the ramparts. And in one of them, about an hundred and twenty–seven yards from its commencement, was another gateway, opening into the station directly from the road to Ribchester. The rest of the wall still rises about five and four feet in height, planted all the way with thorns above, and exhibiting a curious view of the rampart below. Various parts of it have been fleeced of their facing of turf and stone, and now show the inner structure of the whole, presenting to the eye the undressed stone of the quarry, the angular pieces of rock, and the round boulders of the river, all bedded in the mortar, and compacted by it into one. And the white and brown patches of mortar and stone on a general view of the wall stand strikingly contrasted with the green turf that entirely conceals the level line, and with the green moss that half reveals the projecting points of the rampart. The great foss of the British city, the Romans preserved along their northern side for more than thirty yards beyond the eastern end of it, and for the whole beyond the western. And as the present appearances of the ground intimate, they closed the eastern point of it with a high bank, which was raised upon one part of the ditch, and sloped away into the other.
Many inscribed stones have been found on the site of this castrum, which originally were built into the wall; one is noticed by Camden, which read:
Ↄ. CANDIDI
PEDES XX
IIII
i.e., Centuria Candidi, Pedes xxiiii.
Another bore the inscription:
COHO. I. FRISIN.[20]
Ↄ. MASAVONIS.
P.XXIII.