But on this particular occasion one wished that nature had not been quite so busy in seeking to heal the "scars" made by the excavators!
The granaries are magnificent buildings, strongly buttressed to resist the pressure of the heavy stone roofs, with floors raised on sleeper walls, and a ventilation space below, to keep the corn both dry and cool. Window-openings between the buttresses admitted air under the floors. In one window there is a stone mullion, which is probably the only Roman mullion now to be seen. The original western granary was evidently built before the eastern. There are several levels of occupation in Corstopitum, and the western granary has two floors, two walls, two sets of drainage, one above the other, whereas the eastern granary has only one of each. The heavy stone blocks of which they are built are rusticated—inner surfaces as well as outer.
Beyond the granaries are a public fountain and watering-trough. Other buildings found prove that Corstopitum was an industrial centre of some importance.
Two very valuable hoards of gold coins have been found, one in 1908 and the other in 1911. The coins of the later find were the earlier and more valuable, ranging from Nero to Antoninus Pius, Hadrian's successor. They have all been sent to the British Museum.
The famous "Corbridge Lion" was found in a tank in what was probably the garden of a house in the settlement.
Amongst the interesting inscribed stones found here is a tombstone in memory of Barathes of Palmyra (in the Arabian desert), who was a standard-bearer in the Roman army, and died at the age of sixty-eight. A much finer tombstone, which he dedicated to his wife, Regina, who only lived to be thirty, is to be seen in the South Shields Museum, having been found in that neighbourhood.
The excavations at Corstopitum were carried out, under the superintendence of Mr. R. H. Forster, F.S.A., chiefly during the long vacations, when Professor Haverfield and Dr. H. H. E. Craster were able to be much on the spot, and Oxford undergraduates could get an insight into the methods of "reading the soil" employed by archæologists in Britain.
HEXHAM.
Hexham is not a Roman site, but there are many traces of the Roman occupation in the Abbey.
The Saxon crypt, almost the only remaining part of the original church built by Bishop Wilfrid in 674, is entirely constructed of Roman stones. The workmen who built it have attached no importance whatever to the beauty of the mouldings, nor to the interest of the inscriptions. They have simply used them as a "key" for the plaster with which walls and ceiling were covered.