Latius arctoi præconia persequar amnis.
Addam urbis tacito subterlaveris alveo
Mœniaque antiquis te prospectantia muris.
Addam præsidiis dubiarum condita rerum.
Ausonius.
LVGVVALVM. Carlisle.
At the gates are guard-houses of stone, built by Cromwell from the demolished cathedral; and in the middle of the market-place, a fort with four bastions, roofed like a house, with holes for the gunners to shoot out at with small arms. At the south-east end of the city is a citadel built by Henry VIII. as is plain from its conformity to Deal, Walmer, &c. In levelling the ground of the fish-market they found many coins, which we saw in Mr. Goodman’s hands: he has an altar found in the river Irthing, by the Picts wall: also in Mr. Stanwix’s summer-house wall is an inscription of the sixth legion, and a pretty altar, but the inscription worn out. Fragments of Roman squared stones appear in every quarter of the city, and several square wells in the streets, of Roman workmanship. A great quantity of Roman coin dug up under St. Cuthbert’s church. Probably the city stood chiefly on that spot where the castle now is, as the highest ground, but did not reach so far eastward as the present city. One may walk about the walls of this city, as at Chester: there was a double ditch round it.
There are many hollowed stones found hereabouts, much like the marble mortars of apothecaries, with a notch in them. I take them to be the hand-mills of the Roman soldiers, wherein they ground their corn with a stone, and sometimes perhaps became their urns; making their chief instrument in sustentation of life, their inseparable companion in death.
This is a very pleasant and fertile country, rendered more sightly to us by passing so long through the mountainous stoney tracts of Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland. About this country we observe many mud-wall houses, thatched with flat sods or hassocks shaved off the moors; which I suppose the old British custom continued. Here too they use the little carts, as about Kendal.
We saw, in Mr. Gilpin’s hands, a silver Otho, found here; reverse, SECVRITAS R. P. also a middle brass of C. Marius; reverse, VICTORIA CIMBRICA: together with many more, which his father collected. In the cathedral are many remains of the tombs of bishops, I suppose, between the pillars of the choir; every one of which was a little chapel, but now pulled in pieces. A large brass of bishop Bell is left in the choir. The bottom of the steeple, and the west end of what remains of the structure, is of William Rufus’s time: the choir is later.