Volume 1

The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Berks—Bucks. way. Several human skeletons, in a high state of preservation, have been disinterred, together with small sepulchral urns, of rude work- manship, but elegant and classical devices, and upwards of forty Roman coins, of gold, silver, and brass, of the reigns of Domitian, Constantine, Julian the Apostate, Constantius, Gracianus, Licinius or Lupicinius the Pro-prcetor (who was invested with regal authority), and several others. Spear-heads, battle-axes, and spurs of British and Roman manufacture, were also found; and some of the graves contained considerable masses of charcoal, without bones. The bones are well preserved, having lain in dry gravel, about four feet from the surface, immediately overlaying the chalk; and one of the skulls appears heavier and more consolidated than is natural. Stanfordbury. [1834, Part II., p. 417.] At Stanfordbury, near Shefford, some labourers were lately employed by E. W. Brayley, Esq., and Mr. Inskipp, for two days in exploring further the Roman remains of which some account has already been published in Brayley’s “ Graphic Illustrator.” They found an armlet of jet, a small silver girdle-buckle, some stone rings, the remaining part of the wind instrument mentioned in the Graphic Illustrator, a fibula, remains of urns, and paterae, brass pins, extremely corroded, and an imperfect portion of an iron vessel ornamented with a species of Silenus mask. There was a large camp at Stanfordbury, which Mr. Brayley considers was probably equestrian. It would communi- cate with the Roman station Salaenae. They had an extensive burial- place at Shefford. Bucks. Buckingham. [1838, Part I., p. 302.] A Roman villa has been recently found within two miles of Buck- ingham, on the road to Stony Stratford, on a farm belonging to his Grace the Duke of Buckingham, who has given directions that the whole of the foundations shall be explored. A frigidarium and cali- darium (cold and warm bath) lined with red-coloured stucco, and a quantity of loose tesserce, which composed the floor of one of the adjoining rooms, probably the undressing-room, have been found. Large square hollow tiles, evidently used to warm the sudatoria or sweating rooms, have been dug out; also another floor, composed of loose red tessene, and a coin, the reverse of which bears the cross and the alpha and omega, indicating that it was struck subsequently to the time of Constantine, and probably by one of his sons, or the usurper Decentius, whose head and coin it most resembles, though the inscription is illegible.