A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE by Ostorius Scapula, the second governor of Britain, to protect the then frontier of the province. But we have seen that they reveal no signs of military occupation ; we shall see below that there is no reason to ascribe to Ostorius any forts in this part of Britain. The coins suggest that the site was hardly inhabited till late in the first century, and the walled enclosure, 20 acres in extent, is either too small or too large. Had it been a legionary fortress it would have been double that area ; had it been a fort garrisoned by auxiliaries it would have been one third or one quarter of it. We may with more reason suppose that Irchester was a little Romano-British country town or village, less important and less wealthy than Castor. For the rest we must be content to be ignorant. A Roman official, either in active service or in retirement, came there to die. Possibly there was a small shrine there. With these two items its history ends. When its walls were erected — whether at the time when it grew into something like a town, or late in the Roman period when barbarian inroads threatened — we cannot now determine. We do not even know by what roads it was reached. Further excavations, much to be desired, may some day tell us more. (c) TOWCESTER Towcester is a small English country town situated among pleasant meadows on the south bank of the winding Tove, close to the water ; Watling Street runs right through it from south-east to north-west. Here, coinciding closely with the modern town, stood a small Romano- British town or village. The mileage of the Itineraries permit us to identify it fairly confidently with Lactodorum, or (as perhaps it was originally spelt) Lactodurum, and this identification, first suggested by Horsley, is now universally accepted.' The area of the place is not quite certain. Sixty years ago Baker was able to trace ramparts enclosing an irregular quadrilateral of about 35 acres (fig. 15), and some vestiges of these ramparts may still be seen, particularly in a grass field behind the police station and in gardens south of that. It is not unreasonable to think that these ramparts represent the Roman lines. But they have never been explored. We have written evidence of fortification building at Towcester in 921 ; we have at Berry Mount, on the east side of the town, a post-Roman earth- work ; and in the present state of our knowledge we cannot fairly exclude the possibility that the ramparts seen by Baker may also be post-Roman.* The remains found in the place are numerous, but not specially note- worthy. Foundations and roof-tiles have been often met with. Two pavements, one plainly tessellated, the other brick in herringbone pattern, ' Camden made Towcester Tripontium, but, to prove his case, invented new forms, Torcester and Torpontium. It is a characteristic example of how names were played with in his time. Neither form has any existence in fact.
- See Baker, ii. 318 foil. He and others have called Berry Mount Roman, but that is most
improbable. It is not quite easy to make out, from the accounts of antiquaries, whether Roman remains have been found in the soil of the mound or only at and round its base. If however they have been found in the soil, that only proves that, as at Worcester {Victoria Hist, of IVorcestenhWe, i. 207) and elsewhere, the mound has been heaped up from soil which already contained Roman remains. 184
