A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK A page further on contains the following paragraph, which seems to identify the place : ' In a Survey of the Manor of Felixstowe Priory made in 1613 we find a Close of Arable land called Great Long-Dole, in which Close are the ruins of Walton Castle.' The close is still known by its ancient name, and its position may be seen on the Ordnance Survey maps. It lies close against the sea, Grose, in his supplement to the Antiquities of England and JVales, pubhshed in 1787, gives a view of the wall in question, which by that time had fallen on the beach. He says : ' Its remains in 1766 when this view was drawn, were only visible at near low water, the sea having gained so con- siderably on this coast as to wash away the cliff on which it stood. A gentleman now living remembers the ruins of the castle to have stood at least fifty yards within the extremity of the cHff.' Thus the only remaining fragment of Roman inclosure had fallen beneath the waves in 1766. The wall unquestionably formed part of a station of the same class as the one by the Waveney, though perhaps not covering quite so large an extent of ground. Kirby speaks of it as standing on a ridge. This was the southern edge of a wide depression, scarcely a valley, which, wide upon the shore, gradually narrowed as it ran westward to the ancient village of Felixstowe. Both slopes of this shallow valley appear to have been used as the cemetery of the station ; a boarded well has been discovered ; and perhaps some few scattered houses, judging from the building material found, may have existed here. On the north side of the valley, where a fall of the cliff occurred in 1853, two skele- tons were uncovered. These had bronze armlets, which were placed with the bones in the museum at Ipswich." From a report ^^ in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries (1885) we learn that ' during the progress of works carried on in what is known as the Park, situated a short distance from Felixstowe Church (close to, if not actually part of, the field known as the Great Long-Dole), the men in their search for Coprolites came upon many most interesting relics of the Roman occupation.' Amongst the list of objects turned up occur ' coins of Severus, Gordianus, Gallienus, Victorinus, Constantinus, Arcadius ' &c. Of more consequence than the miscellaneous finds were the cinerary urns found, ' containing bones and ashes and either closed with a cover or with a stone only.' The discovery of these last showed the situation as part of the cemetery. From what has preceded it is clear that there was on this spot of the Suffolk coast a Roman station, approximating in size and details of construc- tion to those noted for the defence of the east coast. It occurs at a most important point for the protection of this coast, and its omission would have caused a dangerous gap in the line of defence. On the cliff 100 ft. above the sea it commanded a full view of both the Stour and the Orwell and of the Deben, the harbour at whose mouth, called Bawdsey Haven, scarcely a mile away, would have held the auxiliary ships of the fleet. It seems strange that the site should be so little known by antiquaries, perhaps owing to its disappearance early in the i8th century and the very little interest shown by them in the later Roman fortresses in comparison with those which are more obvious and earlier. •' For an account of other views representing the ruins of the Roman station called Walton Castle see Topographical Index under Felixstowe. " Proc. Soc. Jnlif. Land. (Ser. 2), 1885, xi, 12, 14. 290
