A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE The actual point chosen for this garrison is characteristic of Roman methods. It is no isolated impregnable peak, but a gentle eminence in the middle of the val- ley, which a mo- dern eye might easily neglect (fig. 8.) The ground falls away from it more or less slightly on all sides. On the north-east, twenty or thirty feet be- low it, runs the Noe. On the north-west is the gully of a little nameless burn. On the south-east, a few score yards away, is the Brad- well Brook. Only on the south-west does the fall change quickly to a gradual rise to higher ground. In such a site in the upper of two fields called the Halsteads, the fort was planted, low enough to be near the water, high enough to command an outlook over almost all the valley, and guarded by nature on three of its four sides. For Roman purposes this was sufficient. It mattered not that the hills tower high on either side of the valley, and command a view right into the Roman lines. Under the conditions of ancient warfare they were too far away to weaken the Roman defence. The site has long been recognized as ancient. For generations the dwellers near have known the ruins as a convenient quarry, and the names Brough (at least as old as the twelfth century) and the Castle witness to a popular consciousness of antiquity. Archaeological recog- nition came later. Camden may have had some notion of the Roman associations of Brough when he mentions it as one end of the Roman road Bathamgate. But its true character was not realized till the second SCALE Yf /SMILE FIG. 8. SITE OF BROUGH FORT, ANAVIO. (The heights are in English feet.) 2O2
