Page:VCH Derbyshire 1.djvu/272

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A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE and gritstone quoins, and a pavement of tiles and cement, and Bray re- cords a ' pavement of small bits of brick and pebble strongly cemented,' and ' a double row of gritstone pillars wide enough for three people to walk abreast between them,' destroyed before his day, but remembered by tradition. Bray's pavement is doubtless the same as Pegge's, and his pillars may be taken to be the piles of the hypocaust required for the bath-house. 1 Among the tiles of this building were one or two with the letters C O H or the like, broken and imperfect. Of the cemetery and the camp-followers' village, both of which we should expect to meet outside the fort, no definite traces have yet been noticed. Urns with ashes have, however, been found occasionally, and the Ordnance Survey places some such on the further side of Bradwell Brook. The finds of smaller objects include some inscriptions and architec- tural fragments, querns, stone balls suitable for catapults, glass, potsherds (amongst which are some bits of embossed Samian bowls of a second- century type), 2 a few coins, and some minor fragments. The coins are : a gold coin of 'Augustus'; another of Vespasian (A.D. 71, Cohen 97) ; a ' Second Bronze' of perhaps the second century, found in 1903 near the headquarters ; and some undecipherable Third Brass, conjecturally assigned to the fourth century, found in the filling of the vault. 3 They throw no light on the history of the fort. More importance attaches to the inscribed and architectural frag- ments, and especially to the inscriptions. These are as follows : (i) Four pieces of an inscribed slab, which when perfect was an oblong panel with a plainly-moulded border, 30 or 32 inches tall, 54 inches long, and 4 inches thick. They were found in the vault in 1903. The piece inscribed SCOPRAF was walled in, as a bit of old building material, at the point b on fig. i o. The other three pieces were found in the debris which filled the vault, about halfway down. The largest piece had obviously been used at one time as a flooring slab, no doubt by the Romans themselves, before it was thrown into the vault. The whole when perfect was inscribed with six lines of lettering, the first five lines 2 inches high and the sixth z inches (figs. 13, 14.) The text is : Im[p.'] Caesari T. Ael. Hadr. Aritonmo Aug. plo. p.p~ cob. i Aquita orurri sub lulio Vero leg.] Aug. pr. pr. y imt_anie [? Cdpitonia Fiisco pra(e]f* ' In honour of the emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius, pater patriae ; (erected 1 Pegge, Roads through the Coritani, p. 40 ; Bray, Tour, p. 210. With these we may connect the cement, etc., seen by John Whitaker on the Lower Halsteads (Hist, of Manchester, i. App. p. be.) ; the ' tesselated pavement' mentioned by Bateman as found in 1773 (Vestiges, p. 153) ; the pavement near the river mentioned by John Wilson (cited in Bateman's Ten Tears' Diggings, p. 251), and the tiles, etc., found near Brough Mill in 1892 (Derbyshire Courier, 26 Nov. 1892 ; Antiquary, Jan. 1893 ; Derbyshire N. W Q. i. 49). 2 The pottery found in 1903, including the embossed Samian, is now in the Buxton Museum. Mr. Bateman had some bits (Sheffield Museum Cat. p. 213=6. i. 150; Lomberdale House Cat. p. I25=E. i. 19). Much has been lost and dispersed. s For the coin of 'Augustus' see Nottingham Daily Express, 21 Aug. 1903 ; for that of Vespasian, Pegge, p. 39 ; for the rest, Mr. Garstang's report, Derb. Arch. Journ. xxvi. 4 The only uncertainties are in line 6, where the names of the prefect must be conjectured. The letter before P might be V or A ; for Fuscus, Priscus is an equally possible supplement. The last letter may be E pr<e(fecti), or F fra(e)/(ecto), but seems to me F. 206