Page:VCH Derbyshire 1.djvu/282

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A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE Minor objects are more numerous. They include Samian and other potsherds, iron nails and a knife, lead weights and spindlewhorls, and sheet lead with nail-holes, window and bottle-glass, beads, several dozen querns and millstones, some coins, and some scanty inscriptions, but no fibulae. The following deserve especial notice : (i) Inscribed fragment found about 1832 by Captain de Holling- worth, and long preserved at Hollingworth Hall, but now said to be lost. It bore the letters IMP, or according to a better account ' IMPC with F below, inside a curious border,' and appears to have been the top left-hand corner of a monu- mental slab similar to that found in the vault at Brough (p. 206), though not necessarily of the same FIG. 20. FRAGMENT OF period or emperor. 1 It is far too imperfect to be INSCRIPTION FROM MELANDRA. 11- t_" i i T (After R. B. Robinson.) dated : it might be as early as Domitian. (2) Centurial stone, 1 2 inches high by 1 6 long, found just before 1771 lying near and outside the north-east corner of the fort, having (presumably) fallen from the facing of the wall. For a while built in over the door of a house near ; now in Glossop. Fig. 2 1 . c(o]ho(ri) i Frisiave(num), (centuria) Val(erii) Vitalh. ' First Cohort of Frisiavones, century of Valerius Vitalis (built this).' The cohort occurs also at Manchester, and was probably, at one time or another, in garrison at both forts. 2 The lettering actually on the stone might be read Frisiano(rum) as well as Fnsiavo(num), but the former is assured by various examples (Corpus Inscr. Lat. iii. pp. 866, 873). (3) Another inscribed stone is said to have been found and built into the river wall about 1848. But whatever it was, all trace of it seems to be now lost. Three other alleged inscriptions on tiles must be set aside. One which I have seen, inscribed DRAIV (i.e. 'drain'), was found in 1899 in a modern fence ; the others bear the letters V V, taken to be the end of the stamp of the Twentieth Legion, LEG XXVV, but they seem to me mere scratches (Derb. Arch. Journ. xxi. 16, xxiii. 102). A carved fragment from Melandra is said to have once adorned the ' Spinners' Arms,' at Hadfield, but it is now gone and its age doubtful. (4) One bronze and nineteen leaden weights were found together in the north-east corner of the fort in 1903 (fig. 22). Ten of them bear marks, as follows : 177 grains 9 625 grains . 241 ... 918 - 405 -~ "88 435 '" 17" .. 535 1882 The weights of the uninscribed examples are given as 148 (two), 192, 218, 299, 314, 331, 921, 1728, and 4744 grains. 8 1 W. Beaumont, Brit. Arch. Assoc. vii. (1851), 18, Watkin, Derb. Arch. Journ. vii. 88, Hamnett, xxi. 10 (all giving only IMP) ; Manchester Guardian, 7 March, 1905, from a drawing by Mr. R. B. Robinson, adding C and F. Fig. 20. I have to thank Mr. F. A. Bruton for help in this and other details. 8 First published by Watson, Arcbteologia, iii. 236, since often seen : copied by myself. 3 May, Derb. Arch. Journ. xxv. 168. I have not seen the weights myself. 214