ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE obliterated the antique outlines, and have discovered or at least, have recorded nothing of value. Archaeologists, on their part, have attempted no excavation. Accordingly, we rely principally on Stukeley for plan and for details. He was an inaccurate observer and surveyor. But his account of Little Chester fits both antecedent probabilities and also the scanty facts otherwise known to us. The Roman area 1 appears to have lain around the western half of Old Chester Road (fig. 23). The meeting of this road with the footpath to Breadsall represents roughly the centre of the ' station,' while the western front was near the river and the south-east corner lies under the Great Northern Railway. 2 The ' station ' itself, according to Stukeley, was an oblong of 500 by 600 feet, 3 that is, of almost 7 acres, surrounded by a wall and a ditch. The wall was 9 feet thick, and parts of it were ' mortar full of pebbles as big as nuts ' presumably the concrete core usual in Roman masonry. It had in places vaults alongside it, which, if Roman work, we may interpret as the foundations of wall-turrets or of the guardchambers of gateways. Stukeley adds that the wall was then in process of demolition, and later observers have noted little of it. Pegge, in 1759, saw a piece 5 feet thick, 4 and a definite part of it was perhaps noted long after, in 1888. This stood in the garden of the Manor House farm and in an ad- joining cellar, about 740 feet east of the river bank. It was a stretch of gritstone r .1-1 j ui r F IG - 2 4- PRE-ROMAN FIBULA FOUND AT masonry, 4 feet thick, and traceable tor LITTLE CHESTER. 43 feet, running in a northerly direc- tion ; with it was connected something like an ancient vault. But the age of this masonry has never been ascertained, and as prebendal houses and other buildings occupied the site during the Middle Ages, old walls of post-Roman date might well occur. 6 Of Roman buildings within or without the walls practically nothing is known. Stukeley observed ' foundations of houses in all directions ' inside the station and gravelled streets outside. Further, we have record, either in or outside the ramparts, of broken columns, waterpipes, and steyned wells, including two square ones, described by Stukeley as ' made 1 A fibula is figured in the Intellectual Observer, xii. (1867), p. 345, and stated to have been found at Little Chester with human bones. This fibula is unquestionably pre-Roman, and if really found at Little Chester must be a very early importation from the Continent. That would imply that Little Chester was inhabited long before the Roman occupation of Britain. See fig. 24. 8 Watkin (Derb. Arch. Journ. vii. 78) says the railway skirts the 'station.' But, so far as I can calculate, it crosses the south-east corner. 8 Stukeley also gives the seemingly smaller dimensions, ' 80 by 1 20 paces, the same as Mandues- sedum.' But that place, covering 6 acres, is about the same size as Little Chester. The paces, therefore, are to be understood as long ones. Mr. Ward tells me that he thinks he has been able quite recently to trace much of the wall and calculates the area to be about 540 by 615 feet, the wall to be 9 feet thick, and its core of concrete.
- Roman roads throughout the Coritani (Bibl. Topogr. Brit, iv.), p. 20.
6 Ward, Derb. Arch. Journ. xi. 92 ; Bailey, Derb. Arch. Journ. xii. 170 ; J. Keys, Sketches of Old Derby (1895), p. 8, not a very critical work. The illustrations to Mr. Bailey's article have not a Roman look. Part of the Manor House itself dates back to mediaeval times. I 217 28
