ROMANO-BRITISH LONDON continued will be found to reach the south end of Park Lane,^" and a glance at the map will show that it there made an angle and passed north-west along what is now the Edgware Road. At the mouth of the Ravensbourne opposite the Isle of Dogs, this line passes close to the river, but it may be pointed out that rivers tend to erode the concave shore, and in Roman times the Thames was no doubt some distance north of the road ; hence the loss of this line is apparently due in part to the subsequent shifting of the river- bed, and possibly also to the fact that when the roads were made on the north bank there would have been less demand for wharves at this point for the transfer of goods from the river to the military road. Roman remains and apparently burials have been found at Deptford, though the site is not exactly recorded. '^^^ Roman engineers would find no obstruction between Deptford and Westminster, and the line suggested passes midway between the burial at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum and the Deverell Street ceme- tery. Cinerary urns have also been found, with remains of Roman buildings, in St. George's Fields ^^* (Plan A, 67), through which the line passed ; and further confirmation is found in the name Stanegate (Lambeth) which suggests a paved approach to the ferry or bridge across to Thorney, and is also applied to the Roman road within the great North Wall. Allusion has already been made to the passage in Dio Cassius describing the opera- tions of Aulus Plautius and Vespasian against the tribesmen of this district in A. D. 43 ; and the bridge there mentioned ^" may be located at this point with some degree of certainty. The importance of Westminster as a Roman site is not generally recognized, but Mr. Spurrell, in dealing with the early embanking of the Thames, writes as follows : — In the Roman time the Thorneye on which Westminster Abbey-church now stands, consisted of sand surrounded, or nearly so, with peat or marshland. The land part of this little island where there was no peat, was apparently covered with Roman buildings, removed later perhaps to prepare the site of the Abbey. *^* He was informed by the abbey mason that the rubble and blocks of concrete from these Roman buildings were largely used in the footing of the Gothic work of the church, and some may be detected in the older walls. Beneath the floor of the church, concrete with brick flags was found in situ}^^" Further the clerk of the works reported the remains of a Roman building with bones and pots, on the site of the two red-brick houses on the south side of the abbey garden ; and similar remains were found below what was formerly the organist's house in the dark cloister. In 1841, during ex- cavations for the House of Lords (Plan A, 68), opposite St. Stephen's chapel '" So Loftie, Arch. Journ. xxxiv, 165. "** Leland, It'in. viii, Account of Remains at Bishopsgate (1769), pp. 6, 7 ; Brayley, Dacr. of Lond. and Midd. i, 77. "* Gale, Jntomni Iter, 65. '" It was a little higher up than the ford, which may well have been where the Ermine Street subsequently reached the river (see Plan A). ^'^ Arch. Journ. xlii (1885), 274. Thames high water is I2| ft. above Ordnance datum, and the Roman surface of Thorney 4 ft. (college garden) to 5 ft. (dark cloister) above Ordnance datum. On the latter site Roman remains were found in upper part of peat-bed of i J ft. resting on gravel, which is 4 ft. Ordnance datum ; so that the Roman level was beneath that at which alluvium is now being deposited, the island being deprived of that deposit (ibid. 272). usa "pijese were apparently mediaeval, but a lump of ' opus signinum ' is preserved. Loftie [Hist. Lond. i, 30) mentions a Roman building with hypocaust under the nave, found shortly before 1883 ; and a Roman mosaic pavement found in the nave near the west door in 1 886 {Historic Towns : London, 7). 29
