A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE The iron and coal fields of Staffordshire, which attract so large a population in the present day, were little if at all known during the Roman occupation. Iron ore was possibly smelted in the district during the late Celtic age, in evidence of which some smelted ore has been found in barrows, probably of this date, at Alstonfield and elsewhere,* but nothing has hitherto been discovered to indicate that it was worked here in the Romano- British period. The Romans apparently used coal as fuel in this country, but there is no evidence that the Staffordshire coalfields were known to them. Lead-mining was carried on actively in Derbyshire by the Romans, and there is some evidence that this mineral was worked in the northern part of Staffordshire, which forms a portion of the same beds. At Wetton there appears to have been a Romano-British village where lead ore and the remains of a smelting furnace are said to have been found. 6 This village, being within the lead-mining district, may have been a miners' settlement, and from the objects found in it the inhabitants appear to have been poor and probably of the labouring class. One pig of lead was discovered beside Watling Street, at Hints in the south-east of the county, but from the inscrip- tion upon it there is no doubt that it came from the Flintshire mines and had no connexion with the locality in which it was found. 6 What is now known as potter's clay is not found in Staffordshire, and though there can be little doubt that clays indigenous to the county were used for pottery discovered at Viroconium and on other Roman sites, 7 there is no evidence in favour of its local manufacture on any considerable scale, as at Castor in Northamptonshire, or at Upchurch, and in the New Forest. It has been thought that indications of ancient kilns have been discovered at Burslem, but whether they were Roman is altogether uncertain. Pieces of rough pottery are said to have been found in digging foundations in the neighbourhood, but again there is no certainty as to their Romano- British origin. 8 We are no better off with regard to the agricultural resources of the middle and south of the county. As yet there have been found none of the villas so frequently discovered in the south of England, which formed the country houses of the wealthy, and the farm-houses of the agricultural class. The most important of the permanent settlements of the Romano- British period in the county is Letocetum often, but incorrectly, called Etocetum now Wall, at the crossing of Watling Street and Rycknield Street. From the remains found this would appear to have been one of the more important ' stations ' along Watling Street, and perhaps even a small walled town with buildings of considerable size. The actual site of Pennocrucium, a station on Watling Street which is placed at Stretton, is not definitely known, and there is nothing apparently above ground to indicate its position. It was probably only a small posting station, such as existed elsewhere along the Roman roads, without masonry walls or earthworks. The name survives in Penk and Penk- ridge. At Chesterton there is a large camp which may have formed a Bateman, Vestiges, 76, 77, &c. Bateman, Ten Tears' Diggings, 194-6 ; Carrington, ReRq. v, 20 1 ; Intellectual Observer, vii, 391. See Hints in Topog. Index. Wright, Celt. Rom. Sax. ; Jewitt, Ceramic Art in Great Brit. 32. Aikins, Hist. Manchester, 524-6 ; Ward, Hist. Stoke-on-Trent, 24. 184
