A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK situated the church and churchyard of Burgh, placed astride the centre of the south-west side of the inclosure. The north-east angle of the entrench- ment can still be made out, and perhaps that of the north-west also. The line of fosse and bank of the south-east end is fairly visible, and crowns the slope of the valley down which runs Drabs Lane. All the ploughed land within the vague lines of this inclosure shows fragments of Roman brick and roof tiles, and in the field in which stands the church red-tile tesserae have been picked up, a sure sign of the former existence of Roman buildings. Excavations were made in November 1900 by Mr. Walter Brooke and Mr. E. St. F. Moore. The objects found are now in the Ipswich Museum. Here again we may perhaps see something similar to the two moated inclosures previously mentioned. It may be conjectured that some exten- sive homestead was hastily fortified against the too probable attacks of the Teutonic sea-rovers from the neighbouring ocean, or it may not be impossible that a small congregation of houses within the inclosing banks may have formed the much-disputed site of Combretonium. Burgh Castle. — We emerge into clear daylight when the next two stations and the last to be noted are reached, viz. those of Burgh Castle near Yarmouth and Walton near Felixstowe, of which the latter is now submerged beneath the waters of the North Sea. But before describing these stations something must be said as to the causes of their origin. By the last quarter of the 3rd century the Romano-British fleet, on which no doubt dependence had been placed for the protection of the east and south coasts from raids by plundering bands of rovers from over the seas, had evidently failed to afford that protection. Whether it was that the fleet was not numerous enough or for whatever reason, the Roman government determined to supplement its first line of defence by a second, and this was achieved by the erection of forts capable of holding from 500 to 1,000 men each, on points of the coast-line extending from the mouth of the Wash to Pevensey on the coast of Sussex. The coast-line indicated received the name of Litus Saxonicum, and the nine fortresses which guarded it are called ' the forts of the Saxon Shore.' The repeated attacks on the east coast by the Danes and Northmen at a time later than the Roman period show with sufficient clearness the plan adopted by them in their raids, and from it we may easily deduce that their predecessors the Angles and Saxons were their masters in the art of invasion. Their endeavour was to enter the rivers and by so doing to rerxh an inner and more populous region to plunder rather than to ravage the coast. The way to check the carrying out of this plan was to place a sufficient guard over the mouths of such rivers as might appear to offer too easy an access to the better inhabited districts, and there is strong presumption that this was what was attempted by placing these Roman forts in the positions they occupied. In nearly every instance, but in none so plainly as at Burgh Castle, are they placed on or near the mouths of important rivers. We shall see how the two forts in question will fall in with the view put forward. A consultation of the map (plan I) will show that at the extreme north-east corner of the county lies a sheet of water called Breydon Water, which forms at this point the limit of the county. Into the western end of Breydon flow two rivers, the Waveney and the Yare ; another, the Bure, a Norfolk river, 282
