button to main menu  Camden's Britannia, edn 1789

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Page 186:-
  Wulsty c.
  Wulsty Castle
mitred abbey the abbot had summons to parliament in the reigns of Edward I. and II. [g] The steeple fell down Jan. 1. 1600, and beat down great part of the chancel, which was rebuilt 1603, and afterwards burnt down with the church except the vaulted south aisle. The chancel was rebuilt by the vicar Edward Mandeville, and the church repaired by the parishioners [h]. The west porch was built by Robert Chambers, abbot t. Henry VII. and VIII. his rebus being on it, and his gravestone robbed of its brasses is shewn in the ruined choir. Only the nave now remains [i]. The manor belongs to the heir of Governor Stephenson. Within the parish and lordship stood Wulstey castle, formerly as it is said a very strong building moated round, and according to tradition erected by the religious for the safe keeping of their charters and records [k].
  Michael Scot
  Scot, Michael
Michael Scot was a Durham man, who applied himself to the abstruse Aristotelian philosophy, which he pretended to translate from Avicenna, and dedicated to Frederic II. emperor of Germany, whose astrologer he was. Some of his philological and astrological works have been printed, and Dempster says some remained in his time in Scotland, which his countrymen would not dare to open for fear of the devilish pranks that might be played by them [l].
  Old Carlisle. Pl.IX. fig.9. Pl.X. fig.1.
  roman fort, Old Carlisle
  Olenacum
  roman inscription

The Ala Augusta continued at Old Carlisle, as we learn from inscriptions from A.D. 188 to A.D. 242. [m] The Notitia at Olenacum seems to call it Ala Herculea [n]. A military way has gone from the wall southward from Old Carlisle to Elenborough [o]. The ruins of the Roman town and station are very grand and conspicuous on a large and visible military way leading directly to Carlisle and the wall, and there is no other station on the wall between it and Carlisle. There seems to have been a double rampart round it. The river Wiza runs about half a mile from the south and west side, and from the west is a fine prospect to the sea [p]. The first of Mr. Camden;'s inscriptions is now in the west wall of the garden at Drumburgh. Mr. Gale in Phil. Trans. No.357, reads the first word of the 5th line LING. N. quasi Lingonensis for the name of the province or place whence Tiberius or Justinus came [q]. Another found here belonging to the same ala has been mentioned at Elenborough, and is Horsley's lvii. The next may have been on a defaced altar in the hayloft at Drumburgh [r]. The third [s] was brought away by sir Robert Cotton to Connington, and is now at Trinity college Cambridge [t]. The letters rude and uneven. The Ala is here called Gordiana, the date A.D. 242, under the reign of Gordian III. [v] The altars at Wigton are probably gone. The milliary was in Horsley's time at Naworth castle [x], now at Rookby. The other two are now lost [y], but the second of them may be a dedication to Ocean, as Ward, or to Mars, and Mercury, and the next two may be effaced from two altars now at Drumburgh [z]. The other articles mentioned by Mr. Camden I take to be Lares.
Another inscription on an altar by the ala Augusta found here 1756 is copied from Gent. Mag. Sept. 1756, and is to be thus read:
  Pl.X. fig.[ ]

Jovi optimo maximo
pro salute
Imperatoris Lucii Septimi
Severi Augusti nostri
Equites alae
Augustae curante
Egnatio Vere-
cundo prae-
secto posuerunt.
  Pl.X. fig.[ ] Pl.XI. fig.[ ]
Two more inscriptions found here are copied from Gent. Mag. May 1757. XXVII. p.220 [a].
Old Carlisle is in the parish of Westward [b].
  Wigton.
  Wigton
At Wigton, a market town, is an hospital founded 1725 by John Thomlinson, M.A. rector of Rothbury, c. Northumberland, for six poor widows of clergymen of the diocese of Carlisle, or of that part of Cumberland which is in the diocese of Chester, incorporated by the name of the governess and sisters of the college of matrons, or hospital of Christ, in Wigton, c. Cumberland, and endowed with £.54. per annum. A school was also established by the procurement of the said founder and his brother [c]. Here was antiently an hospital, or free chapel dedicated to St. Leonard [d], to which Mr. Pegge is of opinion belongs a seal found in Pickering castle, c. York, and given me 1785 by Mr. Simpson surveyor there. It is of wood, which is an unusual material, not unlike a butter pat, and has the representation of the deity with the crucifix, circumscribed SEGILLVM WIGHTON. Dr. Burn says the parish church is a very old building, which seems never to have been rebuilt since the time of Odaard de Loriz its antient lord,who in the Chronicon Cumbriae is said to have built it [e].
  BLATUM BULGIUM.
  Blatum Bulgium
  Bowness-on-Solway
  roman inscription

Horsley takes BLATUM BULGIUM and Castra Exploratorum to have been on the north of the wall [f], neither of them being ranked in the Notitia among the stations ad lineam valli, nor does the distance agree from Old Carlisle. He therefore reads it with Dr. Gale agreeable to a MS. and printed copy [g], Ab lato bulgio, i.e. ab lato aestuario, Solway frith, and places it at Middleby [h], or Burnswork in England: the one might be the castra aestiva, the other the station[i]. At Bulness he places the Tunnocelum of the Notitia, where the cohors AElia classica, or of marines was stationed [k]. The village now stands as the fort did on a rock or promontory on the edge of the Solway frith. The remains of the wall are considerable not far from hence on the east, but not at all on the west. What Mr. Camden took for its foundations in the water a mile beyond Boulness was rather a small fort [l]. There was at Appleby part of an inscription said to have been found here:

IMP. M. AVRE
TRIVMPHAI
PERSAR.
under which Mr. Bainbridge added as a comment:

MARC AVREL
PHILO
BLATI BVLGII. [m]
[g] Burn, II. 176.
[h] Ib. 179. ex reg. paroch.
[i] Ib. 181, 182.
[k] Ib. 183, 188.
[l] Tan. Bibl. Brit. 525.
[m] Horsl. 92, 93.
[n] Ib. 95.
[o] Ib. 110.
[p] Ib. 112.
[q] Horsl. 276. Cumb. lvi.
[r] Horsl. 279.
[s] Horlsl. lv. 276. Grut. MVI. 8.
[t] This is copied from Mr. Lamborne's plate of inscriptions at Trinity college.
[u] Horsl. 276.
[x] Ib. 277. lviii.
[y] Ib. 278.
[z] Ib. 277, 278.
[a] They were incorrectly engraved there, vol.XXV. p.360.
[b] Burn, II. 144. 147.
[c] Ib. 195. 197.
[d] MS. valor abp. Sancroft. Willis, Mit. Ab. II. 56. Tan. Not. Mon. 78.
[e] Burn, II. 191.
[f] Horsl. 67.
[g] Ib. 34.
[h] Ib. 114. Bwlch, a passage, Bulch Gvortigern. Hist. of Alchester, 698. Bulge (Cumbric) an inscription scil. of the sea. Gale MS. [2].
[i] P. 409.
[k] P. 92. 103. 109.
[l] P. 157-8.
[m] P. 267.
Here
gazetteer links
button -- "College of Matrons" -- (almshouses, Wigton)
button -- "St Leonard's Chapel (?)" -- St Leonard's Chapel
button -- "Holme Cultrayne Abbay" -- Holme Coultram Abbey
button -- Nelson Thomlinson School
button -- "Tunnocelum" -- Maia
button -- "Olenacum" -- (roman fort, Old Carlisle)
button -- St Mary's Church
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