|
Gentleman's Magazine 1907 part 1 p.176
bronze and iron; also various kinds of pottery, though there
was very little of really fine Samian ware.
Many fragments of glass and lead showed that the windows of
the fort were glazed. Several pieces of jewellery were
found, one being a fish with an enamelled red eye. In the
three-roomed house outside the fort remains of a cat and
kittens (or dog and puppies) were found under the
debris of the roof and walls. Slates were discovered
amongst the ruins showing that the dwellings had all been
roofed with slates.
How the camp was overthrown after the departure of its Roman
occupants we do not know, but its ruin was evidently
completed by fire. Perhaps the barbarian hordes lurking
among the grim fastnesses of the mountains around descended
upon it. History, at any rate, is silent upon this point.
Many of the sandstone door-posts, corner-stones, etc., were
carried away in later times. Some of them were found by Mr.
Calverley in use as cheese-presses, etc., at farms in the
neighbourhood. Still sufficient of the camp is left for us
to build up in the imagination what it once was. We can see
what an imposing edifice it must have appeared to the wild
hillmen, perched in mid-air on the edge of a crag round
which mists swirled and snow drove. It must have been a
dreary spot in winter for those Roman soldiers, with the
north wind from Sca Fell and Bow Fell howling round it, and
wild boars and wolves prowling, perhaps, outside its gates.
A wild boar's tusk was found amongst its debris, and
portions of the antlers of red deer. To-day hares and foxes
may be found amongst its ruins, while ravens still have a
nesting-place in the crags above, and buzzard hawks and
peregrine falcons hover above it in its bleak desolation.
The view from the camp on a fine day is so beautiful as to
make it well worth a visit independently of the great
interest of its relics from an antiquarian point of view. It
is doubly interesting, perhaps, by reason of the mystery
which enshrouds it. Of its builders we know
|