II.—On the Site of CAMBODUNUM. the Object of The
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16 II.—On the Site of CAMBODUNUM. By the Rev. JOSEPH HUNTER, F.S.A. Read 28th May, 1846. THE object of the present communication is to lay before the Society of Anti- quaries of London, first, a concise history of the extraordinary variations of opinion among the antiquaries who have devoted themselves to the study of the Roman, antiquities of Britain, respecting the site of a station the name of which is preserved by Antonine, CAMBODUNUM or CAMULODUNUM, the copies of the Itinerary varying; and secondly, a piece of evidence which I have lately discovered which seems to me to go very far towards determining this long doubtful and unsettled question. I may add that if the evidence which will be produced is thought sufficient to establish the point, the opinion respecting the site of Cambodunum which has now for more than half a century had possession of the public mind will be shewn to be untenable, and a course of one of the principal roads made, or at least used, by the Romans, be shewn to be drawn with more of the wisdom which is justly attributed to that wise and noble people. The road which passed through or near to Cambodunum, is the second of the roads as they appear in Antonine's collection of them. It is a road reaching the whole extent of the island; but the only part of it with which I need to trouble the Society, is the part by which EBORACUM is connected with MAMUCIUM or MANCUNIUM. That Eboracum is the modern York it would be absurd to attempt to prove. That Mamucium is Manchester, is not, perhaps, quite so indisputable, while it is however a point on which antiquaries are so well agreed, that I am not at all prepared or disposed to raise any question respecting it. Between these two stations are two others, the names of which are CALCARIA and CAMBODUNUM. Calcaria is nine miles from York, which is the distance of the modern town of Tadcaster; and, if Tadcaster is not actually on the site of Calcaria, it will hardly be doubted that Calcaria was at the point at which the road crossed the Wharf, and that the name Calcaria originated in the natural features of that limestone district. This then determined, we have between Tadcaster and Manchester an inter- mediate road station, Cambodunum. It is placed, according to the existing copies On the Site of Cambodunum. 17 of the Itinerary, at the distance of 20 miles from Calcaria and 18 from Mamucium. This makes the entire distance between Tadcaster and Manchester only 38 miles, while the actual distance in any line by which it was possible to travel cannot be less than 50. This difficulty presses almost equally against all the opinions respecting the position of Cambodunum, and is not, therefore, at all material in respect of the object more immediately before us; but it may be well to state that Horsley, who was no rash innovator, but who felt this difficulty strongly, suggests the possibility that the reading of the Iter ought in this particular to be corrected, and that the distance from Calcaria to Cambodunum ought to be " mill, passuum triginta " and not " mill, passuum viginti." There is, however, great difficulty in admitting this emendation of the text of Antonine, arising out of this circumstance, that we have rarely a distance from station to station so great as thirty miles. Perhaps the Society may allow me to remark, that this very Iter contains one of the best proofs that the difference between the Roman mile and the modern English mile is not considerable, in the distance at which it places Calcaria from Eboracum. The late Mr. Leman, a Fellow of this Society, and one of the most diligent in- vestigators of the Roman antiquities of Britain, was as fully aware of the difficulty as Horsley had been. His mode of overcoming it was different from Horsley's: he supposed that, in the copies of the Itinerary which have come down to us, the name of a station is lost intermediate between Calcaria and Cambodunum, and this intermediate station he was disposed to place, on no very decisive probabilities, at the site of the modern Adwalton. All idea, it may be observed, of actually tracing this Iter by indicia of it yet remaining, is vain. The difficulty, however, presses with almost equal force against any particular point in the country lying between York and Manchester, at which Cambodunum may be placed; and we must be content, in the first place, to sacrifice in this par- ticular the integrity of the copies of the Iter, and, secondly, to regard the require- ments of the Itinerary satisfied, if we find a place, in other respects having claims to be considered as having been a Roman station, in the line near which we must suppose any road to have passed by which York could have been connected with Manchester. We may pass over the controversy which many years ago fell under the notice of this Society respecting the identity of this station, Cambodunum, and a place spoken of by Bede under the name Campodonum. Polydore Vergil, in the infancy of studies of this kind, had intimated their identity ; but this opinion I believe has now no supporters, and the Campodonum, where one of the first Christian churches in Yorkshire arose, is to be sought for on the line of the Don, and probably at Doncaster. VOL. XXXII. D 18 O» the Site of Camhodimwm. Camden is the first person who attempted deliberately to fix the site of Camboi- dunum. He- had traversed masxk of fcbe west riding of Yoritshke, and was therefore acquainted with the comntry through whiefa the road must have passed, and the antiquities to be fo*ra& ia it^ and, finding n« other ancient works of any magnitude on or near what must have been its course, except those at a place called Almo»- bury, he gave the authority of his venerable; name to the opinion that Almoraburj* is the site of the Roman Carobodimum.—~Bntawmm, 4to. 1600. p. 6>15. In this opinion he is supported by his successors Burton and Gale, an«t followed by ether writers on the Roma© antiquities of Britain; and the opinion may be said t& have kept its groumd till, early in the last century, it became the duty of Horsley to submit it to a close examination. Horsley shewed the utter improbability that Cambodununa was Almonbury. The works at Ahnonbury are undoubtedly most striking and magnificent; but there is nothing Roman about them. Nothing Roman has ever been found ia the vicinity of them. They belong to the class of Earth-Works to wMch belong the works at Mexborough, Laughton, and other places near the southern border of Brigantia; a class of which the purpose seems to be as much unknown as is the people by whom they were constructed. Horsley, however, did n©t dismiss the claim of Almonbury to be the Roman Cam- boduaum', without at the same time endeavouring to shew at what place we ought to look for Cambodunum. He observed in Camdera; that a Roman altar had beem disinterred in some part of that wide district of the parish of Halifax which is known* by the name of Greteland; and having mentioned this name, and having occasion to mention it often again, it may be proper to state that Gietelamd, Stainland, and Elland are terms by which districts are described; that they are not the names o§ towns, villages, or hamlets, except so far as that a village has collected about the church which was erected in Elland; and that they are districts contiguous to each other, forming the southern portion of the very extensive Halifax parish, and* abutting on the parish of Huddersfield* One of the principles on which Horsley proceeded m his admirable investigations of the Roman Antiquities of Britain was this:—that the discovery of fixed and heavy remains of the Roman times, such as all the altars are, affords a presumption that there had been a Roman population settled at or very near to the place at which they are found ; and, applying this principle to the present case, he came t& the conclusion that near where this altar was found there must have been a settle- ment of the Romans, and that this settlement agreed very well with the position of an intermediate station between Tadcaster and Manchester. On the Site of Camhodunum. • 19 Camden, in his Britannia, unfortunately had not told us with sufficient particularity in what part of Greteland the altar was found ; nor was this particular information to be gained from anything in Gruter, to whom Camden sent a copy of the inscrip- tion. But Horsley, who, as will be seen in the sequel, shewed in this his usual sagacity, observed that there was at a particular point in the district called Grete- land one of those lingulee of land on which the Romans most usually placed their <amps. This lingula is at the junction with the Calder of one of its tributary streams called the Black Brook. It lies between the village of Elland and one of the old mansions of the neighbourhood called the Clay House; and, without at all knowing or suspecting that the altar was actually found near this very site, he •came to the conclusion that on this lingula was a camp, about which, as was usually the case, dwellings of the Roman inhabitants of Britain were constructed, and that these formed together the station called Cambodunum.