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 fcbewes t 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

dersfield, and there he found many other indicia of Roman habitation, to which others have since his time been added, and Slack continues even now to afford from time to time fresh matter to gratify those who are curious about Roman antiquities. Mr. Watson communicated information of the discovery he had made to his friend Mr. John Whittaker, who, then settled at Manchester, was quite as eager in his search after the antiquities around him as Mr. Watson himself was. Moreover he was at that time engaged in the composition of his History of Manchester, a work which necessarily led him to seek out the true site of Cambodunum, the station which had such immediate communication with Manchester. To cut short this part of my story, both he and Mr. Watson concurred in carrying the line of the road from Tadcaster to Manchester by Slack ; Slack became, in general estimation, the Cambo- dunum of Antonine ; and the claim of the lingula in Greteland, and the adjacent country, was abandoned. Yet it is curious, and not uninstructive to those who are engaged in antiquarian researches, to observe how it has come to pass that the judgment of the admirable Horsley has been in this point superseded, and how the exactness and truth of a statement of fact by Camden has been put in question. Mr. Watson published his History of the Parish of Halifax in 1775. Speaking of Camden's Greteland altar he says, "Where this altar was found for my own part I could never learn, though I have lived in the neighbourhood of Greteland near twenty years ; there is not the least tradition about it, nor indeed of any thing old and curious having ever been discovered in the whole township. I have frequently searched it all over with the greatest care, and had it once contained such a military settlement as Cambodunum, am clearly of opinion that I should have met with some trace of it, as the greatest part of the land is still wild uncultivated common, or consists of woods and rocks. It is a natural supposition to think that, where such an altar as this was erected, there would be some kind of a settlement; but as there is no reason to believe that any thing of the sort was in Greteland, I rather suspect an error in the account. Had it been given to the adjoining township of Stainland it might have been concluded that it was originally set up in the confines of the supposed Cambodunum at Slack ; as it is, neither tradition, remains, nor the vicinity of any ancient road, tend to confirm the report."—Hist, of Halifax. 4to. 1775, p. 36. Another antiquary of Mr. Watson's period, who sought Greteland over with great assiduity in quest of a station, was Mr. Percival of Royton. Mr. Whittaker says that this gentleman searched with great diligence, yet found nothing, and he concludes his observations on this subject with the somewhat exulting remark, " What has been sought ineffectually for a century and a half,—the real site of Cambodunum,— is now discovered." He means at Slack. The author of the Commentary on the Itinerary, in the Translation of Richard of On the Site of Cambodunum. 21 Cirencester, 8vo. 1809, passes over all that had been said for Greteland, and writes thus :—" As the only great and undoubted Roman station between Tadcaster and Manchester is at Slack, (for the camps at Kirkleas and Castleshaw are only tempo- rary posts,) it will, perhaps, be justifiable to fix this point as the site of Cambodunum ; to suppose ten miles omitted in this stage, and in the next to conjecture that by a common error in copying the Roman numerals XVIII. have been substituted for XXIII., the exact distance from Slack to Manchester." Any correction of the distance which would favour Slack would tell equally in favour of Greteland. Next comes Dr. Thomas Dunham Whitaker, whose survey of the Parish of Halifax was published in 1816. Entertaining on the whole no very exalted opinion of Mr. Watson's skill as an antiquary, he attributes to him " the merit of having discovered the real site of Cambodunum." Dr. Whitaker is further pleased to call Camden's " a vague account," while in reality nothing can be more distinct and precise as to the fact of the discovery. " Calderus in ipso Lancastrensium confinio scatens igno- bilibus prsetexitur oppidis, inter quse ad Gretland in cacumine montis in quern nullus nisi una partfraccessus, effossa fuit hsec ara votiva Deo civitatis Brigantum Topico, ut videtur, posita. Ciuse nunc cernitur Bradleise in sedibus clarissimi viriD. Joannis Savili Baronis Scaccarii."—Britannia, 4to. 1600, p. 612. Dr. Whitaker's words are these: —" Excited probably by Camden's vague account of the celebrated altar DVI CIV BRIG having been found in Greteland, as well as the report of Roman bricks having been discovered at Grimscar, and upon a very accurate research finding nothing ancient or curious in that township, he extended his inquiries into Stainland, on the confines of which, but actually within Longwood, in the parish of Huddersfield, he found, I think beyond a doubt, the long lost Cambo- dunum of Antonine. On this subject, however differing on others, Mr. Whittaker and himself agreed; nor, indeed, can it well be otherwise, for the distance from Manchester is exact, the line near that of the great military way, and the remains decisive of Roman antiquity."—Loidis and Elmete, fol. 1816. p. 374. Dr. Whitaker, however, with a bolder and more commanding mind than any of his predecessors in this department, and only unfortunate in never having had the leisure requisite for collecting the written evidence of those minute transactions which constitute the body of topography, was not completely satisfied with the claim of Slack to be Cambodunum ; at least, something of hesitation may be discerned in the following remarkable passage, remarkable in itself, and still more remarkable as indicating, on ground wholly independent of those taken by Horsley, his opinion of the suitableness of Horsley's site, in Greteland, to be a place of Roman castrameta- tion :—" I cannot persuade myself that the site (Slack) was marked out by Agricola; 22 On the Site of Cambodunum. and it is a very singular circumstance that the same military surveyors who so assiduously fortified the Ure, the Wharf, the Aire, the confluence of Aire and Calder, and those of the Medlock and the Irk at Manchester, should in this line have wholly neglected the Calder, which afforded sites about Elland and Brig house, well adapted to their style of encampment, while they would more equally have divided the space between Mancunium and Calcaria than the bleak and inhospitable height of Cam- bodunum (Slack). In short, though decidedly Roman, this site of an encampment is an anomaly in Roman castrametation." To the same purpose also are his remarks on the superior suitability of Elland to Halifax to be the proper site of the capital of the parish. It must not, however, be concealed that Dr. Whitaker more than once expresses his firm persuasion that Slack is the site of Cambodunum. He thought too lowly of Camden's testimony, and of Horsley's admirable judgment; and too highly of the effect of the discoveries at Slack: he distrusted also too much the independent observation of his own penetrating mind. A native topographer, who in 1836 published an octavo volume on ibe History of the Parish, observes, that " The testimony of Dr. Whitaker is at once so decisive, that I shall not trouble my readers with the proofs brought forward by Watson in support of his argument, that Cambodunum is at Slack;" and again, after Watson, " There is not the visible remains of a Roman station within the bounds of this extensive parish." But Mr. Wellbeloved of York, who in his volume entitled " Eburacum " shews that he has studied in the school of Horsley, and has learned to imitate his accuracy in the description of Roman remains, and his caution in forming deductions from them, notices the two opinions respecting the site of Cambodunum, Greteland, or Slack, and pronounces decisively in favour of neither of them. He gives no countenance himself, though he slightly mentions them, to " the doubts of Mr. Watson respecting the discovery of the altar at Greteland." ' In fact these doubts, on which the objection to the Greteland site wholly rests, ought never to have been entertained. Camden would never have placed upon the pages of his Britannia that a Roman altar, with a most important inscription, had been found in Greteland, if he had not previously satisfied himself of the fact. The anti- quaries who have reasoned on the doubt, and come to certain conclusions in conse- quence, ought also to have known that Camden's intimacy with that branch of the family of Savile which was seated at Bradley in Stainland, to which Sir Henry Savile, another eminent antiquary of the time, belonged, afforded him the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with such an event as the discovery of this altar. And this On tke Site of Cambotkmum. 23 brings me to the second part of my design, which was, to lay before the Society contemporary and most precise evidence to tke finding this altar in Greteland, entirely corroborative of the statement made by Camden, and, as seems to me, most strikingly confirmatory of Hozsley's theory. Amongst those which are called Dodsworth's Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library is a volume which is only called his, as having been in his possession, and as having come with his own great collections into the possession of the family of Fairfax, from whom they passed to the Bodleian. This volume, which is numbered LVIII., eon- tains a multitude of notes relating to the affairs of the manor of Wakefield, and especially relating to those portions of the parish of Halifax which are within that manor. The collector of these notes was an officer of the manor under the Saviles, John Hanson of Woodhouse in Elland, a person known to Dorfsworth, who speaks of him as one who was studious in antiquities. In blank places of this volume he has entered a few memoranda of occurrences in his neighbourhood, and among these is the following particular and important notice of the discovery of the Grete- land altar:— " Memorandum, that in the latter end of the month of April, an. dom. 1597, anno Elizabeths Reginse 39, one Thomas Miles, a labouring man, and John Hallywett, digging upon a lawe of stones at the back of the house of Jeffery Ramsden, at the Thick HoUins, did light upon a stone, squared, in length about a yard, having Roman characters on two sides engraven, and being plain of the other two sides, having partizans or crests at the top and at the bottom, with some other flourishes : which stone had four holes in the top, whereunto it should seem some other thing had been fastened, and the foot thereof had stood upon a square stone, wrought with partizans, &c. The characters contained five lines on one side, and but two of the other, and were very difficult to read. There was also found in the said lawes, and in other places thereabouts, divers foundations of houses, and some Roman coins, and squared stones and thick stones with iron nails, in the earth in divers places of the ground called Thickhollins, lying upon the height near the Clay-House, near unto the Linwell." He then gives a drawing of the altar, with a copy of the inscription as it was then read, which completely identifies it with the altar of which Camden gives an account.* But these unobserved memoranda of Mr. Hanson's further shew us when and how Camden became acquainted with the altar and its DVI CTV BRIG for he speaks of

a This Roman remain has had various fortunes. Horsley met with it in the church of Conington ; so that it had probably been taken from Yorkshire by one of the Cottons. It is now in the library of the University of Cambridge. The inscription is full of interesting suggestion, but cannot be used in the present argument. 24 On the Site of Cambodunum. Camden having paid a visit to the Saviles at Bradley in the August of 1599, two years after the discovery of the altar. Edmund Bolton, another student in Roman antiquities, was at Bradley at the same time: and Hanson relates that he accom- panied these two eminent men as they rode from Bradley to Bradford, and gives some account of the topics of their conversation on the journey. He further tells us that Camden was inquisitive concerning the Roman remains of the neighbourhood, and particularly that he inspected a most singular remain in Grimscar Wood, which had puzzled the native antiquaries, but which Camden at once pronounced to be a Roman Bath.a It may be observed, as an incidental remark, that this altar is not spoken of in the earlier editions of the Britannia, in none indeed previous to that of 1600, the year after his visit to this part of the kingdom.

On the whole then it may be submitted, that the evidence is perfectly conclusive of the discovery of a Roman altar, and other fixed Roman remains, near the lingula of land on which Horsley conjectured that the Romans had probably fixed a camp: for the places named in Hanson's narrative are on the slope of the hill which rises from the rivers on their left bank, where if houses were constructed they could look down upon the camp to which they owed protection. And again, that having all the evidence that prevailed in inducing Mr. Watson and the Whitakers to fix the site of Cambodunum at Slack, in equal force in favour of the site in Greteland, with the additional probability arising out of the infinitely superior suitability of the Greteland to the Slack site, that it is at Greteland that we ought hereafter to fix the site of the long lost station Cambodunum, and that the claim of Slack must hence- forth be abandoned.

* Hanson's words are worth quoting: " 5 Augusti, 1599, eruditus ille Antiquarius, G. Camdenus, cum hospitavit apud domum Jo. Savile Baronis Scaccarii apud Bradley, enarravit mihi quod opus predictum fuit Balneum pro nobilibus Romanis, quibus multum utebantur, cum hanc insulam possidebant, quo die equitavi cum eo ad Bradford, cum quodam nobili et pererudito Antiquario, nomine RoLertus [_an error for Edmundus] Bolton, qui enodaverunt mihi multas ambiguitates de comitibus Warrennise."