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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2011
Before beginning my report on recent excavations I must, with great regret, express on behalf of the Committee and of all connected with the Caerwent Exploration Fund the great and irreparable loss we have sustained by the decease of its President, Viscount Tredegar, F.S.A. From the beginning, in 1899, to the end, his Lordship had been one of the most enthusiastic and the most generous of our supporters. To him was largely due the success of the exploration, and without his aid it is doubtful whether it could have been undertaken. We have also lost by death since the date of the last Report another of our most valued supporters, Lord Llangattock, F.S.A., who was one of our Vice-presidents, and had taken much interest in the work, especially during its early years.
page 438 note 1 Dr. Ashby does not agree with this theory. He writes: ‘The burials were made long after the Roman houses had been razed to the ground or nearly so, and covered over with soil; for the graves were obviously dug from the top, and in digging them what little remained of the walls was destroyed and broken through in such a manner as to make it clear that the diggers did not know where the walls were—otherwise they certainly would have avoided them. This is what happens in the churchyard at the present day, and it proves that the burials in the field cannot be so very early.’ To this I reply that there can be little doubt that man of the Roman houses had fallen into ruin long before the date suggested for the raids, and that in some cases there is evidence that the walls were standing to a height of four or five feet at the time of the slaughter, as for instance at the round temple, to be described later.
page 438 note 2 Early in the sixth century the coasts of the Bristol Channel seem to have suffered very severely from piratical raids, and many of the inhabitants sought refuge with their relatives in Brittany. According to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, ‘About 514 A.D. Rhiwal arrived from S. Wales with a large fleet in the Bay of St. Brieuc and founded the principality of Domnonia. Another swarm came from Gwent’ (Caerwent), ‘where existence had become insupportable owing to the incursions of the Saxons. This Gwentian colony planted itself NW. of the peninsula, and called it Leon or Lyonesse, after Caerleon that had been abandoned’ (Baring-Gould, Book of Brittany, p. 5). See also Lives of the British Saints, vol. i, Introduction, p. 41 et seq.
page 438 note 3 It has been suggested that these are the remains of the victims of the plague which ravaged the country in the sixth century, but in that case they would hardly have been buried separately all over the site.
page 439 note 2 Archaeologia, lviii. 404–5.Google Scholar
page 439 note 3 Ibid., pl. xxvi.
page 440 note 1 Archaeologia, lix. 290–1.
page 440 note 2 Ibid., pl. lxvi.
page 440 note 3 The dimensions of the southern rooms of House X have been given previously. Those of the northern rooms are as follows: (1) 43 ft. by 6 ft. 3 in.; (3) 43 ft. by 17 ft. 6 in.; (7) 43 ft. by 9 ft. 3 in.; (8) 9 ft. 6 in. wide at north end, 4 ft. at south end; (10) 30 ft. by 8 ft.
page 441 note 1 Archaeologia, lix, pl. lxvi.Google Scholar
page 445 note 1 When first uncovered this apse looked so like that of a temple that some unknown visitor to the excavations sent a note to the local papers, which was copied into various London and other newspapers under the heading ‘Discovery of a Temple of Diana at Caerwent’.
page 445 note 2 It is quite possible that at one period the whole of the buildings which we have called Houses X, XI, and XXV s may have been one large house of the ‘Caerwent type’—with rooms on all four sides of a central courtyard, the rooms formerly on the south-west having perished.
page 447 note 1 Close to the south-west corner of Room 3 remains of a rough grave were found, in which were a few bones, a pewter sepulchral chalice, and a square iron buckle, which apparently belonged to a priest of about the beginning of the thirteenth century.
page 451 note 1 The diameter inside the circular wall at Caerwent is 130 ft.; the diameter of the supposed octagon about 60 ft. This is about the same as the outer octagon of the building at Weycock, Berkshire, described by Mr. Neville in the Archaeological Journal, vol. vi, which ‘consists of an octagonal wall 63 ft. 7 in. exterior diameter, enclosing a smaller octagon 35 ft. 11 in.’ Possibly the Caerwent building also had a second octagon, but at Weycock there was no sign of an enclosing circular wall, and there were no traces of the entrances.
page 452 note 1 In the new edition of his pamphlet on The Romanization of Roman Britain, pp. 63 and 64, Prof. Haverfield, in describing these raids, says: ‘As the Romano-Britons retired from the south and east, as Silchester was evacuated in despair and Bath and Wroxeter were stormed and left desolate, the very centres of Romanized life were extinguished … sites lay empty and untenanted for many years. Only in the far west, at Exeter or at Caerwent, does our evidence allow us to guess at a continuing Romano-British life.’