was an attractive one. It is a small, flat promontory
of clean chalk and gravel sheltered within a fold of the Medway and rising
slowly southwards to the Kentish hills. With water or marshland on three
sides of it, defence did not present any special difficulty, although from
a military point of view the site is not notably strong. Indeed, its
landward accessibility is, in some degree, rivalled by its accessibility
from the sea, and the modern development of the district might tempt us to
compare its position at the head of. ‘the Medway estuary with that of
the port of. London near the former limit of the tidal Thames. The Medway
estuary, however, is a dangerous one, and, besides, a harbour at this
point can have, had no great attractions for the men of Romano-British
times. The principal routes which then connected. ‘south-eastern Britain
and the Continent were either a short sea passage to an East Kent port
with a journey by land, or, in the alternative, a long sea: voyage direct
to London. The use of Rochester as a port. would have meant a fairly long
sea voyage with an appreciable land journey in addition, and this suited
neither quick nor slow, traffic, We must therefore suppose that it was
rather the other advantages of the site which drew settlers to the spot—the
North Kent roadway, the facilities for a bridge, and perhaps. more the
combination of these facilities than any one of them singly.
The name of this Roman bridge-head settlement. is not in
doubt. The Second Iter of the Antonine Itinerary places Durobrivae—if
that be the nominative .of a. name which occurs only in the dative or
ablative, Durobrivis—at a distance of 25 miles from Durovernum
or Canterbury, along the main road towards London. This . distance
falls barely a mile short of the map-distance for Rochester. Again, in the
Third and Fourth Itinera, the same distance is given as 27 (Roman) miles.
A garbled version of the name should perhaps be recognised in the Roribis
which, lies north-west of Durolevo (probably Faversham—p. 93)
on the Peutinger Map (P1.VI), and
should, it has been boldly suggested, be restored as [Du]rorbus ;16b
whilst the Ravenna Geographer places Durobravis in his list between
Richborough and London. As in the case of Canterbury (see above, p. 63)—though
our evidence is here less abundant—the Roman name of Rochester seems
occasionally to have survived the introduction of its Saxon. successor,
Rofesceastre; for a Kentish coin of the ninth century bears the
inscription DOROBREBIA CIBIT. The
precise significance of such survivals or revivals is not, indeed, easy to
estimate. They should perhaps be ascribed rather to literary than to folk
tradition, but the question fortunately does not arise in the present
context.
The details of ‘the Romano-British settlement itself are
scantily known. Indeed, but for the observations of Mr. George Payne and
others towards the end of the last century, we could not attempt to draw
any picture of it. The most striking remains are those of the Roman walls,
preserved to some small extent in the medieval fortifications. The walls
are described variously as 6 ft., 7 ft. and 8 ft. in ,thickness, a
variation which may be explained partially by the presence in at least one
stretch17 of an internal offset, 8 in. wide, at a height of 1
ft. 8 in. above the base. The best attested measurement gives the width as
6 ft.. 10 in.18 The core, which stands to a maximum
height of 14 ft., is of
16b See O. G. S. Crawford, Journal
of Roman Studies, xiv, 138.
17 Arch. Cant. xxxvii, lxvi,
referring to a discovery along the line of the north-eastern wall.
18 Ibid. xxix, lxxxiv.
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