excavation has revealed solid foundations and
flanking towers. Many stones in the platform at Lympne were old material
taken from earlier buildings and used up again. Among them was an altar
set up by an officer of the classis Britannica, which will be
described below. Besides the chief gate, there was a postern 4 ft. wide
in the west wall nearly opposite it. Whether there were more entrances
seems uncertain.90
Inside the fort three buildings were traced in 1850. Near
its upper part, broken walls were noticed which seemed to indicate a row
of long low edifices extending across its area. In the centre of this
row was a building much disturbed by landslip, measuring 30 ft. by 120
ft., walled with limestone and tile, devoid of recognizable flooring,
but testifying to windows by containing window glass. A second building
near the south-west quarter contained four rooms, two equipped with
pillared hypocausts and a third with a ruder walled hypocaust, and was
probably part of a bath. Pieces of painted wall-plaster were found in
these rooms, and ashes in the furnaces of the hypocausts. One of the
stones of this building was a hewn stone from some earlier structure,
which, before it was used up again, had lain in sea-water and attached a
number of barnacles to itself (Roach Smith, Report, p. 26). This
seems to show that the building belongs to a late period in the history
of the site. A third smaller and ruder building was excavated in the
south-west corner of the fort, but it yielded only flue-tiles, charcoal
and animals’ bones. Another building, or perhaps a part of the second
above mentioned, was touched on by Sir Victor Horsley in 1894. It is
unfortunate but obvious that the vestiges of these structures do not
help us really to understand the interior of the fort.
Of external buildings still less is known,91 and
the cemeteries are equally undiscovered. On the other hand, the road
which gave access by land to Stutfall Castle has been famous under the
name of Stone Street since the sixteenth century, and is still in use.
It runs south from Canterbury, following a line that is singularly
direct even for a Roman road, and swerving only where it descends from
the high downs towards the coast.
The miscellaneous smaller objects found in the fort are few
and, save for inscriptions, are uninteresting. One of these inscriptions
is an altar, bearing an imperfect dedication. It is a block of
limestone, much weathered and broken at the top, 36 in. high, 12 in. to
13 in. wide and 11 in. thick, engraved with plain letters 1¾ in. to 2⅜
in. high. The beginning is lost, and the praenomen before the name
Aufidius is doubtful. Hübner read C: it appears to be rather a fairly
certain L.
. . . \ . . .aram . . . Aufidius Pantera
praefect(us) clas(sis) Brita(nnicae) ‘to (some god whose name is
lost), . . . Aufidius Pantera, admiral of the British fleet, erected
this altar.’
What god was worshipped on this altar, when it was set up,
and who the dedicant Aufidius Pantera was, can only be conjectured.
Roach Smith
90 C. R.
Smith, Richborough, etc., p. 267, says he found several posterns,
and marks four on his plan. Later, two of these turned out not to be
gates, and in his Report, p. 13, he speaks of only one as really
existing. It is quite possible that all these late forts, in which men
laid so much stress on the defensive, had few and mostly small gates.
91 Wright mentions foundations, pottery and
tiles at the bottom of the hill west of the fort (Wanderings, p.
135). But he does not give the exact site, and the remains have never
been followed up. C. R. Smith, Richborough, etc., p. 263, records
flue and other tiles, indicating a dwelling, at the farm of
Court-at-Street. But this is two miles away to the west. |