house,
various mosaic and cement floors, hypocausts, and so forth. It had been
often altered, and its excavation and explanation were excessively
difficult. Mr. Bushe-Fox thinks that it may have begun as three shops
giving on to the north and south Street which bounds its eastern end.
Certainly it became, in course of time, a large corridor-house with a
south aspect and an eastern wing fronting the street, and as such it
underwent several changes in detail. Beyond its western end lay a still
more puzzling structure. An enceinte formed by two parallel walls, about
13 feet apart, enclosed a rectangular space of about 150 feet wide; the
western end of it, and therefore its length, could not be ascertained;
the two corners uncovered at the east end were rounded; an entrance
seems to have passed through the north-east corner. It has been called
a small fort, an amphitheatre, a stadium, and several other things.
But a fort should be larger and would indeed be somewhat hard to account
for at this spot; while a stadium should have a rounded end and, if it
was of orthodox length, would have extended outside the town into or
almost into the Severn. Interest attaches to a water-channel along the
main (north and south) street. This was found to have at intervals slits
in each side which were plainly meant for sluice-gates to be let down;
Mr. Bushe-Fox thinks that the channel was a water-supply, and not an
outfall, and that by the sluice-gates the water was dammed up so as,
when needed, to flow along certain smaller channels into the private
houses which stood beside the road. If so, the discovery has much
interest; the arrangement is peculiar, but no other explanation seems
forthcoming.

Small finds were many and good. Mr. Bushe-Fox gathered 571 coins ranging
from three British and one or two Roman Republican issues, to three
early coins of the Emperor Arcadius, over 200 Samian potters' stamps,
and much Samian datable to the period about A.D. 75-130, with a few rare
pieces of the pre-Flavian age. There was a noticeable scarcity of both
Samian and coins of the post-Hadrianic, Antonine period; it was also
observed that recognizable 'stratified deposits' did not occur after the
age of Hadrian. Among individual objects attention is due to a small
seal-box, with wax for the seal actually remaining in it.

It appears that it will probably not be possible to continue this
excavation, even on a limited scale, next summer. Mr. Bushe-Fox's