the
discovery of Roman antiquities there especially interesting. On 27th
August, 1839, a man who was employed to raise some stone in Crabtree
Hill, of which several heaps were lying on the surface, in turning over
the stone found about twenty-five Roman coins. The next day, in another
heap about fifty yards distant, he found a broken jar or urn of baked
clay, and 400 or 500 coins lying by it, the coins being for the most part
those of Claudius II., Gallienus, and Victorinus. The spot is rather
high ground, but not a hill or commanding point, and there do not appear
any traces of a camp near it. Some of the stones seemed burnt, as if the
building had been destroyed by fire. There was no appearance of mortar,
but the stones had evidently been used in building, and part of the
foundation of a wall remained visible. A silver coin of Aurelius was
likewise picked up.

Similar discoveries have been made in other places. At Seddlescombe, in
Sussex, one of the earliest iron-making localities in the kingdom, Mr.
Wright, in his interesting work entitled 'Wanderings of an Antiquary,'
mentions several Roman coins, especially one of the Emperor Diocletian,
having been met with in a bed of iron cinders, manifestly of great
antiquity, since four large oaks stood upon its surface.

An interval of a few hundred years brings us to the probable date of the
next class of antiquities, viz. the military earthworks yet traceable in
the neighbourhood. They are four in number, commencing with the lines of
circumvallation which enclose the promontory of Beachley; next, the camp
and entrenchments on the high lands of Tidenham Chase; then, a camp near
the Bearse Common; and, as a termination to the chain, the triple dyke
defending Symmond's Yat. Some have regarded these remains as forming the
southern termination of Offa's Dyke, which that sovereign constructed
about the year 760, to prevent the Welsh from invading his kingdom of
Mercia; but they are not sufficiently uniform or continuous to warrant
such a conclusion. They seem rather to be connected with the incident
which the Chronicles of Florentius Vigorniensis relate as taking place
A.D. 912:--"The Pagan pirates, who nearly nineteen years before had
retired from Britain, approaching by the province of Gaul, called
Lydivinum, return with two leaders, Ohterus and Hroaldus, to England,
and, sailing round West Saxonia and Cornubia, at length reach the mouth
of the river Sabrina (Severn