Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/266

240 Together with the inscriptions, fragments of apparently Roman mouldings were found embedded in the walls, and their presence led Horsley to suppose that Hexham had been a Roman station. He thought it improbable that with quarries at hand the builders of the church would have brought stones either from Corbridge, the supposed of Antonine's Itinerary, or from the Roman wall; and therefore conjectured it to have been the  of Ptolemy ; although Ebchester, in the adjoining county of Durham, is now considered to represent the station so designated. But however this may have been Horsley's inference, drawn from the existence of quarries in the vicinity of Hexham, it is not entitled to much weight, as the county of Northumberland affords numerous instances of Roman remains having been used in building, in places where abundance of stone was to be had nearer than the spots from whence such relics must, unquestionably, have been procured. With these remarks we may take leave of the Roman antiquities of Hexham. The engravings 1, 2, and 3, are copies of fragments of mouldings extensively used in the walls of the crypt. No. 1. is certainly Roman; and though some doubt may be entertained respecting the other two, we are inclined to consider them relics of that debased style of art, which marked the works of the Roman legionaries in Britain.

None of the antiquaries referred to bestowed much attention