Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/115

 88 THE HISTORY Book L cunium. Thefe contain an area of twelve or fourteen acres, and are watered with a couple of brooks, that meet juft at the town and curve round three fides of it. And along the extended area of thefe fields have foundations of buildings been difcovered, fome of them being a yard in thicknefs, and all of them com- posed of ftrong ftone and cement. Two of the fields have been lately cleared of thefe crowded foundations, but the other two ftill remain entirely filled up with them, and the farmers have frequently broken their ploughs in all. And feveral foughs. have been difcovered, pieces of thick giafs, urns, bones, and flips of copper. Thus plainly have thefe Eald fields been the fite of fbmfe consi- derable town. And that the town was Roman is abfblutely cer- tain. The pofition of it amid the wild expanfe of thefe dreary moors and upon the courfe of the Roman road over them, and its exadt diftance from Mancunium, do of themfelves evince it to be Roman. And a great quantity of bricks has been difcovered in the foundations, fome of which were long and fome fquare, and all of a very beautiful red. The latter bricks were fre- quently twenty-two inches in the fquare, and were found in the floorings of fome of the houfes ; as in others was found a thick cruft of brick rudely fcorcd into fquares in imitation of the teflellated work, and in others was taken up a pavement compofed of pounded bricks and very white mortar. Near the ealtera fide of the area, where three ftone-hedges as*d three lordihips now meet, and whence a long line of houfes appears from the difcovered foundations to have extended towards the north and in the line of the hedges, were lately found three coins of brafs, two of which were fbda loft by the carelefnefs of Ignorance, and the third has CAESL A VG. P. M. TR. on one fide, an S and a C in the middle, and PVBLICA. . . „ . round the margin of the other. And two Roman inscriptions have been found, which are exhibited in the plate, the larger of which, walled up in a building, was copied for me by the reverend I&vWat- fon, and the fmaller is in my own poflefEon. But