Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/151

 —The original gully at this point, according to Whitaker (see also his "Plan of the Summer Station," taken in 1765), was 8 yards wide, and traced down to 21 feet without reaching the bottom. At its western banks rose the steep knolls of Cateaton Street, at 116 feet above the level of the sea; here Whitaker placed his hanging bridge and erected a small Roman turret, and from that point, crossing through the present western tower of the Cathedral, he makes the Romans follow the precipitous rocky crest that faces the Irwell, to hew their later road to Ribchester, to the margin of the Irk; but, before we reach its rocky brink, he figures another imaginary turret, 80 yards to the south of it, and by dint of another bridge carries the road over to Strangeways, where we are at last on firm ground and where hypothesis ceases. The road runs straight along thence, and it was noticed by him at Francis Reynolds's park in forming the canal at the end of the park (see Green's map).

The Hanging Bridge, in consequence of the extensive demolitions effected in the course of the last few months, has again risen into prominence, and is a fine stone-arched bridge, probably built in the fourteenth century; if it has taken the place of a previous Roman structure at this point, we don't know yet; perhaps traces of a possible sub-structure may be found abutting against the Cathedral side. To the west of Hanging Bridge, close to one of the arches, in Cateaton Street, a shaft was sunk in August, 1900, by the Corporation, and from the decayed vegetable black sediment which was brought up from below, 20 feet deep, I obtained two pieces of Roman glass, the rim canaliculated, of green colour, probably belonging to the bottom of a goblet, of the same class as discovered at Melandra Castle by Mr. R. Hamnett. Messrs. Rogers and Holt examined the vegetable layer, which formed a