Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/178

 of the change, Deansgate must have become in course of time the centre of Roman life, with a specific population of soldiers, officials, and traders, while the tribe people would cluster more intimately around their ancient quarters at the banks of the Irk. Thus in course of time we probably had the Brito-Roman upper (or hill) town, and the Roman lower station at Castlefield. Such parallels are familiar to us from South Africa, where we have the old native and the British quarters.

The distance between the Hunt's Bank settlement and Castlefield measures about 1,620 yards, or nearly one mile. To distinguish the two a slight change in the place-names seems to have been made at some time. This would explain the otherwise quite enigmatical and tenacious dual form of Man and Mam. We have the mam contained in such Welsh words as mamdref=chief town, mamddinas=the metropolis, mam-eglwys=the mother church, and the place-names Mam Tor and Little Mam Tor, Moel Fammau, Mam Head, Mamhilad, Mamhole, and perhaps in Mamaceæ (France), Mamertium (in Calabria).

Mam-uc-ium would, therefore, mean the mother stone edge, the original site of the Britons and the older Roman site; while the newer and their principal castrum at Castlefield, in contradistinction, went by the name Man-uc-ium. This seems to be made plausible when we recollect that the Mercians, in rebuilding the place destroyed by the Danes, speak of Mamcestre, which can only have been the site of Hunt's Bank, which in succession was again occupied by the Norman barons, who had their Barons' Hall on Hunt's Hull or Hill. We may argue retrospectively to an occupation of the same site in early Anglo-Saxon times.

The old Roman station in Castlefield at their appearance