Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/187

 of urns, three skulls (one plainly a human one), human and animal bones lying under a decayed arch of Roman bricks, composed of finer wrought matter than stock bricks, exceedingly heavy and bright coloured. Next the pedestal were found two brass balances and a large knife. (Whitaker's Building 1.)

That large projection of the bank of the Medlock, which commences near the south-eastern and south-western points of the station, lying within the two angles of the camp, was naturally the site of all the offices. In 1771 was here found, a little to the west of the south-eastern angle and directly opposite to the small bridge on the other side of the river, when levelling the bank for a wharf, and proceeding to the east:

A large stone, like the pedestal of a pillar, but all plain on the surface, 2 feet 9 inches across at the base, gradually decreasing upwards by four stages, 8 inches, 3½ inches, 1¾ inches, and 1½ inches in height, and 2 feet 3 inches, 2 feet, and 1 foot 9 inches long, placed on a flooring 7 inches to 8 inches thick, made with pieces of soft red rock and bedded in clay, and nearly 25 yards distant from the present edge of the Medlock.

Eight feet immediately to the east of this was a:

I. Building, equally with the stone, about 2 feet below the surface of the ground, and floored with a Roman cement of mortar and pounded brick. The floor, 9 inches thick, rested on a body of marl about as many in depth. The whole building was about 20 feet long and 10 feet broad. Nine feet to the east of this was:

II. Another flooring, 2 feet or 3 feet lower in the ground, and a cake of the same cement and thickness. It lay upon loose earth, but was covered with flags. The whole about 10 feet broad and 30 feet long. The exterior wall of both buildings was discovered on the northern side, running with the river, the former about 2 feet 3 inches in thickness, the latter about 4 feet. This rose about 3 feet high, formed of regularly dressed stones, the upper shallow and the lower deep, and having extended nearly in a right line about 30 feet, it then turned in a fair angle and pointed towards the river. In the former building was dug up only one flooring, in the latter three.

Below the pavement described, and in the loose earth on which it lay, were found as the pillars of it large blocks of a millstone grit and square tubes of strong tile. And the first flooring lay on all these, the interval between the tubes and blocks was entirely filled up with earth. The former were about 16 inches high and 5 inches in diameter, filled up with mortar, once fluid. Three of these were found together, standing erect, and two of them so formed with projections as to make a third by their union.

And these and the earth all rested upon a second flooring, another cake of the same cement, near 2 feet in thickness, and lying upon a second bed of rubbish about 3 feet in depth. In the body of this earth, which