Page:Sussex Archaeological Collections, volume 6.djvu/124

 observed, at others of those stations, whereof Anderida was one. Dr. Harris himself, who adopted the suggestion of Camden, remarked the entire absence of stones in and around the embankments of the Castle Toll, which circumstance he attempts to account for by supposing the place to have been resorted to as a quarry for building materials, to supply the natural deficiency of stone in the district. But innumerable proofs exist throughout the country, that in such cases the ashlar or hewn stone alone is commonly appropriated for working-up again; and although the whole should have been designedly swept away, yet most assuredly walls surrounding a far smaller space than "eighteen or twenty acres" could not possibly have been removed so completely, as not to leave in the soil some fragments of masonry, whether stone or brick, together with numerous vestiges of mortar; of which testimony we may safely challenge the production by the advocates of the Newenden theory.

In inquiries of this nature the support of our early historical writers is of course much to be desired, and accordingly for this purpose we sometimes find the first words, but no more, of a passage from Gildas adduced, when the context, as will presently appear, would give a very different aspect to the authority. Dr. Harris asserts distinctly (ut sup.), "Gildas places Andreds Chester in litore oceani ad meridiem," the real fact being, that that historian makes no allusion to Anderida or any particular place, but, speaking generally of the proceedings of the Romans preparatory to withdrawing finally from Britain, says, "In littore quoque oceani ad meridianam plagam, qua naves eorum habebantur, et inde barbariæ feræ bestiæ timebantur, turres per intervalla ad prospectum maris collocant.—And on the sea-coast southward, where their vessels were kept, and thence the barbarous wild beasts were feared, they place forts at intervals in view of the sea." It has been argued that the expression "on the sea-coast south-ward" is sufficiently indeterminate to admit of being applied to Newenden; which place, it is granted, stood on the border of an estuary during the existence of Anderida. At that period however the mouth of the river flowing through the estuary was at some distance eastward from Newenden,