Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/25

 CHAPTER I

S the Kentish Stour takes its course through the hills and along the beautiful and fertile valleys in East Kent, it reaches the site of Durovernum, a Roman town situated in that part of the county where the valley, widening out, becomes about two miles in breadth, and the river itself divides into two main streams with several islands among its branches; this is some eight or nine miles from its entry into what was anciently called the Wantsume, at Stourmouth.

At Tonford, rather less than a couple of miles above this anastomosis of waters in the valley referred to, the stream is single and fordable. This was convenient for reaching the British oppidum at Bigbury, a stronghold in all probability of pre-historic times, but of the date of its occupation there is no certain evidence.

A couple of furlongs below Durovernum, at Coldharbour (a term of Saxon origin signifying a "place of shelter by the side of an old road"), the waters are again found to be gathering together, whilst a quarter of a mile lower down at the Pool below Barton Mills a single stream is formed which flows on to Stour-ey (at Starry) and the ford, at Fordwich.

Here, then, at Durovernum, where the river widens out, forming the two main streams and its confluent branches, it can be realized that in early days much of the land between them and on their borders was marshland or bog. Nevertheless, at this spot, on account of the shallowness of the river, there had been constructed the most important ford hereabouts in Roman times; for at this place the great Roman roads from the coast fortresses at Reculver, Richborough, 1