Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/334

 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK with the Waveney and its associated Norfolk rivers, and was formerly so with the Blyth, which has been led by a direct cut into the sea. The Aide, or Or, which bears the latter name in its lower half, is more decided in the strange- ness of its wanderings. It makes for the sea till just behind Aldeburgh, where it expands into a considerable sheet of water, from the eastern end of which it takes a southern direction not far from, and sometimes quite close to, the shore, and so continues for about lo miles before it finally falls into the ocean. The next river travelling south, the Deben, has a direct exit, but the waves are gradually heaping up the sands at its mouth, and so forcing the current downwards till in time it will no doubt resemble its sisters. The same on a much larger scale may be said of the estuaries of the Stour and the Orwell in their devious courses. These rivers are accompanied by belts of marsh land, which have behind them extensive heaths, a very paradise of the bee when the heather and the gorse are in bloom. The tract altogether forms a wide belt on this eastern side of the county which may be distinguished under the title of ' the light lands.' Probably, although a greater and more careful cultivation has altered somewhat its general conditions, it retains much of the aspect it wore in Roman times, when it must have been a district not of agriculturists, but of hunters and fishers. The marshes of the east coast are matched by the fen land on the west side of the county, and the country about Brandon and Thetford on the north repeats the light lands of the east coast. A larger and more settled population of natives or colonists occupied the fertile wheat-producing portions of the more central area. They may have con- tributed by their industry to the export of grain from Britain of which we hear in the later Roman period. There was only one port on the coast, and as to its identity there are some doubts. Some antiquaries call Dunwich — or rather the town of that name now beneath the waves of the North Sea— the ancient Sitomagus. Supposing them to be right, then the grain ships for the Continent were probably loaded along its quays ; but if not, the road, certainly Roman, through central Suffolk would be used by long trains of wagons loaded with corn toiling southward to Camulodunum, where the empty ships ready for their arrival lay along the wharfs by the Colne. But leaving conjecture there can be no question that traces of the inhabitants of the Roman period are dotted all over Suffolk, and it will be our task to point them out, or at least the most prominent of them, in the following pages. The Roman antiquities of the county, for the sake of clearness, will be best described under two heads, viz. Military and Civil. The first section is by far the more important, as it touches the subject of the defence of the east coast from invasion. Remains of Military Occupation Referring to the Ordnance Survey maps, there will be noticed many places marked 'camp' or 'camp field,'' and others, 'rectangular inclosure formed by moats,' some with, some without banks of earth on the inner side, most of which are usually erroneously referred to the Roman period. ' Consult the New Engl. Did. edited by J. A. K. Murray, vol. ii, C, where is found the following : ' Camper (obs. or dial.), a player at Camp or football,' and quotes '1573 Tusser, Husb. (1878) 60,' Get 'Campers a ball to Camp therewithall,' and ' In medow or pasture to growe the more fine. Let Campers be tamping in any of thine.' 380