between Villa Faustini and Icinos; but in my imperfect. information about this intervening country, it would be premature to discuss them; and I address myself to the last problem, the distance of xxxv. miles between this place and Cambridge. Ixworth is situated on a nice little stream, which, flowing northward by Honington and Pakenham, and through Euston Park, reaches the Little Ouse a few miles above Thetford. Many Roman remains have been found there, and at the adjoining village of Fakenham, and the name Ixworth is certainly suggestive of the Iceni.

As Lapie places Icinos at Rymer-house, near Thetford, I did not wish to pass that theory unnoticed, but on visiting the place on July 28, 1892, I failed to find any confirmation of his view, and the distances would present a difficulty. Ixworth, then, with Pakenham contiguous to it, I regard as this station, and record, on the information of the Rev. C. W. Jones, Vicar of the latter parish, the find of a denarius of Tiberius in the triangle formed at the fork of the roads through Pakenham to Bury, and to Thurston Station.

The road thence to Camboricum I believe to be at first the old coach-road to Bury, whence I suppose it passed out by West Gate, Risby Gate suggesting a later origin, and the road by Saxham White Horse and Kentford to Newmarket, apparently having been, in part at least, made in times within Gough's memory.1 Thence the way may have been by Chedburgh and Wickham Brook, both names containing propitious roots, to the Thurlows, so full of Roman remains; thence by West Wickham and at the south of Balsham, so as to strike into Wool Street and run for Cambridge. If anyone will take this course from Ixworth to Cambridge, he will find it not far out from the xxxv. Roman miles from Icinos to Camboricum.

But we are now beyond the confines of the county, and must turn to Route No. IX.

1 See 'Suffolk Traveller,' p. 400.

Ο

CHAPTER III.

UR business now lies with the Route IX. in Antonine's Itinerary, the text of which, after a most exhaustive recension of MSS. by the latest editors, stands thus:

Item a Venta Icinorum Londinio...

mpm cxxviii. sic.

A full discussion of the sites of Venta Icinorum and Camolodunum is better suited to treatises on Norfolk and Essex than to these pages. The former I take to be Norwich, and the latter Lexden, two miles on the London side of Colchester, which accords with the Itinerary. Caistor, a Roman camp near the river Tase, appears to be Ad Taum, communicating with Suffolk by a postAntonine road, to which we shall have to refer. With regard to our starting-point, the arguments of Hudson Gurney and others in favour of Norwich seem unanswerable, save for the general absence of Roman remains at that city; but the recent discoveries of fictile fragments, some thumb-marked, and apparently of Romano-British

make, on the north side of the cathedral, may probably prove the precursors of others. He that stands on the grounds of Carrow Abbey, and surveys the water-protected character of that position, with the Tase in front, and the Wensum curling behind, so as to leave only the east without a river-front, will see that no more suitable position could have been chosen for a settlement by the Britons. They had, indeed, to learn at the hands of the Romans the futility of such defences against organized warfare; but for intertribal struggles Norwich must have been a place of unusual strength.

The roads are older than the record of them, and I should regard this Route IX. in the Itinerary as gradually improved from old British tracks by straighter cuts in places and bolder treatment of water-crossings. And I think that the time for earlier improvements would be that of P. Ostorius Scapula, who in A.D. 51 settled a colony at Camulodunum after the defeat of the Iceni, subdued the Brigantes of Yorkshire, and the Silures and Ordovices of Wales.1

Between Norwich and Lexden the distance is under fifty miles as the crow flies; but between Venta Icinorum and Camolodunum we have to account for seventy-five Roman miles, and consequently there must have been a great deflexion either eastward or westward. If we adopt the former theory, Sitomagus is Dunwich, and Combretonium is Burgh, near Woodbridge. The westward course will give us Thetford and Brettenham, near Lavenham, respectively for those stations; and this was the solution of Camden and his followers. Sit' in Sitomagus he identified with Thet' in Thetford, assuming without any evidence the former syllable as a variety of the latter, while 'Bret' in Brettenham was undoubtedly a strong temptation for Combretonium.

1 Tac., ‘Ann.,' xii. 31, etc.

2 Camden only identified Sitomagus with Thetford. William Burton in his 'Commentary on Antoninus his Itinerary' (1658), p. 229, adopts Brettenham, but in rather dubious language.

The latter spot is not to be passed over without mention. There are traces of a camp, yearly growing more faint, and about three-quarters of a mile from it is a rather commanding situation, called Castle Hill. But there seems to be no knowledge or tradition of coins, pottery, etc., found here.1

In the Peutinger Tabula Convetni, which no doubt represents Combretonium, is close to the coast. Written against it is xv., the Antonine mileage between it and Ad Ansam.

Suckling's remark that the adoption of the eastward course would charge the Romans with having left the heart of the county of Suffolk unprotected may be disposed of by the fact that Route V. traversed that very district. Camden's preference for the western course has no other basis than the supposed identity of 'Sit' in Sitomagus with 'Thet' in Thetford. He speaks of the river Sit or Thet, but there is no other proof of the existence of the first name.

The balance of evidence seems to me to incline eastward, and such remarks as I have to make from local knowledge are based on that theory. Assuming this, let us look to the first stage. And first of all its length (thirty-two miles) is remarkable, being rarely surpassed. We have thirty-five-mile stages twice in the very obscure Iter V., and one thirty-six-mile stage on Iter XV. between Durnonovaria and Muridunum, on the road from Silchester to Exeter, and these are the only British instances in excess of the stage between Venta Icinorum and Sitomagus. And as it was undoubtedly long, so it was presumably difficult. Three rivers, the Tase, the Waveney, and the Blyth, had to be forded. On the inland side lay, for the greater part of the way, an ancient and deep forest, which also extended occasionally beyond the road on the sea side. The lighter lands on the sea side were covered

1 The Rev. C. J. Betham, Rector of Brettenham, to the author May 22, 1894.

? Various readings are Comvretonum and Ad Coverin.

with thickets and scrub, and excellent shelter was afforded to marauders, whether sea-rovers or salvagers. The character of the soil was hostile to traffic for a great part of the year, and so far as the record of Antonine's Itinerary goes, the road was no thoroughfare. I am not denying the existence of other roads out of Norwich at the time; none of them, however, were thought worthy of a place in the Itinerary. If the centurion M. Favonius, whose monument remains at Colchester, ever made the journey, he would have had occasion to contrast the stage with others, to its disadvantage.

The passage of the Waveney was the most critical point in the road, and at no place are the conditions more favourable than at Wainford, or Wanney-ford, already mentioned, there being an especially strong glacial deposit on the Suffolk side. Afterwards the name passed on to the hundred of Wangford, the ford, as a place of common concourse, being suitable for the hundred mote.

The extent of marsh is here reduced by the presence of a twofold patch of higher ground, called Pirnough Street. Below Wainford the Waveney is not fordable. On August 2, 1889, I examined the way between Ditchingham Station and the church of Ilketshall St. John's. The turns in the road at first are quite accounted for by the advantage of keeping on these patches of gravel in the marsh. The second of the two patches ends a little more than 100 yards before the first of the two present bridges; but everything here has been cut about for milling and malting. The old road ran to the east of the malthouses, and here in 1856 were found Roman coins and a flint arrow-head.

Moreover, in 1893, two coins were discovered, one of Philip the Arabian-sen., obv., IMP M IVL PHILIPPVS AVG. ; rev., PAX ÆTERNA, with a standing figure of Peace bearing olive branch and caduceus between the letters s c. This reverse, which seems to have indicated the Emperor Philip's discreditable peace with Sapor, resembles one of Alexander Severus, struck after a genuine