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ROMAN ANTIQUITIES
Of Lydney Park, Gloucestershire

By Rev. William Hiley Bathurst - 1879.



Sample text :-

' The roman station in Lydney Park is situated about a mile and a half from the river Severn, on the western side about nine miles above its confluence with the Wye, ami about twenty miles below Gloucester. (See Plate I.) It is probable that the river flowed nearer to Lydney in former times by at least half a mile, for a large tract of alluvial ground is known to have been formed by deposition from the river within the last 150 years, and tradition reports that the water once came up within a short distance of the churchyard at Lydney.
[ Rudder in his History of Gloucestershire, p. 524, speaks of a tradition among tlie inhabitants, that the tide in its usual course formerly came up to a bank of earth called the Turret, just without the churchyard; and that a large ship was built near the place where there is now a spring of fine water, called the Turret-well. And this may have been the place alluded to by certain commissioners appointed, in the fourteenth, year of Charles II., to examine into the condition of the Forest of Dean. They say, in a report dated April 12, 1661, ' We also viewed . . . . &c. ' ]

This low ground is skirted by a range of hills extending about six miles in length, with various undulations, and at a distance from the river varying from one to three miles. Near to Lydney at one end of this hilly ridge, and near to Tidenham at the other end, the high ground stretches forward to the bank of the river ; but these projections are of such moderate elevation, that from the hill-tops on which the Romans had their station the view extends over them, as well as over the flat ground just below, to the Cotswold and other hills on the opposite side of the river. The range of view from this point may be said to reach from the hills near Painswick on the north to those near Bristol on the south.

The position then which the Romans here occupied was a very commanding one, and communication might be held from thence by signals with the fortresses which they are known to have held on the opposite side of the river, such as those at Painswick, Selsley hill, &c..... '


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