OLD ROMAN DRAIN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20876, 16 November 1929, Page 19

OLD ROMAN DRAIN.

BUILT OF HALF-TON STONES. The excavations on the site of Richborough Castle, near Sandwich, continue to bring to light striking examples of Roman engineering and workmanship made during practically the whole of the Roman occupation, from the first to the fourth centuries, a.d., savs an English paper. * ° Within the last few weeks a splendidly constructed drainage system in massive stone work was unearthed inside the castle. Hugo stones, computed to weigh from half a ton to 3cwt each, were used in this work. Its condition is as good as when it was first laid, at a date which Mr Walker, the archseologist in charge of this excavation, considers to lie between 80 and 100, a.d., from the evidence of pottery discovered on the site. For 30 feet this drain extends in a succession of these great stones, laid flat, with others forming two side£, and it is a tribute to the judgment of the Roman engineers in charge of that work that the foundations were so well laid that there is no sign of sagging, although for centuries the heavy stonework of the drain has had super-imposed upon it the tons of weight of many feet of earth. Excavation shows further that the stiucturc had taken place of an earlier drain of crude construction which formerly existed within the castle walls. The opening out of the Roman road systems have proved that from the earliest times there existed on this site two great roads—north and south, cast and west. Well-battered beach and soil formed the foundations of the earliest roads, and as additions were made later a solid mass like concrete was formed many feet in depth. The ini estigatiou of the two Roman defensive ditches outside the castle walls has been started beyond the great west gate, and good progress is being made. Vast quantities of earth are bein" reproved, and one can begin to get a E good idea of what these defensive works of Rutupiao, the great naval port, looked like in Roman davs.