A GREAT ROMAN FORTRESS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1682, 5 November 1925, Page 6

A GREAT ROMAN FORTRESS

RICHBOROUGH RUINS, If the walls of Richborough could speak what an interesting story that grim masonry could tell, situated as it Is, impregnably, fifty feet above are now marshes, but where 1700 years ago rolled the sea. The situation of the island must have been early noted by the Romans, and It was seized by the Emperor Claudius’ legions when the landing for the conquest of Britain took place in A.D. 43. v But although Richborough was the base camp at that landing the actual walls seen now are probably not earlier than about the year 300. Following round the walls, which originally enclosed an area about 494 feet by 565 feet, the north, the west, and the south walls can be seen, still in places rising to the height of 25 feet, tut the whole of the east wall is missing. 'Here the sea, and at a later date the river Stour, washed the foot of the hill, and as the soft sand was carried away the undermined wall slipped down or turned bodily over. In its long history the fortress has suffered much destruction by natural agencies, as well as by man. The top of the walls must have once had a rampart walk of huge stones, but when these were pitched over for removal ] to Sandwich by bygone generations wind and weather could do their worst; and once the top had gone there was nothing to protect the face of cut stones, so this has disappeared inside, except where the accumulation of soil against the walls has protected them. These massive walls, averaging eleven feet in thickness, rest on a foundation of boulders and chalk. >

The great puzzle of Richborough is the immense mass of concrete which, thirty or more feet deep, lies nearly in the centre of the camp. The dimensions are 126 feet from north to south by 81 feet from east to west, and it has a projecting rim five feet thick all round. On this platform is a corniform concrete construction, the north and south arm measuring 8 feet 6 inches wide by 86 fet long and the east and west arm 22 feet by 47 feet. It stands now 4 feet 6 inches high, but was probably higher. Although many suggestions, have teen put forward to account for this stupendous foundation, the absence of any similar building in the Roman world makes any guesswork unsatisfactory. One can think of it as a platform for military engines of war, or as a foundation for Pharos, a triumphal column or a temple, but something in the nature of one or other of the last seems most satisfactory, as the immense quantity of Carrara marble in moulded fragments and slabs found about it must be accounted for. — London Daily Mail.