Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-05T01:03:08.350Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A ‘Romano-Celtic’ Temple near Harlow, Essex; and a note on the type

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

R. E. M. Wheeler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

About two hundred and fifty yards west of Harlow railway-station, in the Essex border-parish of Latton (Ordnance Survey 6-in. map, XLI, NW.), a small gravel-capped oval hill known as Stanegrove or Standing Groves rises to a height of some 20 ft. above the marshy banks of the river Stort. In 1764 and again in 1819 ‘very strong walls’ were observed here; and other foundations ‘evidently Roman’, tesserae, many other Roman relics, and a stone coffin are recorded to have been discovered in the fields extending for a mile to the north-east, more particularly during excavations for gravel within 250 yards of the mound itself. Coffins thought to be of Roman date were found also near the station when the railway was built in 1841 and were re-buried in the station-yard. Amongst the finds from the area are specially noted ‘a great number of Roman coins chiefly of Emperors from the first Claudius to Valentinian’, including ‘several silver pieces of Sabina, Faustina the Elder, and Constantinus Junior’, and a few British, of which the following are specified: (1) one with a helmeted head, with CUNOBELINA; reverse, a hog and TASCHOVANIT (sic); (2) another ‘with a head on one side; on the other a man striking upon an anvil; (3) ‘one with a star, between the rays of which are the letters VERLAMIO; reverse, an ox’. The general character of the evidence closely resembles that obtained from similar riverside gravels in many parts of south-eastern Britain, and indicates a fairly extensive and continuous occupation, perhaps not of a very high order, from later prehistoric times to the last quarter of the fourth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 1928 , pp. 300 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1928

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 300 note 1 Gough's Tours, Bodleian Library MS., Gen. Top. e. 18, fol. 160; Archaeologia, xix, 410; Gent. Mag., xci (1821), pt. I, 66; Wright, T., Hist. of Essex (1831), ii, 292Google Scholar; Essex Arch. Soc. Trans., (O.S.) i, 199; (N.S.) xviii, 222; Hist. Mons. Comm., Essex Central and S.W., 145. A local resident tells me that his father had ‘a bushel of coins’ found at various times in these fields.

page 300 note 2 The first and last of these types may be identified with Evans, J., Ancient British Coins, pl. XII, 2, and pl. VII, 3Google Scholar.

page 301 note 1 Mr. Warren has also very kindly prepared the general survey of the site, fig. 1.

page 301 note 2 The much-abused term Celtic is here preferred, since the majority of the deities worshipped in these temples bore Celtic names and, as will be seen below, the distribution of the type lies within the Celtic area. The alternative term, Romano-Gallic, is perhaps insufficiently descriptive, since it may be taken to include all temples of the Roman period built in Gaul.

page 303 note 1 An excellent ‘reconstruction’ of the Harlow temple by Mr. Forestier, A. appeared in the Illustrated London News, 31 12, 1927Google Scholar.

page 305 note 1 Hettner, F. and Jacobs, J., Trierer Jahresberichte, iii (1910)Google Scholar.

page 306 note 1 I am indebted to Mr. G. F. Hill and Mr. H. Mattingly for looking through the coins.

page 314 note 1 Chauvet, G., Revue archéologique, xxxvi, 1900, 281Google Scholar; Vesley, , Les Fana, 102Google Scholar.

page 314 note 2 Unpublished: in Lord Bledisloe's private collection at Lydney.

page 314 note 3 Antiquaries Journal, viii, 81.

page 314 note 4 Hettner, and Jacobs, , op. cit., 50Google Scholar.

page 316 note 1 Attempts which have been made to find Tuscan or even Egyptian prototypes are so fantastic as to render discussion of them unnecessary.