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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
As you seem to have been interested in the Roman iron tools found by me at Holcombe, I think perhaps that some further particulars regarding the find, and the remains of the Roman Villa which has been discovered there, may not be uninteresting to you.
a The iron tools in question are represented in the accompanying plate, and appear all to be of Roman origin. They may be described as follows :—1. A strong pair of pincers ; length 1 ft. 8½ in.; a somewhat similar pair, from Kingsholm, near Gloucester, is preserved in the British Museum. 2. A thick quadrangular bar, broken into two pieces, and pointed at one end; length 12 in. 3, 4. Two strong wedges ; length 5 in. and 4¾ in. 5. A chisel with a pointed tang ; length 6 in. 6. One of the singular objects which have from time to time been discovered with Roman remains, and are now considered by archaeologists to be horse-shoes; their use seems to be decisively settled by a specimen in the British Museum, to the under part of which is fixed a thin horse-shoe of the ordinary description. Some excellent figures of these strange horse-shoes have appeared in a Memoir on Roman Remains discovered in London, by J. E. Price, Esq., F.S.A., published in the Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (vol. iii. p. 517). Besides these objects there was found an imperfect Roman knife or cultrum, and another fragment.
