and from the shores of the German Ocean to those of the Atlantic?

The race that first began to carve them were, there is reason to believe, that race among our forefathers who erected the cromlechs, the chambered barrows, the stone circles, the large monoliths and the other megalithic works, which are still found scattered over the British Islands. If we may judge from the evidence afforded by the barrows opened in our own country, in the Channel Islands and in Brittany, these megalithic builders appear to have been still sparingly, if at all, provided with metallic tools; and the chisellings and carvings upon the stones themselves can be all, I find, easily imitated, even on granite rocks, by flint weapons and a mallet. The ethnological proofs gathered from the examination of the crania found in connexion with megalithic sepulchral structures tend, as far as they go at present, to point to a race different from, and seemingly anterior to, the appearance of the Celtic race in our Islands. If this view, (a view held by some of our first archæologists,) ultimately prove to be correct, then we have in the Calder Stones,-and and within hail, as it were, of the busy mart and great modern city of Liverpool,-a stone structure erected and carved by a Turanian race, who dwelt in this same locality, and lived and died in this same home many long centuries before Roman or Saxon, Dane or Norman, set his invading foot upon the shores of Britain; and possibly anterior even to that far more distant date, when in their migration westward the Cymry and Celt first reached this remote "Isle of the Sea." The extreme rudeness and simplicity of the British cup and ring cuttings afford at least sufficient evidence of their very early and archaic character; while their general diffusion proves that the race or races,-be they Celtic or Pre-Celtic,-that carved them, must at one time have widely overspread both the kingdoms of England and of Scotland.

ON THE ROMAN TOPOGRAPHY OF EAST

LANCASHIRE.

By T. T. Wilkinson, F.R.A.S. &c.

(READ 16TH MARCH, 1865.)

THE tenth Iter of Antonine is well known to have passed from north to south through the county of Lancaster. Its principal stations are now much better defined than when the Rev. Thomas Reynolds published his Commentary in A.D. 1799; for he remarks, (page 315,) that "no Iter in Britain "has exercised the ingenuity of antiquaries so much, or been "made out so little satisfactory." He fixes Bremetonacis at Lancaster; Coccium at Ribchester; and Mancunium Mamucium, at Manchester. In this arrangement he is followed by several other antiquaries who have written since his time.

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The Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, prefers to place Coccium at Blackrod, for which he is censured by the historian of Whalley; and the reader is cautioned against trusting too much to the guidance of Richard of Cirencester. This caution, however, must now be somewhat modified; for in his time" no concurrence of roads,

no discovered remains, led to the supposition that two "stations or towns of eminence, in the age of Ptolemy or of "Caracalla, were planted on the banks of the Ribble." (History of Whalley, p. 13, Ed. 1818.) A second station has nevertheless been found on this river, near to Walton-leDale; and its discoverer, Mr. Charles Hardwick, has given a full account of it in Vol. VIII, pp. 127-140, of the Transactions of this Society, and again in pp. 39-46 of his valuable History of Preston. A fall of earth at this place has recently

disclosed a very fine portion of Roman pavement, probably forming a part of the military road from Walton to Lancaster. The pavement lay about thirty inches below the present surface of the soil; it was nearly ten yards wide, and was composed of boulder stones, sand and gravel, very firmly set. Since then a well-preserved coin of Germanicus has been found on the site of the new station; and these, together with numerous fragments of pottery &c. &c., abundantly prove that the Romans certainly had a second permanent station on the Ribble not far from the present town of Preston. The tradition, therefore, that Preston rose from the ruins of Ribchester must now be modified, since it is much more likely to have been founded from those at Walton.

Under these circumstances I am disposed to agree with Mr. Hardwick that, "till better evidence be produced," the following may be regarded as the most probable interpretation of the Roman topography of this portion of Britain.

Coccium

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Walton, near Preston.

Mamucium Manchester.

Rigodunum Rerigonium Ribchester.

Colunio

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Mr. Hardwick does not attempt to fix the station Ad "Alpes Peninos" of Richard's Itinerary; but suggests, as others had done before him, that it was somewhere near Pendle Hill. The tenth Iter of Antonine is then corrected by writing "Coccium Walton," and this station completes a "double line of forts, to guard the passes over the principal "rivers in Lancashire." The first line is placed "at the "head of the tidal estuaries of the Mersey, the Ribble and "the Lune." It comprises Condate = Wilderspool, near

Warrington, on the Mersey; Coccium Walton, on the Ribble; and Bremetonacis Lancaster, on the Lune. The second or inland line is formed by Mamucium = Manchester, on the Irwell, a tributary of the Mersey; Rerigonium= Ribchester, on the Ribble; and Ad Alaunum = Overborough, on the Lune. (Hist. Preston, p. 34.)

We may, therefore, now consider these as so many fixed points, and proceed to examine the roads which intersect the county. The Rev. John Whitaker, after tracing a portion of the great road from north to south through Rerigonium, alludes to several "minor ways" to Manchester, York &c., "one of which passes through Whalley, and points to Colne." (Hist. Manch., vol. i, p. 186.) He afterwards traces what he conceives to be the course of Richard's seventh Iter, which runs from west to east, beginning at Freckleton on the Ribble; but after leaving Ribchester he passes by Clitheroe, through Downham, Broughton near Skipton, and thence through Ilkley to York. Returning to the "minor road," he finds it passing by the fortifications of Castercliffe near Colne; and hence concludes that this place is the Colunio of the Anonymous Ravennas. He, however, places Ad Alpes Peninos at Broughton in Craven, and alters the distance in the Iter accordingly. Mr. Hatcher, in his edition of Bertram's Richard, (London, 1809,) adopts this arrangement, in which he is supported by the Rev. Thomas Leman in his Commentary appended to the same work. Their joint results may be given thus:

"A Portu Sistuntiorum Eboracum usque, sic." From Freckleton to

The Roman road being tolerably perfect all the way to Aldborough and the vestiges of the stations undoubted, these authors consider that they are justified in altering the two first distances from XXIII and VIII to XIII and XXIII, as above. Dr. Whitaker, in his History of Whalley, (pp. 29-32, Ed. 1818,) partially dissents from these views. He traces the general courses of the two great roads, which intersected nearly at right angles on Fulwood Moor, but he doubts whether Ad Alpes Peninos ought to be considered a station; and if it be so, whether it ought not to be sought on the "minor way" which traverses "the eastern skirts of Pendle." This able antiquary was not inclined to place much confidence in the Itinera of Richard; although he admits the existence of the stations indicated in the Iter under discussion. Doubts respecting the authenticity of Richard's work are also stated by Messrs. Petrie and Hardy in the Introduction to the Monumenta Historica; and again by Dr. Robson in pp. 10-12, Vol. III of the Transactions of this Society. Thomas Wright, in his Celt, Roman and Saxon, lends his authority to the other side, and I think with very sufficient reasons :—“ his "roads have been traced where he (Richard) places them; and their existence was certainly not known in Bertram's "time." (Celt &c., p. 459.) The via media has been found by the Rev. Thomas Reynolds, who considers Richard to have been "the first known English commentator on the work of "Antoninus." (Iter Britanniarum, p. 126.) It is worthy of remark that not only the names of the stations, but the direction of the roads across the county, are given with an accuracy in Richard's Itinerary which cannot be found in either Ptolemy or Antoninus; and hence his general trustworthiness may be considered as established.

The late Mr. John Just carefully examined the route of the seventh Iter, commencing with Poulton-le-Fylde on the Wyre, and ending with Downham on the north of Pendle Hill; but