THE BRITONS AND ROMANS

Summary

Cambridge, situate in the country anciently inhabited by the tribes called the Simeni or Iceni, is conjectured to have been the British city denominated Cair Graunth

From the remains discovered or discernible at and in the immediate neighbourhood of Cambridge, there is every reason to conclude that here was a Roman station.

This station was, no doubt, situate on the north bank of the river, a spot likely to have been fixed upon, as being sheltered by the ground rising to the north, and gently declining to the southern sun.

Dr. Stukeley thus describes the site of this station (which he terms the city of Granta):–“ I have, in company with Mr. Roger Gale, traced out the vestiges of that city, without any difficulty; being an oblong square which was walled about and ditched, the Roman road which comes in a strait line from Huntingdon hither, runs through the midst of it, and so in a strait line through the town by Christ's College and Emanuel to Gogmagog Hills where it passes by Bartlow and Haverhill in Essex, probably to Colchester, the Camulodunum colonia. In the garden of Pythagoras's school, south and west of that building, the trace of the ditch of the Roman Granta may easily be discerned; and the turn or angle of it, to which the angle of that building corresponds.