Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
I transmit to you, at the request of my respectable and ingenious friend, Major Rooke, of Woodhouse, a small treatise, which he has drawn up on some Roman Roads, Tumuli, Stations, and Camps, which he has lately traced in the neighbourhood of Mansfield, and which have not hitherto been noticed. I cannot comply with his request that it might be transmitted to the Society, without explaining some particulars which gave rise to this treatise. When I first saw the account, which he sent to the Society, of a Roman Villa which he had discovered near Mansfield, I communicated to him some few sentiments of mine, on which I grounded an opinion, though I was quite unacquainted with the country, that this Villa was probably the residence of some military Roman commander, and that there was probably some Roman camp or station, or some military Roman road running near it. This did not by any means appear by his answer to be the case. And yet it still seemed to me improbable that it should be otherwise.
page 198 note [a] The plans of all the camps mentioned in this paper are laid down from the same scale, one hundred yards to an inch.
page 198 note [b] Pleasley Park consists of 183 acres of thick underwood and trees, which made it difficult to trace out the camp.
page 199 note [c] Roman roads through the country of the Coritani.
page 199 note [d] P. 439.
page 200 note [e] An estate belonging to the archiepiscopal see of York. See Mr. Rastall's History of Southwell, p. 374.
page 200 note [f] See History of Southwell, p. 366—372.
page 201 note [g] The ingenious Mr. Rastall, in his Antiquities of Southwell, mentions these camps, but does not allow them to be of a Roman origin. He gives very plausible reasons for his opinion. But had this gentleman carefully examined the camp on the Combs, and discovered Roman bricks and tiles, I am satisfied he would agree with me in thinking that these camps were originally of Roman construction, whatever people might afterwards take possession of them.
page 203 note [h] Brit. Rom. Book iii. chap. 2, p. 390.
page 204 note [i] Pownall's Provincia Romana, Appendix, p. 192.
page 204 note [k] Ibid. p. 190.
page 205 note [l] P. 157.