In 1849 Mark Anthony Lower published a pioneer paper on the ironworks of East Sussex, but this contained no mention of any ironworking at Beauport Park, near Battle. Ten years later, however, the Rev. S. Arnott, rector of the nearby parish of Hollington, wrote that, although there were no remains of early ironmaking in his parish, ‘there is a large cinder-bank in Beauport Park on which grow firs with oak and ash, all planted by the owner, Sir Charles Lamb’.

The western end of Hadrian's Wall has received relatively far less archaeological study than the central and eastern sectors, and in the Solway area there is room for re-assessment. The final section of the stone-built wall was observed on 29 August 1707 running into the Solway some quarter mile west of the terminal fort at Bowness. Beyond this further forts along the Cumberland coast as far as Moresby and beyond have long been recognised along with a number of apparently isolated milefortlets in the northern section. To this picture, largely through the work of Bellhouse, has been added a growing collection of free-standing towers similar to the turrets of the mural system. Yet the system as hitherto known could be thought in-complete. For although Bowness marks the position of a ford, there is no major break in the southern Solway coastline until Moricambe, the combined estuary of the Rivers Waver and Wampool; that broad estuary marks a far more obvious point at which to terminate a linear defence system (FIG. I).

Professor C. Northcote Parkinson has demonstrated that government officials increase by a process of quasi-organic growth, unrelated to the burden of work for which they are responsible. The phenomenon is as apparent in the Roman Empire as in modern Britain; but modern British scholarship working on the evidence from the Roman Empire has carried the process even further by producing an official who never existed - though in fairness it must be admitted that no new post was created. It would be interesting and instructive to follow the process by which this apocryphal administrator became accepted into the canon of governors of Roman Britain, but problems of space mean that we can do no more than show why he must be declared redundant.

The summer of 1983 was remarkable in certain parts of North Britain for the severity of the drought which developed during the months of July and August, all the more so because it was unexpected. The weather had been far from settled, even in early June, and among those engaged in aerial reconnaissance praesumpta illius anni quies. By the end of the season, however, flying in central and eastern Scotland, south of the Highland Line, had met with unparalleled success in terms of the quality and quantity of archaeological evidence recorded from the air. Considerable interest attaches to the identification of no fewer than three Roman forts, all of which appear to be of Flavian date (see below, p. 275), but one of them, the newly discovered work at Doune, appears to possess a special significance which justifies the presentation of this early report.