THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 121
Tart, called Grymes Dyke, which runs across Lexden Heath from the Colne to the
Roman River, about two miles distant from the point where they unite. This
tableland, defended by its rivers and rampart, and surrounded by forest, corre-
sponds very exactly with Cesar's description of a British Oppidum, 'fortified by
nature and art.' When we look for evidence of its British occupation, we do not
fail to find them. The rampart which forms its western boundary, with a ditch
on its west side, is the ancient boundary of the manors, parishes, and liberties of
the borough—i.e., it existed before manors, parishes, and borough. The earlier
antiquaries mention flint spear-heads as being found in the neighbourhood of the
rampart; weapons of flint and bronze, urns, and British coins, have been found
in abundance scattered over the large area which we assume to be the
Oppidum. A short distance within the rampant there is a lofty tumulus, which
is probably British. Three British roads are to be recognised as converging
within this enclosure : one towards London, another towards St. Albans, and
another north-eastward towards the country of the Iceni. If these seem to be
scanty relics of a long British occupation, it may be noted that the extant relics
of the Saxon occupation of the same site during four centuries are still more
scanty."
In demonstrating the most interesting points in connection with the earthworks,
Dr. Laver was careful to distinguish those banks which he considered to be the
remains of old Roman roads from the true ramparts raised to defend the ancient
British colony (see Dr. Laver's important paper on the Roman roads of the
Colchester district, Trans. Essex Archaeol. Society, vol. iii. (n.s.), 123). The
first entrenchment visited was that on the east side of the valley in Lexden Park,
and which crosses the road just before Lexden Church is reached. It commences
at a point on the old Roman road to London, about one and a-half
miles from Colchester, and extends northwards across the river Colne and
railway to the Bergholt road, where it becomes very indistinct, but Dr. Laver
believes that sufficient traces remain to allow its course to be followed in an
almost direct line to Horkesley Causeway, an unmistakably Roman road. This
entrenchment was said by the Rev. Henry Jenkins ("Archaeologia," xxix., 243)
to be the eastern boundary of British Camulodunon, and in this he has been
followed by later writers; but Dr. Laver pointed out that the ditch was on the inside,
a fact alone sufficient to show the erroneousness of such an idea, and he thought
the work more like the remains of a road, especially as it crossed the river at a
ford still in use. Dr. Laver drew attention to some tumuli in Lexden Park, and
stated that excavations in these had shown that they "contained Roman interments,
many of the vases so found being now in the Museum. The party then drove
to Lexden Heath, where Dr. Laver pointed out the traces of the early road
towards Stanway, fully described in the paper above referred to, and showed that
a foot-path, the descendant of the right of way, still ran over its course." Then
the remains of a second entrenchment, running a few yards from the "Straight-
road," as it is called, on Lexden Heath, were visited, and it was stated that this
earthwork commenced in the middle of one end of a small camp, plainly dis-
tinguishable; that it crossed the before-mentioned "old London road" ; and that
the traces were lost just at the starting point of the present Colchester and
8 In a very interesting paper "On the Antiquity of Some Foot-paths" (Trans. Essex Arch.
Soc, vol. iii (n.s.), 78), Dr. Laver proves, from instances around Colchester, that numbers of
our foot-paths follow ancient and sometimes forgotten lines of road, and are of very great
antiquity, if not pre-historic in some instances, owing their existence to times when the rights of
ownership were not such as we recognise at the present time.
I