252 ON A RECENT SUBSIDENCE AT MUCKING, ESSEX.
in E. Norfolk. It is given in a letter from Thomas Munro (?) to the late
Samuel Woodward, dated 29th August, 1834. Mr. Munro thus writes :—" It
was discovered on the side of a lane a little to the left of the road leading
through Lammas to Buxton, where an acquaintance of mine was allowed to dig
sand and gravel for top-dressing an adjacent meadow, and the quantity was not
less than eight or ten quarters......An oak tree of considerable age
grew near the spot, the fibrous roots of which had insinuated themselves among
the wheat, which lay in two distinct compartments at the bottom of the sloping
bank, separated by a natural division running transversely through the pit."
Also in Norfolk, at Caister near Yarmouth, was found in
1837 a bricked pit, an account of which appears in the Gentle-
man's Magazine Library (Romano-British Remains), Part I,,
pp. 230-5. From the very full description of this pit we learn
that:—"The masonry [of Roman bricks and tiles] was very rude,
and there was no appearance of covering above, nor could we
discover any traces of a paved bottom, there being nothing but
the natural clay in which the whole was imbedded forming the
floor of this oblong pit." Its length at the bottom was 11ft., and
its breadth 7ft. At the top the length was 12ft. and the breadth
8ft. Its height had probably been "at least 4 feet." Among
the remains found in the pit were oyster shells and fragments of
Roman pottery. The writer of the account (T. Clowes)
discusses the purposes to which this pit may have been devoted,
rejecting the notions that it may have been a bath or a tanner's
pit, and adding that it was "in truth so rude a building that my
own idea is that its use was one of so ordinary and common-
place a nature as scarcely to be worth much speculation ; that it
was Roman, beyond doubt, is I conceive the only point of
interest."
We have, however, some reason for thinking that this rude
pit was not devoid of interest, as Mr. Clowes supposed, for we
find that "Mr. Woodward suggests that the building was
intended for a corn store, but I scarcely incline to this supposi-
tion, as an underground vault, though very well for concealment
in cases of necessity, would by no means be a corn store in a
well-defended Roman encampment."
It is somewhat singular that Mr. Clowes was disinclined to
accept Mr. Woodward's view for the reason given, even though he
considered this pit as "constructed for some domestic purposes."
For in a "Notice of the Barrier of Antoninus" by John
Buchanan, which appears in the Archaeological Journal, Vol.