"Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!"
--_Hamlet_.

One of my fields--about five acres--called Blackbanks from its
extraordinarily black soil, over a yard deep in places, and the more
remarkable because the soil of the surrounding fields is stiff
yellowish clay, showed other indications of long and very ancient
habitation. Among the relics found was a stone quern, measuring about
21 inches by 12 by 7-3/4, and having, on each of two opposite sides, a
basin-shaped depression about 6 inches in diameter at the top, and
2-3/4 inches in depth; also a small stone ring, 1-1/4 inches in
diameter, and 3/8ths in thickness, with a hole in the centre 1/4 inch
across; the edges are rounded, and it is similar to those I have seen
in museums, called spindle whorls. The quern and the ring I imagine to
be British. This field and the fields adjacent on the north side of
the stream formed, I think, primarily a British settlement and area of
cultivation, afterwards appropriated by the Romans in the earliest
days of the Roman occupation of Britain, and inhabited by them as a
military station until they left the country.

Among other relics found in Blackbanks and in the fields to the north,
called Blackminster, between Blackbanks and the present line of the
Great Western Railway, aggregating about a hundred acres, there were
found large quantities of fragments of pottery of several kinds,
including black, grey, and red, and among the latter the smoothly
glazed Samian. Many pieces are ornamented with patterns, some very