session of Captain Skinner, R.M. his nephew. Likewise another bronze statuette of Sylvanus, as delineated in the margin, was dug up about the year 1820, in the borough of Westree, Maidstone, across the bridge. It was formerly in possession of Mr. Lamprey, and now of Captain 

Bronze statuette of Sylvanus

Skinner, as the preceding, and is only two inches in height. Also in the year 1823 various sepulchral antiquities, apparently chiefly Anglo- Saxon, were discovered in Wheeler Street, in excavating for laying the foundations of the Lancastrian School. These few dispersed relics show no sufficient indications of either a Roman station or town where the present town of Maidstone stands. They are scarcely more than might be expected from digging to the same  

extent in the New Forest, or in that of Epping. While in the direction of that part now out of the present town, or on the skirts of it, which I have suggested as a far more favourable sphere of inquiry, we have something much more relative. There are in this quarter the foundations of the large and substantial Roman villa or building partly excavated by the late Mr. Charles; which will be more fully described in a subsequent paragraph. In the meanwhile, more completely to show that the first Roman establishments were in that quarter and on that spot with which I have endeavoured to identify them, a few words on the gradual rise and extension of the town of Maidstone, from the said locality, may probably not be here irrelevant. 
   14. Whatever may have been the state of the site of the present town of Maidstone in Roman times, whether it were forest or under any species of cultivation, it is certain that a Roman road went through it, in its progress to the Weald of Kent. This road has been mentioned