with Augustus or Tiberius; one or two
Republican denarii, and one or two each of Augustus, Tiberius,
Germanicus, Nero, Titus, Marcus, and Severus and his
contemporaries; those of Tiberius and Nero are signalized by
Battely as being fresh and unworn.26 The second
consists of a vast multitude of late coins, from Probus,
Carausius and the Constantines to the end of the fourth century.
Lastly, the access to the site. Physical conditions
suggest that this must have been from the west or south-west,
and we can trace a suitable route which may date from Roman
times. This route runs north-eastwards from Canterbury past
Sturry; then, turning in a more northerly direction, it climbs
up and down hill past Maypole, Ford, Sweech Hill and Hillborough
Church; finally it again turns eastwards and quickly reaches
Reculver. Most of it is still in use as a road; part of it is a
parish boundary, and the section nearest to Reculver is known as
Old Lane.
Such was Roman Reculver, so far as we know it
to-day. We need not hesitate to infer its character. It was not
a town : of that our evidence gives no suggestion. Its ramparts,
its size, its strategic position watching the channel between
Kent and Thanet, all show that it was a fort, and the coins
found in it prove that it was occupied during the fourth
century. Plainly it was one of the caste//a of the Saxon
Shore, and its name—Recuif or Racuif or Raculfcestre in
pre—Conquest days 27 —identifies it with the castellum
Regulbium, garrisoned (as the ‘Notitia’ tells us) by the
Cohors I Baetasiorum. This regiment was quartered on the
northern frontier of Britain during the second century. When the
forts of the Saxon Shore were organized, it was apparently
called south to assist in the coast defence.
So far, our knowledge of Reculver, if slight, seems
certain. A harder problem arises with respect to its history in
earlier days. The occurrence of British and early Imperial coins
suggests that the site was occupied long before the fourth
century, and various structural details, such as the nearly
square shape of the fort, and the absence of bonding tiles and
of external towers or bastions, have been adduced by Mr. Fox to
prove further that the actual ramparts date from a period
definitely previous to A.D. 300. The question is not easy to
decide without more evidence than we at present possess. The
structural details seem to me indecisive. We have not the right
to assert, for instance, that fourth-century forts had always
external towers or bastions. Reculver itself witnesses to the
contrary. For, whenever built, it was certainly occupied in A.D.
300—400. If bastions had then been thought indispensable, they
would have been added, as they were added to the walls of
certain of our Romano-British towns, such as London and
Caerwent, or to earlier forts, as at Turn-Severin on the Danube,
and (perhaps) at El-Leggun in Arabia. But it is safer at present
to confine our view to the coins and pottery. They suggest an
early occupation of Reculver, apparently in the first century of
our era. Coins of Severus, or even of Marcus, might conceivably
appear
26 For the British and
Republican coins see Battely, especially plate vii, and Evans,
Ancient British Coins, indices; for 2 Augustus, 1 Germanicus,
1 Nero, 1 Titus, 1 Marcus, 2 or 3 Severus and ‘several
hundreds of the Lower Empire‘ see R. Freeman, Regulbium, pp.
60, 65 unworn bronze of Tiberius and Nero, Battely, sec. 43, p.
79; base silver of Severus and contemporaries, Battely, sec. 51,
52, pp. 91, 94. Harris mentions also lead coins and’ unstruck
globules of brass.’ B. Mus. Add. MS. 6626, fo. 8, mentions 14
Constantinian coins found in Dec. 1727 owing to a fall of cliff.
27 For the Early English name see the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 669, Bede, Hist. Ecci. v, 8, and
early charter of 679, etc. The identification of Reculver and
Regulbium has been accepted by almost all writers since Camden. |