with the actual construction of the platform and its superstructure; its date and its comparatively short life tend to support this view. Be that as it may, its walls were in ruins and the remains of its floors were already covered with debris from 1 ft. to 2 ft. in depth when, at some uncertain date in the second century, a building of entirely different design was erected upon the site. The small portion of this new building which has survived the falls of the adjacent cliff points to a structure of ‘courtyard‘ plan, with ranges of small rooms flanked by verandahs. The walls were of plastered flint with double lacing-courses of tiles, and the floors seem in some cases to have been of timber. Beyond the fact that the building was apparently of domestic type, it is now impossible to guess its precise purpose; but, as will be seen, it appears to have been of some importance, and to have survived until the building of the Saxon-Shore fortress in the latter part of the third century. It was then destroyed, and the north wall of the fortress passes over it.
   Meantime, another building had been set up close to the north-west corner of the platform. The front (southern) part of this building consisted of three oblong rooms, with a range of smaller rooms and a corridor-approach at the back. The walls, as surviving, consist of deep foundations of coursed flint with brick quoins. On the east side was a series of buttresses, and on the west, which is now incomplete, was a drain or conduit which formerly extended northwards beyond the (later) north wall of the Saxon-Shore fortress. The building is difficult to classify; it may have been either a dwelling-house or a workshop. Its initial date, as suggested by the contents of pits and a well which preceded it, was about A.D. 150, and a hint as to its terminal date is given by the fact that it was clearly a ruin when, in the third century, the defensive ditches of a small fortification were cut through it.
   This fortification introduces the next phase of the history of the site. At a period which, on the evidence of excavation, is placed provisionally in the middle or the third quarter or the third century, a space nearly 300 ft. square, with the great platform in its centre, was enclosed by three V-shaped ditches, doubtless with an earthen rampart on their inmost margin. The eastern side of these defences has been almost completely destroyed by erosion. In the midst of the western side is a causeway through them. The courtyard-house to the north-east of the platform was respected by the builders of these defences, since the two outer ditches are stopped against it and the innermost curves slightly to avoid it. Otherwise, no structure has yet been identified with this small fort, and it is, indeed, difficult not to believe that the primary object of the entrenchments was to protect the structure on the platform. If this served as a look-out and an aid to shipping, it may well be that in the earlier years of the Saxon raids, before the elaboration of the Saxon-Shore defensive system, it was found necessary to take this provisional step to protect one of the principal seamarks of the Channel Fleet.
   How long this small fort remained in use is not altogether evident, but it was observed that ‘the ditches showed little sign of having been open for any length of time.’ They probably remained operative, however, until they were superseded by the Saxon-Shore fortress as we now know it. Whether this fortress was built before or after the recovery of Britain by the official regime in 296 is not yet certain, but it is at least clear, as a result of the recent excavations, that it was erected within the last thirty or forty years of