excavation has revealed solid foundations and flanking towers. Many stones in the platform at Lympne were old material taken from earlier buildings and used up again. Among them was an altar set up by an officer of the classis Britannica, which will be described below. Besides the chief gate, there was a postern 4 ft. wide in the west wall nearly opposite it. Whether there were more entrances seems uncertain.⁹⁰
   Inside the fort three buildings were traced in 1850. Near its upper part, broken walls were noticed which seemed to indicate a row of long low edifices extending across its area. In the centre of this row was a building much disturbed by landslip, measuring 30 ft. by 120 ft., walled with limestone and tile, devoid of recognizable flooring, but testifying to windows by containing window glass. A second building near the south-west quarter contained four rooms, two equipped with pillared hypocausts and a third with a ruder walled hypocaust, and was probably part of a bath. Pieces of painted wall-plaster were found in these rooms, and ashes in the furnaces of the hypocausts. One of the stones of this building was a hewn stone from some earlier structure, which, before it was used up again, had lain in sea-water and attached a number of barnacles to itself (Roach Smith, Report, p. 26). This seems to show that the building belongs to a late period in the history of the site. A third smaller and ruder building was excavated in the south-west corner of the fort, but it yielded only flue-tiles, charcoal and animals’ bones. Another building, or perhaps a part of the second above mentioned, was touched on by Sir Victor Horsley in 1894. It is unfortunate but obvious that the vestiges of these structures do not help us really to understand the interior of the fort.
   Of external buildings still less is known,⁹¹ and the cemeteries are equally undiscovered. On the other hand, the road which gave access by land to Stutfall Castle has been famous under the name of Stone Street since the sixteenth century, and is still in use. It runs south from Canterbury, following a line that is singularly direct even for a Roman road, and swerving only where it descends from the high downs towards the coast.
   The miscellaneous smaller objects found in the fort are few and, save for inscriptions, are uninteresting. One of these inscriptions is an altar, bearing an imperfect dedication. It is a block of limestone, much weathered and broken at the top, 36 in. high, 12 in. to 13 in. wide and 11 in. thick, engraved with plain letters 1¾ in. to 2⅜ in. high. The beginning is lost, and the praenomen before the name Aufidius is doubtful. Hübner read C: it appears to be rather a fairly certain L.

    . . . \ . . .aram . . . Aufidius Pantera praefect(us) clas(sis) Brita(nnicae) ‘to (some god whose name is lost), . . . Aufidius Pantera, admiral of the British fleet, erected this altar.’

   What god was worshipped on this altar, when it was set up, and who the dedicant Aufidius Pantera was, can only be conjectured.   Roach Smith
   ⁹⁰ C. R. Smith, Richborough, etc., p. 267, says he found several posterns, and marks four on his plan. Later, two of these turned out not to be gates, and in his Report, p. 13, he speaks of only one as really existing. It is quite possible that all these late forts, in which men laid so much stress on the defensive, had few and mostly small gates.
   ⁹¹ Wright mentions foundations, pottery and tiles at the bottom of the hill west of the fort (Wanderings, p. 135). But he does not give the exact site, and the remains have never been followed up. C. R. Smith, Richborough, etc., p. 263, records flue and other tiles, indicating a dwelling, at the farm of Court-at-Street. But this is two miles away to the west.