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the Castle was built; after
that it became the south gate of the Castle, while the public
road was diverted eastwards and left the city by a new exit
opened for the purpose, called Wincheap Gate. About 1540—50
it was blocked up. About 1793 it was reopened, the Castle
ditches were filled up, and Castle Street was carried straight
out along its present line. At the same time the old arch was
removed. But it is known through earlier accounts and
sketches, of which perhaps the most accurate are those of
Thorpe, made about 1771 It was a single gate, opening 12˝ ft.
wide and some 14. ft. high, with jambs composed of squared
ragstone blocks and a round head turned in a double row of
Roman bricks, and measuring 28 in. in thickness. This arch has
been thought Roman since Somner, and perhaps longer, and the
tradition is probably correct. The extant sketches of the arch
certainly suggest Roman rather than Saxon or Norman work.
Brent urged that it might be post-Roman work built with Roman
materials, like so much else in Canterbury. But this is one of
those easy explanations which must be used with caution, and
the sketches show an arch built with more understanding of
what an arch is than Saxon builders usually possessed.
Unfortunately, the position of the gate does not help. A Roman
gate must have stood somewhere here to admit Stane Street. But
Worth Gate is 850 ft. outside the Roman inhabited area; part
of the interval is filled with a large Roman cremation
cemetery, while the street leading to the gate, when trenched
in 1867—8, revealed no continuous and clearly ancient
roadway beneath it. Two further pieces of evidence may be
cited, though contradictory and of uncertain value. On the one
hand, Pillbrow in 1868 found a wall of Roman character close
to the gate (13). On the other hand, Brent in 1877, excavating
at Wincheap Gate which pierces the town-wall just east of
Worth Gate, found under it (as he asserts) only the flint and
concrete foundation of the medieval wall, resting on the
native brick-earth (Cant. Olden Time, 13 n). If he was
right in thinking the flint and concrete medieval, there was
no Roman wall here. But medieval concrete is hard to
distinguish from Roman, and further search is needed.
(15) We pass to the district east of Castle
Street and St. Margaret’s Street. St. Mary’s Street
supplies only a bronze latchkey (Cant. Olden Time, 49,
p1. xviii). In St. John’s Street, Pillbrow met
foundations, potsherds, and coins at 120 ft. from Castle
Street, and again at the turn in the lane, but he gives no
details (Arch. xliii, 159, nos. 38—40). Where St.
John’s Lane meets Rose Lane and Wading Street he found Roman
structural remains—painted stucco, burnt masonry and wood,
and (at 10 ft. deep) a tessellated floor, and by it a
cornelian intaglio afterwards pronounced modern by Fortnum
(ibid. 157, no. 37; Arch. Cant. xv, 348). From
the western part of Watling Street he records only a gold coin
of Vespasian: here no ancient road lay beneath the modern
street. But under the eastern part of Watling Street was a
hard road of strong ballast, large flints, chalk and concrete,
which sank gradually from 3 ft. to 6 ft. in depth as it
approached Riding Gate. At one point near an Independent
Chapel 140 ft. from Riding Gate, he found Roman potsherds,
oystershells, charcoal and abundant ashes 10 ft. below the
street-level and directly under the buried road. The depth of
these remains is the same as that of the adjoining tessellated
floor, and the charcoal and ashes are probably the marks of
conflagration which occur all over Canterbury at the Roman
level. About here the hard road stopped. Instead, a vast
deposit of black vegetable matter, exceeding 14 ft. in depth,
extended almost to the Gate. This deposit contained Roman urns
with ashes or burnt bones inside, a Roman silver spoon,
boars’ tusks, etc., while a rude cobble road crossed it at 3
ft. deep (Arch. xliii, 157 and plate). The vegetable
matter probably represents an old watercourse, like those
noted in the Parade and Iron Bar Lane (secs. 6, 18). The
burials in it suggest that it, or some part of it (we are not
told their precise position), had become dry in the Roman
period. Pillbrow suggested that the road-surface noted under
the eastern part of Wading Street was connected with that
under Beercart Lane and belonged to a Roman Street which
crossed the town to Riding Gate. But the road under Beercart
Lane cannot be accepted as proven Roman (no.10), and the
traces in Watling Street, with their shallow depth (3 ft. to 6
ft.) and with Roman remains actually underlying them, are
equally doubtful. The name Watling Street is, of course, no
evidence; it is the invention of an antiquary (p. 134).
(16) Watling Street ends in Riding Gate. This,
like Worth Gate, has long been imagined to stand on the site
of a Roman gate. Some facts may be cited in support of that
view. Riding Gate is ancient: a gateway stood here in A.D.
1040. It is also the starting point of the Old Dover Road,
which is thought to represent roughly the line of the Roman
highway to Dover, though Pillbrow, when trenching it in
1867—8, found no old road underlying it (Arch. xliii,
158). Moreover, early sketches of it show two brick arches
(destroyed in 1782) which are pretty clearly Roman workmanship
(Somner, Canterbury, ed. 1640, p. 19 Stukely, Itin. ed.
1724, p. 115, plate 96 here repeated) There are, it is
true,. certain difficulties. Its position, with burials and a
broad water channel behind it, is unsuitable; it lies some way
from the Roman inhabited area; the traces of a Roman Street
leading to it are doubtful, and the line of the Roman road to
Dover is at this point unknown. Once more the final proof of
excavation is required. If excavation should prove the gate,
or the ramparts near it., to stand on the site of a Roman gate
and town-walls, we should draw
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