Abstract
ARCHÆOLOGISTS have long known that a Roman site existed near Wilderspool Brewery, close to the Mersey on the south side of Warrington. Discoveries have been made during the constructions of various canals, and remains have accumulated in Warrington Museum. Now a local antiquary, Mr. May, has attempted during the last eight or nine years to excavate a small portion of the site—some two or three acres out of an estimated total of thirty or thirty-five acres. In the volume before us he collects, revises, and illustrates various accounts of his work which he had previously published in scattered papers. The collection is a useful contribution to the local study of Roman remains. It has the merits and demerits of many books of the same kind. In his general attack on the problem of what Roman Warrington was, we think Mr. May has not succeeded. He calls it “a partly fortified industrial town” extending over a quarter of a mile on both sides of a Roman road; but his fortifications are puzzling, and his furnaces, smelting floors, &c, do not constitute an “industrial town” in any proper sense of that phrase. On the other hand, he records interesting minor discoveries in the way of pottery and small objects, and the traces noted by him of glass workers, iron workers, and potters are noteworthy, though it may be rash to call them “the earliest in Britain.” The little volume is well illustrated, though printed on rather unpleasant paper.
Warrington's Roman Remains.
By Thos. May Pp. 87. (Warrington: Mackie, 1904.) Price 5s. net.
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Warrington's Roman Remains . Nature 70, 395 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/070395a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/070395a0