ANCIENT EARTHWORKS for or against Roman origin of this camp, or its claim to be the site of Noviomagus, but we may say that the great area of the enclosure seems too large for a Roman military station, while its hundred acres would not be too much to accommodate the families, flocks and herds of a British tribe. There is abundant evidence of occupation in Roman times, as will be seen in the chapter devoted to the antiquities of that period, but this of course does not prove construction at so late a date. Loose : Quarry Wood. — This work of doubtful age, suggesting late rather than early construction, lies partly in the parish of Boughton Monchelsea, on land sloping gently from the south and east, with no special advantage of position. It may possibly be one of those referred to by Hasted, cast y^WStSS^y Wood Camp, Loose. up in the sixteenth century. Quarrying has entirely swept away the traces on the north, and other age ncies have broken the contin- uity of the line on the south-west. On the east, where the land without is slightly higher than the ' camp,' there is a shallow fosse or ditch outside the rampart, but on the west the land slopes down from the enclosure, and there is no fosse, as probably would have been the case had prehistoric man constructed the works. The quarries of Kentish rag-stone are of much value, and must cause further destruction of this earthwork. Nackington : Iffin Wood. — According to Hasted there were in his time vestiges of an ancient camp about eight acres in extent ; only two acres are level and connected, the rest being cut cross-ways, and in differ- ent directions, into several separate mounts and ridges. There are numbers of different intrenchments throughout this large wood, and one vallum especially which runs on to the stone-street road.^ Now the vestiges are so broken and destroyed that it is hard to realize that any true camp or defensive enclosure existed. Nettlestead : Milbay's Wood. — These entrenchments are six miles south-west of Maidstone, standing about loo ft. above sea-level and 80 ft. above the river Medway, which flows a mile away to the east. » Hist. Kent (1790), iii. 728.
