ROMANO-BRITISH LEICESTERSHIRE that it served as a guard-house, but it is too shallow for any wall to have inclosed it for this purpose. The northern arch is much narrower than the others. The back wall is pierced by two loops, evidently intended for the purpose of watching the approaches. The height of the arches is 19 ft., the wall above them another 6ft., making altogether 25ft. to the rampart- walk about the usual height of Roman city-walls in this country. To this must be added 4 ft. for the height of the parapet walls and embrasures. 'The wall is of the usual construction, viz. the body composed of rubble having a facing of small squared stones banded at short intervals by wide bonding or lacing courses of tiles. All the arches are turned with tile. No doubt a ditch ran in front of it, access to the gateway being obtained by wooden trestle-bridges on to each portal. Similar arrangements have been noted at the two posterns of the town wall at Silchester (Ca//eva Attrebatuni) , and the gate in the Roman wall of London, known in mediaeval times as Aldersgate, was reached across the moat in the same way. A road led up to the gate of Ratae from the direction of Watts Causeway, which connected the town with the Fosse Way. ' The date of this gate cannot be fixed with certainty, but perhaps it may have been erected under Constantine. The late Mr. J. H. Parker judged it of that period, being guided to his opinion by the size of the tiles and thickness of the mortar joints of the bonding courses ; but Roman construction in Rome, on which he based his judgement, does not always give the rule for similar work in Britain. Possibly a safer guide to date may be found in the narrowness of the gateways only 7 ft. 6 in. and their distance apart, for the later in date a fortified inclosure may be, the narrower are the entrances. In fact, the two portals in the Jewry Wall have more the appearance of a couple of posterns side by side than one of the main entrances to a city. The best idea of what this gateway was like is to be obtained from the views in Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum. The elaborate drawing to scale made by Mr. A. Hall in 1870, in the possession of the Leicester Architectural and Archaeological Society, shows all that we are likely to know of this relic of Roman Leicester. It has been reproduced in vol. viii of the Transactions of the society, and from it the plan and elevation here given has been made. It is a satisfaction that so excellent a record has been made of one of the few remains of Roman antiquity standing above ground, as to whose ultimate fate it would be hazardous to venture a prediction. Wrecked, not by time but by the hand of man, with blocked portals and its western side covered by workshops, while the eastern is more than half hidden by a pathway, it is no wonder that it has proved a puzzle to antiquaries until excavations and more careful research than was formerly possible had revealed the true character of the remains.' Judging by the structural details of the Jewry Wall, already referred to, the town walls of Ratae were probably erected at a late date of the Roman occupation. Mr. Haverfield has pointed out that in the western provinces of the empire, town walls seem to have been principally erected after A.D. 250, when the barbarian invasions grew formidable, 10 but this would not probably have affected Britain till a later date, as the reason for the building of walls here was as a protection against the attacks caused by local disturbances in 10 V.C.H. Somers. 1,228. I 185 24
