Welsh Journals

182 CORRESPONDENCE. identifies, as a Roman line, the road from Kinderton to Chesterton, which was previously conjectural only, and thereby consigns to the uses of Wales and its marches, other lines tending more to the westward, I subjoin the particulars. In my account of this Station, [Hist. Chesh. hi., p. 2,) I cited Whitaker's own words with respect to his own discovery of it, as time and alterations had made intermediate ravages. In the following mention of three lines of road considered to have diverged from it, in the direction of Wales, (in all which the Ordnance Surveyors coincide with me,) I use modern names instead of those of the Itineraries, for the sake of clearness to the general reader, and waive notices of intricacies in distant points irrelevant to the present discussion, as for instance, with respect to the "Mediolanum" of Chesterton, and the other "Mediolanum" of the Tanad lately alluded to in your pages. These three lines are as follows :— I.—The well known Kind Street, bearing from Kinderton on Northwich, and continued thence by the North Watling Street to Chester.— {Hist. Chesh. vol. iii., p. 2.) II.—The line traced by Dr. Bennet, (Bishop of Cloyne,) through Nantwicli Hundred in the direction of Wroxeter and the South-eastern Watling Street, and of course towards the Stations of Merionethshire and Caernarvonshire. III.—The line traced by myself, near the western side of Bradwall, by Boothlane, towards the west of Sandbach, which there combines with the results of Bishop Bennet's investigations, as to its continuation towards Worcester and the Severn. Mr. Whitaker assumed, from local names, from Iter X. of Antonine, and Iter X. of Bertram's Richard of Cirencester, that " another road must have extended (from Kinderton) by Street Forge and Red Street to Chesterton near Newcastle. Its actual line, however, was unknown when I wrote, and therefore I left the question open, and suggested the possibility of its having diverged from Road III. above mentioned.—(vol. iii., pp. 2 and 3.) Very shortly afterwards, the artificial gravel-bank of Whitaker's road was discovered, and line III. (as far as can be gathered from the direction of its clearly distinct commencement) may now be left to pursue its south-western course towards the valley of the Severn, without necessity for ramification or deviation. This gravel bank was found accidentally, about two feet below a peaty surface, by a tenant of my late relative, Dr. Latham, in opening a water¬ course through " Brindley Moors" farm, on the eastern side of Bradwall. This is exactly in Whitaker's conjectured direction, and its genuineness was further attested by Coins, as follows :— In 1820, a mole-catcher, working in Brereton, at a short distance from the farm mentioned, and that of about four miles (direct) from the Kinder- ton Station, at a point where a small brook is crossed by the footpath from Brereton to Sandbach, struck his paddle against something resembling a mass of fused metal, contained in a decayed box, but afterwards found to consist of about a thousand Roman Coins, bound together by verdigris and rust. Nearly six hundred of them are in my possession, which are partly broken and corroded, and partly good specimens of the denarii serei ot Gallienus, Claudius II., Tetricus, the two Tetrici, Victorinus, and Diocletian. This discovery, so near to the central point of the diverging roads, gives strong confirmation of the genuineness of the Station itself, which has been unattested hitherto by such evidence, and (as before mentioned) completely proves the Chesterton line to have been distinct from the Welsh com¬ munication.