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ROMAN ARCH

This walled space included the sites of both cathedral and castle, and was thickly covered with houses in Danish and Saxon times. We hear of 166 being cleared away by the Conqueror to make his castle. The Romans themselves extended their wall southward as far as the stone-bow in order to accommodate their growing colony. Their northern gate yet exists. It is known as “Newport Gate,” and is of surpassing interest, as, with the exception of one at Colchester, there is not another Roman gateway in the kingdom. Only last October the foundations of an extremely fine gateway were uncovered at Colchester, the Roman “Camelodunum”; apparently indicating the fact that there were two chariot gates as well as two side entrances for foot passengers. The Newport Gate is sixteen feet wide, and twenty-two feet high, with a rude round arch of large stones without a key, the masonry on either side having stones some of which are six feet long. On each side of the main gate was a doorway seven feet wide for foot passengers. A fifth Roman road is the “Foss Way,” which came from Newark and joined the Ermine Street at the bottom of Canwick Hill, a mile south of Lincoln.