position in which it is common to find a well or cistern. Thus at Birrens, at Bar Hill, and at Gellygaer, the well was in a similar situation to the left of the entrance. At the Saalburg there are wells in the outer courtyard on either side of the entrance. It is therefore probable that the Newstead pit had originally been constructed for the storage of water. Its discovery in September 1905 gave the first indication of the possibilities of the site. It proved to be circular, having a diameter of twenty feet at the surface. At the bottom, which was reached at twenty-five feet six inches, it had narrowed to a diameter of six and a half feet. From a depth of about twenty feet from the surface it was filled with a confused mass of red sandstone blocks, for the most part of small size, such as might have been employed for the masonry of walls or the sides of a well. A few of these showed the diamond broaching which is frequently met with in buildings of the period. Stones dressed in this way occurred here and there among the buildings at Newstead, but on the whole their use was less common there than that of simple hammer-dressed stones.

Over forty cartloads of these smaller stones were taken from the pit.[1] Mixed with them were a number of much larger blocks. In all some twenty-four of the latter were brought to the surface from various depths,—one or two from the very bottom. It was quite plain that the majority of them had been used as building material. All had been more or less shaped, perhaps unfinished; some were carefully tooled. One large block nineteen inches broad, twelve inches high, and twenty-two inches in depth had been cut for the rebate of a door. The front of this was tooled with diamond dressing. Another stone, twelve inches long by twelve inches deep, was shaped like a pilaster or a rounded cope for a wall. The lewis hole employed to lift it into position was visible upon the face. A third was carefully tooled in a manner which recalled the work to be seen on the lids of Roman sarcophagi such as those that lie in the Church of St. Ursula at Cologne. Yet another, and this a block of considerable size, bore on its side, roughly incised, the figure of a boar, the symbol of the Twentieth Legion, while a much smaller stone had the same symbol in relief. One of the large blocks found in the bottom was shaped like the bases of the pillars already described.

1 The building stones from the pit, together with the gutter stones from the courtyard of the Principia, were removed by Mr. Roberts to Drygrange, where they are now erected in the form of an arch. The pit was filled up with modern rubbish.

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