Of
its high antiquity there can at least be no doubt, for there we may
still see parts of the Roman walls near nine feet thick and innumerable
Roman remains have been found within them.
The situation of Clausentum, too, was rather Celtic than Roman. It
stands upon a tongue of land thrust out into the Itchen from the left
bank, between Northam and St Denys on the right bank; the river washed
its walls upon three sides, north, south and west, but upon the
landward side to the east it was protected by two lines of defence, an
outer and an inner, the one nearly three hundred yards from the other.
At first this arrangement might seem rather Celtic than Roman, and in
fact, it may well be that the Romans occupied here earthworks far older
than anything built by them in Britain, and yet it seems perhaps more
probable that they are responsible for all we have here, un-Roman
though it seems, and that the true explanation is that the outer
defences, while their work, are the older of the two; that with the
decline of their administration in the fourth century, with the
building of the Stane Street and the general walling of the Roman towns
this older and larger defence was abandoned, and the place, whatever it
may have been, reduced to a mere fort to hold which upon the landward
side the inner defence was there built.
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