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This destruction of Romano-British life produced a curious result which would be difficult to explain if we could not assign it to this cause. There is a marked and unmistakable gap between the Romano-British and the Later Celtic periods.
The new buildings therefore arose with their foundations some feet above the original level of the Romano-British city. So complete was the gap between the destroyed Durovernum and the Saxon town which eventually grew up that men had had time to forget the old name, and, finding it necessary to invent one, called it Cantwarabyrig, which meant the city of the men of Kent.
Miss Strong decided not to waste any time there, but to push on as fast as possible across the hills to Sudbury, where there was a fine Romano-British villa that was well worth a visit.
At Cirencester, the Romano-British centre for the canton of the Dobuni and a still larger town than Wroxeter, the 'insulae' near the Basilica seem to have measured as much as 120 yards in length, though full details have not yet been obtained. Both these towns may be ascribed to the later years of the first century and to the same civilizing process as Silchester and Caerwent.
Secondly, the distribution of civilian life, even in the lowlands, was singularly uneven. It is not merely that some districts were the special homes of wealthier residents. We have also to conceive of some parts as densely peopled and of some as hardly inhabited. Portions of Kent, Sussex, and Somerset are set thick with country-houses and similar vestiges of Romano-British life.
Picts, Scots of Ireland, Angles and Saxons swarmed southwards, eastwards, and westwards respectively into England, and ruined Romano-British civilisation, which the Britons, unskilled in arms, were powerless to defend, as the lamentations of Gildas abundantly attest.
Roman inscriptions are occasionally set up. The Romanization of Britain was plainly no mere interlude, which passed without leaving a mark behind. But it was crossed by two hostile forges, a Celtic revival and an English invasion. Romilly Allen. But how far it was borrowed from Romano-British originals and how far from similar Roman-provincial work on the Continent, is not very clear.
It is only in the tumuli along the coast, or in those of the Romano-British period, that iron implements are ever found; whilst in the ancient burying places of the interior of the country they are altogether wanting.
It seems probable that the districts of Britain which we call Wales had in Romano-British times only one bishopric, that of Caerleon-on-Usk, near Newport, in Monmouthshire. But as soon as light is seen in the country again, after the darkness which followed the departure of the Romans, we find a number of diocesan sees.
Just as the five cities of Colchester, Lincoln, York, Gloucester, and St. Albans, stand on the sites and in some fragmentary measure bear the names of five Roman municipalities, so Isca Dumnoniorum, now Exeter, appears to have been a cantonal capital developed out of one of the great market centres of the Celtic tribes, and as such it was the most westerly of the larger Romano-British towns.
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