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The Caratacus Stone on Exmoor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
On the very top of Winsford Hill, the southern limit of Exmoor, more than twelve hundred feet above the sea, two roads meet at right angles, at a point called Spire Cross. One connects the ancient (some say prehistoric) bridge known as Tarr Steps, on one side of the hill, with the picturesque village of Winsford, lying deep down in the valley of the Exe, on the other. The second road runs north-west from Dulverton to Exford, and so to Porlock and Lynmouth, passing on the left Hawkcombe Head, the favourite meeting-place of the Somerset and Devon Staghounds, and the Lorna Doone country.
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- Copyright © F. A. Bruton 1919. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
page 208 note 1 The inscription is numbered 982 in Haverfield's Supplement to C.I.L. vii (Eph. Ep. vol. ix, fasc. iv). His note upon it there, written before he had seen the stone, runs: ‘The inscription is Celtic rather than Roman, perhaps of the fourth or fifth century; Rhys has pointed out that the word nepus (i.e. nepos) here signifies kinship or family relationship.’
page 209 note 1 On this point Haverfield, merely says (V.C.H. Somerset, vol. i, p. 369Google Scholar): ‘The N was found later.’ Again in Proc. Somerset Arch. Soc. vol. lxiv, p. xxxviii, he adds: ‘The first letter of the second line is a broken N.’ Page, who took Rhys to see the stone in August, 1890, wrote (Proc. Somerset Arch. Soc. vol. xxxvi, 1890Google Scholar) : ‘At the time of our visit there was no actual evidence that the N existed … The Rev. J. J. Coleman, the local secretary for the Society for Dulverton … hearing about three years since [i.e. about 1887] that a portion had been broken off, visited the spot and secured and buried the pieces. “One of these pieces,” Mr. Coleman wrote, “is inscribed distinctly with M and it exactly fits on to the part of the stone which is inscribed EPVS, the N evidently forming part of the same word as that to which EPVS belongs.”’ Apparently, therefore, Mr. Coleman was the first to see the fragment.