Romano-British for Dux Britanniarum
Brickwork research
The kids had a day trip to Dover Castle earlier this week as a last hurrah before the end of the Easter holidays.
They very kindly took some research photographs of the tower of the church of St Mary in Castro. Which are shown here.
For those who might not be aware, St Mary in Castro is a church located within the curtain wall of Dover Castle, hence the name “in Castro”. The church itself is very old, being built around AD 1000 in the late Saxon period, possibly on the site of an even older Saxon church dating from around AD 600.
However, for our purposes, the point to note is that the church adopted as its bell tower the remains of a Roman lighthouse or Pharos built around AD 130. This structure is still four stories tall and may even have reached as high as eight stories when first constructed. It was one of two built by the Romans to guide ships into Dover harbour which was then known as Dubris. If you look at the pictures, the characteristically thin orange bricks of the Romans are clearly visible. This is the colour I need to try and replicate on my watchtower.
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