Outside the walls of Cilurnum are traces of the usual suburban dwellings; and here, near the river, stood the villa of the officer in command of the station.  The excavation of all these buildings and many others took place in the forties and fifties of last century, and were due to the energy of Mr. John Clayton, the learned and zealous antiquary, in the possession of whose family the estate still remains.  To Mr. N.G.  Clayton we owe the Museum at the Lodge gate, which he built for the reception of the notable collection it contains of antiquities gathered from all the various stations in Northumberland.  A very fine altar brought from Vindolana at once strikes the eye, and may be taken as a type of many others, though not many are so perfect.  The gravestone of a standard-bearer, from the neighbouring station of Procolitia, shows a full-length carving of the dead warrior.  Other inscribed stones are of great interest, though unfortunately most of them are but fragments; still these fragments not infrequently contain a few words which enable students of them to confirm a date or a fact concerning the garrisons, which must otherwise have been a matter of pure conjecture.  For instance, it might seem very improbable that the same regiments should have been quartered in certain stations for over two hundred years; yet one of the inscribed stones proves that such was the case at Cilurnum.  The inscription states that the second ala of the Asturians repaired the temple during the consulate of certain persons, which is found to be about the year 221.  In the Notitia, which was not compiled until the beginning of the fifth century, the second ala of the Asturians is given as the garrison of Cilurnum.

Another thing which strikes the imagination is the sight, after the lapse of so many centuries, of the erasures on various inscribed stones—­erasures of some emperor’s or Caesar’s name after his death by the chisel of a soldier in one of his legions on this far-away post of his empire.  It is one thing to read one’s Gibbon, and learn of the murder of Geta, son of Severus, by order of his brother Caracalla, and another to see the youth’s name roughly scratched out on a stone in Hexham Abbey crypt; and to read of the assassination of Elagabalus does not move us one whit, but to see his name erased from a stone in Chesters museum brings the tumultuous happenings in ancient Rome very closely home to us.

Here are also several Roman milestones, with their lengthy and sonorous inscriptions, from various points on the Wall; and a miscellaneous and deeply interesting collection of smaller articles, such as ornaments of bronze, jet, or gold, fibulae (brooches or clasps), coins of many reigns, Samian-ware, terra-cotta and glass, parts of harness, etc., etc.