be arranged thusly:--


_Ber_, bear or boar; _moeng_, many; _ham_, dwelling--the whole making
_Bermoengham_, the dwelling of many bears, or the home of many pigs!


~Metchley Camp.~--At Metchley Park, about three miles from town, near to
Harborne, there are the remains of an old camp or station which Hutton
attributes to "those pilfering vermin, the Danes," other writers
thinking it was constructed by the Romans, but it is hardly possible
that an undertaking requiring such immense labour as this must have
done, could have been overlooked in any history of the Roman occupation.
More likely it was a stronghold of the native Britons who opposed their
advance, a superstition borne out by its being adjacent to their line of
Icknield Street, and near the heart of England. From a measurement made
in 1822, the camp appears to have covered an area of about 15-1/2 acres.
Hutton gives it as 30 acres, and describes a third embankment. The
present outer vallum was 330 yards long by 228 wide, and the interior
camp 187 yards long by 165 wide. The ancient vallum and fosse have
suffered much by the lapse of time, by the occupiers partially levelling
the ground, and by the passing through it of the Worcester and
Birmingham canal, to make the banks of which the southern extremity of
the camp was completely destroyed. Some few pieces of ancient weapons,
swords and battle-axes, and portions of bucklers, have been found here,
but nothing of a distinctively Roman or Danish character. As the
fortification was of such great size and strength, and evidently formed
for no mere temporary occupation, had either of those passers-by been
the constructors we should naturally have expected that more positive
traces of their nationality would have been found.