The huge Roman structure at Castor was built around 250 CE. The term ‘Castor Praetorium’ was used by Edmund Artis in the 19th century, to indicate that it had an administrative funcion.
“British Archeological Assocation
The second of a series of conversaziones, given by Mr. Pettigrew to the members of the association, was held on Wednesday evening the 18th inst., in Saville-row, London, and was numerously attended. The exhibitions of works of ancient art, which crowded the tables and walls of the apartment, displayed the resources of the association, and the activity with which it is carrying out the objects for which it was instituted. Among these was an extraordinaty collection of Romano-British remains, recently discovered by Mr. E. T. Artis, F.S.A., in the neighbourhood of Castor, near Peterboro’. It consists chiefly of an extensive variety of fictile* vessels, taken from the debris of Roman potteries, which it appears extended along the banks of the Nene for at least 20 miles. These vases are thus proved to be of home manufacture, and the mode in which they were worked, glazed, ornamented, and baked, was detailed by Mr. Artis himself, in a pleasing and familiar way, to a large group of the company. The subjects upon the vases are mythological, hunting, arabesques, or composed of animals and fanciful ornaments. These, which often display much force and beauty, were, Mr. Artis stated, composed in an off-hand way by the maker, without a mould. Near one of the kilns was found a portion of a mould, which had been made by some native artist for pottery, intended to resemble the beautiful red kind, familiar to antiquaries by the term ‘Samian.’ At Castor (the Durobrivæ of the Romans) were also fabricated many of the plated and debased coins which are still discovered in such profusion throughout England. Mr. Artis exhibited the very moulds in which these coins were made, and in some of which were the coins themselves, which had never been removed. They were chiefly of the family of Severus, and his immediate successors.”
The Stamford Mercury, 27th June, 1845.
*made of clay or earth by a potter.