The small town of Caerleon lies upon the banks of ‘full-tided Usk’, on the north-eastern outskirts of Newport in Monmouthshire. In a superficial sense it may, indeed, be regarded as the forebear of the medieval and modern borough which, two miles nearer the Severn estuary, has first replaced and now, spreading inland, threatens to absorb it. At the end of 1925 events moved with unexpected rapidity in this direction. Land in the centre of Caerleon—and therefore in the centre of the site of the Roman legionary fortress—changed hands for immediate ‘development’, and urgent action was necessary. On the initiative of the National Museum of Wales, a representative ‘Caerleon Excavation Committee’, under the presidency of Lord Treowen and the chairmanship of Dr. C. A. H. Green, then bishop of Monmouth, was called into being; whilst the Presidents of the Society of Antiquaries, the British Academy, the Classical Association, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, and other bodies, realizing that Caerleon provided the only example in Britain of a legionary fortress which was not almost completely covered by medieval or modern buildings, issued a joint appeal to the press.