Portskewett The village lost its railway station (on the Newport to Gloucester line) when it was closed under the Beeching Axe in 1964. Black Rock, on the Severn estuary immediately south east of the village, has been an important crossing point of the River Severn for many centuries. Numerous coins found in the mud show that it was in constant use throughout the Roman period, on the route between Aquae Sulis (Bath) and Venta Silurum (Caerwent). By the 18th century, a regular ferry service crossed the Severn estuary from Black Rock to New Passage on the Bristol side, carrying passengers, cattle
Sulis the similarly local pre-Hellenic deities in the local epithets that they assigned, associated with the cult of their Olympian pantheon at certain places (Zeus Molossos only at Dodona, for example). The Romans tended to lose sight of these specific locations, except in a few Etruscan cult inheritances and ideas like the "genius loci", the guardian spirit of a place. The gilt bronze cult statue of Sulis Minerva "appears to have been deliberately damaged" sometime in later Antiquity, perhaps by barbarian raiders, Christian zealots, or some other forces. About 130 curse tablets, mostly addressed to Sulis, have been found in the