Portus Felix (or ''Sinus Salutaris'' meaning good harbour) was a small coastal

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

in the

Roman province The Roman provinces (, pl. ) were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman appointed as Roman g ...

Britannia The image of Britannia () is the national personification of United Kingdom, Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used by the Romans in classical antiquity, the Latin was the name variously appli ...

, in the area that became the

East Riding of Yorkshire The East Riding of Yorkshire, often abbreviated to the East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, S ...

Filey Filey () is a seaside town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. It is located between Scarborough, North Yorkshire, Scarborough and Bridlington on Filey Bay. Although it was a fishing village, it has a large ...

is considered to be the probable location of the port settlement. Sewerby and

Bridlington Bridlington (previously known as Burlington) is a seaside town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is on the Holderness part (Flamborough Head to the Humber estuary) of the Yorkshire Coast by the North Sea. The town is ...

(formerly known as Burlington) have also been suggested. The name of Portus Felix does not appear in the

Ravenna Cosmography The ''Ravenna Cosmography'' (, "The Cosmography of the Unknown Ravennese") is a work describing the Ecumene, known world from India to Ireland, compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna around 700 AD. It consists of five books describing ...

's list of all known places in the world in about 700 AD. Portuosus Sinus on Gabrantuicorum bay is in

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

Geographia The ''Geography'' (, , "Geographical Guidance"), also known by its Latin names as the ' and the ', is a gazetteer, an atlas, and a treatise on cartography, compiling the geographical knowledge of the 2nd-century Roman Empire. Originally wri ...

and may be the same place. Charles Bartram's forged 14th-century manuscript ''

De Situ Britanniae ''The Description of Britain'', also known by its Latin name ' ("On the Situation of Britain"), was a literary forgery perpetrated by Charles Bertram on the historians of England. It purported to be a 15th-century manuscript by the English monk ...

'' included the place names ''

Petuaria Petuaria (or Petuaria Parisorum) was originally a Roman fort situated where the town of Brough in the East Riding of Yorkshire now stands. Petuaria means something like 'quarter' or 'fourth part', incorporating the archaic Brythonic *''petuar ...

'' and ''Portus Felix'' in the region of ''Ocellum'' occupied by the Parisi tribe''.'' On

William Roy Major-General William Roy (4 May 17261 July 1790) was a Scottish military engineer, surveyor, and antiquarian. He was an innovator who applied new scientific discoveries and newly emerging technologies to the accurate geodetic mapping of Gr ...

's 1793 map of Ptolemy's Geographia, the Parisi tribe is shown as inhabiting the area of

Holderness Holderness is an area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, on the north-east coast of England. An area of rich agricultural land, Holderness was marshland until it was drained in the Middle Ages. Topographically, Holderness has more in common wit ...

peninsula in the East Riding of Yorkshire, north of ''Promontarium Ocellum'' (believed to be

Spurn Head Spurn is a narrow sand tidal island located off the tip of the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England that reaches into the North Sea and forms the north bank of the mouth of the Humber Estuary. It was a spit (landform), spit with a s ...

). Port Felix is shown above ''Brigantum Extrema'' (

Flamborough Head Flamborough Head () is a promontory, long on the Yorkshire coast of England, between the Filey and Bridlington bays of the North Sea. It is a chalk headland, with sheer white cliffs. The cliff top has two standing lighthouse towers, the olde ...

), indicating its location as Filey Bay. In 1857 the foundations of a 4th-century Roman signal station were discovered at the Carr Naze cliff edge on Filey Brigg, at the northern end of Filey Bay. The structure is 50 metres long with a square tower 14 meters wide, a defensive ditch and ramparts from a later era. Excavations at the time of the find and subsequently in the 1920s and 1990s uncovered Roman pottery and hoards of coins. The site is a protected

Scheduled Monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage, visu ...

.{{PastScape, mname=FILEY ROMAN SIGNAL STATION, mnumber=81380, access-date=2020-08-28

References

Roman towns and cities in England History of the East Riding of Yorkshire