Server :: Putting IP Blocking In A Separate Conf File?

Running Red Hat (not sure of the build atm) and I need to be able to put all of the IP blocking in a separate file. It will eventually be uploaded to a large number of hosting accounts, and modified from time to time...so it isn't feasible to modify that many httpd.conf files each time we need to add an IP to be blocked. In httpd.conf I can add the "Deny from" line to the following directive and blocks it just fine:

Code:

<Directory "/var/www/html">
#
# Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All",
# or any combination of:
# Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews

[code]....

There is an include to pick up all *conf files in ../conf.d, and everything else in there is working just fine. I created a file called robots.conf; it currently has a set of mod_rewrite rules which work. So I added this to that file:

Code:

<Directory "/var/www/html">
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from 123.456.789.098
</Directory>

It is not blocking access from the IP with it in there.I've done all of the usual things; restarted Apache, cleared browser cache etc. I can also block it using that same directive in a local .htaccess.