Part 3

Some of the bricks used were of larger size than the ordinary, being 20 in. by 12½ in., and the drawings show that they were carefully laid with alternate headers and stretchers (Fig. 17). They were 1¾ in. thick, and four courses made 10-12 in.; the joints were thus about 1¼ in. thick. At the Guildhall is a fragment of brickwork from Leadenhall Market, with bricks and joints both 1½ in. thick. The stone walling was of concreted rubble, with facings on each side in small, roughly wrought but carefully-coursed stones; the layers of bonding tiles passed through the thickness of these walls (Fig. 20). A large drain ran parallel to the outer south wall about 4 ft. wide, including its brick sides.

The general plan shows a total length from the apse at the east to the broken wall at the west against Gracechurch Street of about 210 ft. About 44 ft. to the north of the Great Wall a parallel wall is shown on the plan, but no details are given, and it may not have been Roman.

The interior curve of the _upper wall_ of the apse had a radius of about 22 ft., and the width of a central “nave” agreeing with this can hardly have been less than 50 ft.; the total internal width, supposing there were “aisles” in line with the “chambers” at the end, would have been about 110 ft. There were thick transverse walls across the front of the apse, and again about 20 ft. to the west. I give (Fig. 22) a plan adapted from _Archæologia_; the walls shown black were not necessarily all above the floor level, although they are thinner than the lowest foundations. (Note that in the plan in _Archæologia_ the scale is given in divisions of 12 ft., and not of 10 ft. as usual.)

My plan is restored as a possible reading of the evidence; the most certain parts are those in black (A); the foundations (B) may be of a different age; at the left (C) is the brick pier or wall against Gracechurch Street.

A structure perhaps 110 ft. wide with a central avenue of 50 ft. would have been exceptional; on the other hand, a Basilica 220 ft. to 250 ft. long including the apse would have been rather short. One of the walls found to the west of Gracechurch Street was bent in its line as if it might have been against a stream. The nature of the site might have dictated a rather short and very wide building. It should be noticed that the line of Gracechurch Street is nearly or exactly at right angles to the great building. Hodge’s drawings show that the walls of Leadenhall Market were built directly on the Roman foundations, and hence square with them.

The Basilica would have had ranges of Corinthian columns and perhaps a transverse row on the foundation in front of the apse, as at the Basilica Ulpia in Rome and at Pompeii: compare also the transverse walls at the Basilicas of Cirencester and Caerwent. The roof would probably have had trusses of low pitch exposed to the interior, like those of the early Christian churches.

In 1908 a Roman wall, 3½ ft. wide, _parallel_ to Gracechurch Street, was found at No. 85. In 1912 a fine Roman wall, 4½ ft. wide, running north and south, was found just south of Corbet’s Court; turning at right angles it passed under Gracechurch Street. It was of ragstone with double courses of tiles; the base was 27 ft. below the present level; a piece of thinner wall ran close and _parallel_ with the roadway (_Archæologia_, lxiii.). Kelsey noted that in 1834 massive walls were found in Gracechurch Street from Corbet’s Court to the head of the street (_Archæologia_, lx.).

The discovery was announced in January 1922 of a wall 2¾ ft. thick of ragstone and bond tiles “in the centre of Gracechurch Street a little south of the Cornhill crossing (to the west or left of Fig. 22). A length of about 10 ft. has been disclosed following the central line of Gracechurch Street. The presence of this Roman building in the middle of the highway proves that the mediæval street did not follow the line of the Roman street. Close at hand is Leadenhall. When the present market was reconstructed, excavations disclosed remains of an important Roman building. It is probable that the remains now unearthed are associated with the same group of buildings.” Another wall, 4½ ft. thick, was found at right angles to the thinner wall; the finds were at a depth of about 13 ft. This building, which must have been part of the Basilica or adjacent to it and square with it, was thus as far west as the middle of the street, and doubtless farther, for the thinner wall in association with a thicker one would not have been an external wall. Other walls have recently been found under St. Peter’s, Cornhill, corresponding with those under Leadenhall Market. “All these finds seem to be part of a great building more than 400 ft. long, which crowned the eastern hill of London” (_Antiquaries’ Journal_, vol. ii. p. 260; see also p. 225, below).

The smaller inset plan on Fig. 22 is a very visionary reading of the possibilities. A street in line with Fish Street Hill and the Bridge, which I will call _Axis Street_, may not have pointed to the centre of this great building, but rather by its west end as suggested (X). If this is too far west for the _Axis Street_, then we must suppose that it was directed towards some point in the south front of the Forum. (It is desirable that all the walls found in this locality should be accurately laid down on a plan.) A parallel street to the east, which I will call _North Gate Street_ (Y), would not be in continuation with _Axis Street_. The question whether Bishopsgate and Gracechurch Street represent a Roman street from the Bridge to the Gate has been much argued over (see _Archæologia_, 1906), and it seems to have been shown that the line was interrupted in some way. The southern part, however, must, I think, represent the Roman street from the Bridge, although it may later have been bent aside to tend more directly to Bishopsgate. The facts and the fault in the line may be reconciled in some such way as suggested. (Hodge’s drawings are in the old Gardner collection, and it would be interesting to know what other Roman records are included.)

Beyond the statement quoted from Brock no identification of the building is offered in _Archæologia_, and Mr. Bushe-Fox thought that if the walls were contemporary they could not belong to a Basilica. “If there were a nave with two aisles and an apse there would be no reason for the cross wall, nor for the excessive thickness of the side wall. The building had perhaps been a bath; the wall which ended abruptly at the west end was probably a flue for heating the apse, and the large drain would be accounted for” (_Proceedings_, 1914-5). That the building was indeed the civil Basilica of Londinium is proved to my mind by: A comparison of the plan with those of other British Basilicas—notice the way that the apse is within straight external walls, and compare Fig. 21; by the great scale of the work; by its central position in the City; by the scale and character of the construction; by the fact that the only possible alternative seems to be the supposition that it was the great Bath of the City, and for this neither the planning nor the situation seems suitable; by the exceptional wall decorations described below; by the fact that a tile bearing the official stamp PR-BRILON was found on the site (Price). It is a remarkable fact that Leadenhall was the market, and that the Crossing at Cornhill was the carfax of London during the Middle Ages.

We have seen above that Brock said that fragments of painting were found on the site. In the British Museum are four pieces of wall painting, given by Mr. Hilton Price—1 and 2 in 1882, and 3 and 4 in 1883; the first pair are said to be from Leadenhall, the second pair from Leadenhall Market. One and 3 are fragments of large-scale scrolls of ornamental foliage of a grey-green colour; 2 is a piece of large-scale drapery, and 4 is part of a life-sized foot. These four remarkable fragments evidently form one group and came from the Basilica. The large scale of the ornament and figure work differentiates these pieces of painted plaster from all others found in London. At Silchester and Cirencester fragments of marble wall linings have been found on the sites of the Basilicas, and some of the marble fragments in the British Museum may have come from our Basilica, which must have been a handsome, indeed splendid, civic centre. In the Forum would have been statues of Emperors, and in the Basilica some impersonation of Londinium itself (cf. the fragment of such a figure found at Silchester, now at Reading).

_Houses._—In 1869 a mosaic pavement was discovered in Bucklersbury which is now at the Guildhall (_Builder_, May 15 and 29). It was fully described in a volume by Price. The floor was that of a small round-ended chamber, and belonged to a building on the western bank of the Walbrook, Around the apsidal end of the room which had the mosaic was a wall of stone and chalk, built upon piling; this wall contained the flues of the heating-system, and it terminated in piers at the ends of the semicircle. From the fact that no more walling was found and the evidence of an attached lobby which had a wooden sill around it, we may suppose that the rest of the house was of timber work (Fig. 23). The curved apse would be a strong form in which to build a mass of wall to contain the vertical wall flues; and it is an interesting example of building contrivance. We have already seen that timber and clay construction was frequent in Londinium. Near this building a well was found (built of square blocks of chalk, _The Builder_ says). This building with the mosaic floor must have been a superior house on the bank of the Walbrook. To the west, as we shall see, seems to have been a street possibly of shops; we can thus imagine a little group of buildings and streets, and a bridge over the Walbrook at the end of Bucklersbury.

The well mentioned above is one of a great number which have been discovered; for instance, in excavating for Copthall Avenue “a pit or well, boarded, and filled with earthenware vessels,” etc., was found (_Builder_, October 5, 1889). Such wells with boarding like a long barrel have been excavated at Silchester. Again to the south of Aldgate High Street two wells were found (_Builder_, May 3, 1884).

The most complete Roman building which has been recovered and planned is one excavated in Lower Thames Street in 1848 and again in 1859 (_Builder_, February 5, 1848, and June 11, 1859). A restored plan was given in the _Journal of the British Archæological Association_, vol. xxiv. (see Fig. 21). The two apsed chambers had hypocausts beneath their floors, supported on little piers built of tiles 8½ in. square, and broken materials. Fig. 25 is reproduced from the illustration of the eastern chamber given in _The Builder_. Several sketches and some notes, by Fairholt, of this building are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. About 4 or 5 ft. of the walls remained in places, all of tiles with mortar joints nearly as thick as themselves.

“The walls were of red and yellow brick in alternate layers composed of 18 in. tiles.” Outside the walls was “a drain of wooden planks, 18 in. deep by 10 wide, running towards the river” (see plan). The walls were erected on piles. The sketches show some of the box-flue tiles which had impressed patterns (see Fig. 25). Some additional information is given on a lithograph by A. J. Stothard (1848). The walls were 3 ft. thick. Above the floor of the south room, which was of coarse red and yellow tesseræ, was a second, about a foot higher in level; this was “a layer of red concrete 2½ in. thick, hard, and the upper surface almost glazed” (compare a floor found in Eastcheap, “concrete stuccoed over and painted red.”—_V.C.H._). This building was doubtless a house; at the time it was found it was called a bath, but it seems too small to have been even a secondary public bath. As Thos. Wright says: “Many writers have concluded hastily that every house with a hypocaust was a public bath” (cf. the plan of a house at Lymne, _The Roman, etc._, p. 160). The stoke-hole of the hypocaust was at F, and there were flues up the middle wall and the western apse. The large room was 23 ft. square; some tiles of 2 ft. square were found here, also window glass and an iron key. The plan lay square with the south City Wall (Fig. 24), and the building can hardly be earlier than this wall. It may thus be accepted as a late fourth-century house, and we may further infer that box-tiles with impressed patterns were a characteristic of this century. On two sides of the house were lanes about 10 ft. wide. As in so many cases modern walls seem to have been laid out on the same alignment as the Roman building.

The house just described had two apses, and the Bucklersbury house also had an apse. This was in agreement with general custom. As Thos. Wright remarked: “One peculiarity which is observed almost invariably in Roman houses in Britain is that one room has a semicircular alcove, and in some instances more than one room possesses this adjunct.” In the plan given in _Archæologia_ of the Roman walls and floors found in and about Lombard Street in 1785 two apses seem to be indicated; thus we have evidence for five in the scanty records; altogether there must have been scores in the city.

Within the walls of the City were many large houses of the villa type as well as minor dwellings and streets of shops. Roach Smith speaks of such great houses about Crosby Square; he also describes a mosaic floor under Paternoster Row which extended 40 ft.; a second important floor on the site of India House, Leadenhall Street, was at least 22 ft. square, and may have been considerably more; a third large floor which was found under the Excise Office, Broad Street, was about 28 ft. square (probably 30 Roman ft.). All these must have been the floors of the chief central rooms of large houses of the villa type. Tite saw this of the Broad Street floor as his speaking of the “triclinium, other rooms, and the garden” shows. This Broad Street pavement was lying square with more modern walls surrounding it, and it may not be doubted that buildings continuously occupied the site.

The supposition that there were important houses of the villa type within the walls of the City has been fully confirmed by the excavations at Silchester, and I may here quote Dr. Haverfield’s general conclusions as to Roman towns in Britain. “Roman British towns were of fair size, Roman London, perhaps even Roman Cirencester were larger than Roman Cologne or Bordeaux. They possessed, too, the buildings proper to a Roman town—town hall, market-place, public baths, chess-board street-plan, all of Roman fashion; they had also shops and temples and here and there a hotel.... The dwelling-houses in them were not town houses fitted to stand side by side to form regular streets; they were country houses, dotted about like cottages in a village. But in one way or another and to a real amount, Britain shared in that expansion of town life which formed a special achievement of the Roman Empire.” The evidence as to the isolation of the houses is here a little overstated, but in the main the passage gives a true impression. Fragments of wall decorations and mosaics found in Southwark suggest that there were big houses on that side of the river, and doubtless others occupied sites along the Strand and Holborn.

I give here a little sketch plan (Fig. 26) of a house found about a century since at Worplesdon, Surrey, from a survey at the Society of Antiquaries. This house is interesting as its unaltered plan gives an example of a simple “Corridor House.” It was 62 ft. long by 22½ ft. wide within the foundations, and faced west. The slight foundations of flint, not much more than a foot wide, show that the walls must have been of timbering or wattle work. The rooms and passage had floors of plain coarse tesseræ, except that the outer side of the passage had a simple twist border in mosaic. Possibly there had been some pattern in the central room as the floor was there missing, and a note reads: “Near this place was found the lozenge-shaped tessellated pavement.”

_Baths, Temples, etc._—Remnants of important buildings have been found in Cannon Street from time to time, and London Stone is probably a fragment of one of them. Wren was of the opinion “by reason of its large foundations that it was some more considerable monument in the Forum; for in the adjoining ground to the south were discovered some tessellated pavements, and other extensive remains of Roman workmanship and buildings.” Under Cannon Street a building with one apartment 40 ft. by 50 ft., and many other chambers, is mentioned in _V.C.H._ At Dowgate Hill the foundations of large edifices are listed in _V.C.H._, and of Bush Lane it is remarked: “That there must have been extensive buildings here seems clear.” At Trinity Lane, Great Queen Street, “great portions of immense walls with bonding tiles” have been found (_V.C.H._). There was a house on the south side of St. Paul’s known as _Camera_ or _Domus Dianæ_ which may have taken its name from some Roman monument. In a St. Paul’s deed of 1220 it appears as a messuage or inn, _domum que fuit Diane_.

In December 1921 Mr. Lambert described the foundations of a building by Miles Lane. The plan of this suggested a house of the corridor type facing east. The site seems to have been levelled up by timber walling or wharfing against the river and running back into the sloping ground.

One of the most important public buildings in the City would have been the Public Baths, as those of Silchester and Wroxeter show. At Trèves the great Baths cover acres of ground by the river. Bagford says that after the fire of London some Roman water-pipes were found in Creed Lane “which had been carried round a Bath that was built in a round form with niches at equal intervals for seats.” This suggests a part of important Baths, and Creed Lane does not seem an unlikely situation for the Public Baths. (In _V.C.H._ the site is said to have been in Ludgate Square.)

The only certain evidence we have for Temples are some inscriptions and sculptures. For the most part they would, like those found at Silchester and elsewhere, have been small square and polygonal structures set on a rather high podium approached by steps. Fig. 27 is a restored plan of the little Temple found at Caerwent. Doubtless here and in most cases, the roof of the cella ran on to cover the podium. At the foot of the steps an external altar would have stood. The column illustrated before (Fig. 1) seems suitable for a temple. Roach Smith, speaking of the group of Mother Goddesses found in Crutched Friars (see _Builder_, October 30, 1847), says: “It is the only instance with the exception of the discovery made in Nicholas Lane in which the site of a temple can with reason be identified” (_Ill. Rom. Lon._, p. 33). The find in Nicholas Lane was part of an important and early inscription which may have been on the chief temple in Londinium. Some sculptures found on the bank of the Walbrook suggest that a cell of Mithras occupied the site. In the fourth century a Christian church would, as at Silchester, have occupied an important site in the City.

A large Theatre or Amphitheatre, or both, would have been necessary in such a town. Roach Smith, who had a wonderful instinct of insight, thought that such a building probably occupied a site against the bank of the Fleet, called “Breakneck Steps.” Lately it has been suggested that the drawing-in of the line of the City Walls at the north-west angle was done to avoid an amphitheatre; more probably, I think, it was to avoid wet ground. There is evidence that gladiator contests and chariot races were popular. For gladiators, compare two small bone figures at the British Museum, evidently from one shop, with the fragment of a little statuette at the Guildhall. The bronze trident-head, also at the Guildhall, really does seem to be a gladiator’s weapon as suggested in the catalogue. For chariot races, see the fragments of glass bowls, which may have been made in London, in the British Museum. I have found an additional little point of evidence on chariot races. Amongst Fairholt’s sketches at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is one of an enigmatical little fragment of a Castor vase, found in Bishopsgate Street, which seems to represent four heads of dogs running neck and neck. Now there is a whole vase in the British Museum (found in Colchester) which was practically a replica of the other, and this shows that the four running animals of the fragment were chariot horses, and the whole represented a race. Above the horses of the fragment is scratched ITALVS, which, I suggest, must have been the name of some favourite “winner” in Londinium.

_Streets._—In his account of the Bucklersbury pavement, Price describes also some walls which were found “about 30 yds. westerly from the pavement” (the position is shown on his plan). “Two Roman walls running nearly in line with Bucklersbury directly towards the Walbrook.” In the space between them had been laid a drain to fall towards the brook with a tile pavement above, and mortar fillets against the walls. The walls were 2¾ ft. thick, and built on three rows of piles, and the space between was 2¼ ft. The tiles are of the usual kind of red and yellow brick. Above these walls were others of chalk and stone 3 ft. apart, of later date. This is one of a great number of instances where we find that mediæval buildings were founded directly on Roman walls. The space Price suggested was “an open passage-way, or it may be of an alley between two buildings.” Comparison makes it certain that the walls were those of neighbouring houses in a street; similar conditions have been found at Caerwent, Silchester, etc. At the former “the shops along the main street were probably roofed with gables; this is substantiated by the finding of a finial in front of a house. The narrow space between the houses would serve to carry away the water which would drop from the eaves” (_Archæol._, 1906). The walls are shown in Fig. 28.

The Bucklersbury paved passage, only just wide enough for a man to get at it, with the underlying drain, is obviously a similar space. The tradition of dividing houses in streets from one another in this way lasted into the Middle Ages (see V. le Duc’s _Dict._, “Maison”) and, of course, occasionally to modern times. By this means party walls and difficult roof gutters are avoided. From the two parallel walls we are justified in inferring a row of houses—possibly shops—and a street running to the west of them; moreover, the example suggests to some extent what continuous streets of houses must have been like. In Southwark a passage-way between houses was found 3 ft. 8 in. wide. A wall with tile paving against the outside, found under the Mansion House, suggests a similar passage.