Part 3

The walls of this building, as we find them under ground, present from time to time discontinuations, or breaches, caused no doubt by the breaking up of the walls for materials by the mediæval builders, who sometimes went deeper for them than usual; and it is very likely that this may have been caused, in some instances at least, by the circumstance that on the site of these breaches were doors or passages, the jambs and ornamental parts of which were formed of large stones which were more tempting to the old excavators. With the exception of these breaches, there are no traces of doorways from one apartment of this building to the other. About the middle of the northernmost wall there is a very wide breach of this kind, which perhaps represents a grand entrance from the north. Moreover, in carrying the excavations further towards the north, it was found that this northernmost wall of the building formed the side of a street, which was paved in the middle with round stones, not much unlike the pavements of some of the streets in Shrewsbury and other old towns as they remain at the present day. The northern wall just alluded to was traced eastwardly until the edge of the field in which the excavations are carried on prevented the workmen from going any further. Immediately to the east of the building we have been describing was a not quite rectangular inclosure, which, from the appearance of the walls, was probably a court-yard. A doorway, approached by a stone step within the great inclosure to the west, led into it. Beyond this, to the eastward, was a much larger inclosure, which as far as it was explored, had no tracings of walls or pavement within, and may possibly have been a garden. At the western end of the great building, about the middle of the extremity of the great central inclosure, indications were discovered which probably belonged also to an entrance. These indications consisted of two original openings in the wall, within which were found, evidently in their original position, in one a large squared stone, and in the other two similarly squared stones placed one upon another. One of these was bevelled off at the outer edge into a plain moulding, and their general appearance led to the belief that they had formed the basis of something—perhaps of large columns. Here, therefore, may perhaps have been the principal entrance into the long and extensive area which occupied the middle of this building. It faced the modern Watling Street Road, which evidently represents another street; and it thus seems to admit of no doubt that this building formed the corner of two principal streets of the Roman city of Uriconium.

We will now return to the long alley, as we have ventured to call it, on the southern side of the building we have been describing. It has been already stated that there were found in this alley two steps, formed each of a large squared stone, attached to two doorways in the western continuation of the Old Wall. The more western of these two steps was very much worn by the feet of the people who had passed over it, as though it had led to some place of public resort. It was at the more easterly of these doorways that the excavations were carried to the southward of the Old Wall. This doorway apparently led into some open court which communicated with domestic apartments. A trench carried directly southward from the doorway, brought the excavators to the semicircular end of a hypocaust, which had warmed a considerable room thirty-seven feet long, by twenty-five feet wide, and which was in a state of very perfect preservation when opened, although the floor which once covered it had entirely disappeared. The pillars, which were formed of Roman square bricks, placed one upon another without mortar, and of which 120 were counted, were above three feet high. This room has now been completely laid open, and on the western side has a complicated arrangement of walls, which evidently served some purpose connected with the heating of the hypocausts. A considerable quantity of unburnt coal was found here. The northern end of this hypocaust, the wall of which remained to the height of several feet, presents an imposing mass of masonry, and we learn from it the interesting fact that the Roman houses were plastered and painted externally as well as internally. The exterior of the semicircular wall at the north end of this hypocaust was painted red, with stripes of yellow. Near it lay an immense stone, hewn into the shape to fit the semicircular wall of the hypocaust, which had evidently formed part of a massive band of such stones at some height in the wall. A strong piece of iron is soldered into it with lead, for the purpose of attaching something to the building externally. A little alley, considerably wider than the spaces between the pillars of bricks, ran across this hypocaust, and through an opening in the wall, into another hypocaust, which was entered from without by a large archway, and this again was approached by a flight of three steps, each step composed of one large well-squared stone, descending from a square platform, which was apparently on a level with the original floors of the rooms. When the steps were uncovered, a broken shaft of a large column was found lying across them. The platform at the bottom of the steps, or at least the corner of it farthest from the arched entrance to the hypocaust, seems to have been used by the last occupiers of this building as a receptacle for the dust swept from floors and passages, for the earth, for about a foot deep on the floor, was literally filled with coins, hair-pins, fibulæ, broken pottery and glass, bones of birds and animals which had been eaten, and a variety of other such objects.

To the east of the entrance to the hypocausts, a small room only eight feet square was found, which had a herring-bone pavement like that of the great inclosure to the north of the Old Wall. A rather wide passage through the eastern wall of this small room led into another room with a hypocaust, the floor of which is also gone. The pillars of this hypocaust were rather more neatly constructed, but they seem to have been considerably lower than those of the hypocausts previously opened. This hypocaust was the scene of a very interesting discovery. Abundant traces of burning in all parts of the site leave no doubt that the city of Uriconium was plundered, and afterwards burnt by some of the barbarian invaders of Roman Britain at the close of the Romano-British period, that is, towards the middle of the fifth century. The human remains which have been met with in different parts, bear testimony to a frightful massacre of the inhabitants. It would seem that a number of persons had been pursued to the buildings immediately to the south of the line of the Old Wall, and slaughtered there; for in trenching across what were perhaps open courts to the south and south-east of the door through the continuation of the Old Wall, remains of at least four or five skeletons were found, and in what appears to have been a corner of a yard, outside the semicircular end of the hypocaust first discovered, lay the skull and some of the bones of a very young child. In the last of the hypocausts we have been describing, three skeletons were found, that of a person who appears to have died in a crouching position in one of the corners, and two others stretched on the ground by the side of the wall. An examination of the skull of the person in the corner leaves no room for doubting that he was a very old man. One at least of the others was a female. Near the old man lay a little heap of Roman coins, in such a manner as to show that they must have been contained in a confined receptacle, and a number of small iron nails scattered among them, with traces of decomposed wood, prove that this was a little box, or coffer. The remains of the wood are still attached to two or three of the coins. We are justified from all these circumstances in concluding that, in the midst of the massacre of Roman Uriconium, these three persons—perhaps an old man and two terrified women—had sought to conceal themselves by creeping into the hypocaust; and perhaps they were suffocated there, or, when the house was delivered to the flames, the falling rubbish may have blocked up the outlet so as to make it impossible for them to escape. It is not likely that they would have been followed into such a place as this hypocaust. These coins were 132 in number, and the following description of them has been given by Mr. C. Roach Smith:—

TETRICUS. One much worn, of the _Fides 1 Militum_ type CLAUDIUS. One, _rev._ CONSECRATIO; an eagle 1 Constantine the Elder. _Obv._ CONSTANTINVS. MAX . AVG. 13 Head diademed, or wreathed, to the right. _Rev._ GLORIA EXERCITVS. Two soldiers with spears and shields, standing; between them two standards; or (in three instances) a single standard.

_Mint Marks_ (exergual letters): P . CONST., 3; TR . P., 6; S . L . C. 1; illegible, 3; total CONSTANS. _Obv._ Much worn or decayed. 1 _Rev._ FEL . TEMP . REPARATIO. The emperor holding a globe and a standard, standing in a galley rowed by a Victory. This coin is altogether much worn. It possibly may have been plated CONSTANTINE II. _Obv._ CONSTANTINVS . IVN . NOB . 36 C. Laureated head, to the right; bust in armour. _Rev._ GLORIA EXERCITVS. Two soldiers standing; between them two standards, and on the same a wreath, or other object, in the field.

_Exergual letters_: TR . P. or TR . S., 15; P . L . C., 9; CONST., 3; illegible, 9; total CONSTANTIUS II. _Obv._ T . L . IVL . CONSTANTIVS . 5 NOB . C. Laureated head, to the right; bust in armour. _Rev._ GLORIA EXERCITVS. Two soldiers, &c., as on the coins of the preceding.

_Exergual letters_: TR . S., 3; P., 1; SMTS, 1; total JULIAN. A plated denarius. _Obv._ FL . CL 1 . IVLIANVS: P. F. AVG. Diademed head to the right. _Rev._ VOTIS V MULTT . XX, within a wreath HELENA. _Obv._ T . L . IVL . HELENAE AVG. 2 Head to the right. _Rev._ PAX PVBLICA. A female figure standing and holding in the right hand a branch, and in the left hand a _hasta pura_. In the field, a cross; in the exergue, TR . P. Another without the cross. Total THEODORA. _Obv._ FL . THEODORAE AVG. Head 1 to the right. _Rev._ PIETAS ROMANA. A female standing suckling an infant: in the exergue, TR . P. URBS ROMA. _Obv._ VRBS ROMA. Galeated head 24 of Rome, to the left. _Rev._ Romulus and Remus nursed by the wolf; above, two stars: on two, two stars and a wreath.

In the exergue: PL . C., 11; TR . P . or TR . S., 10; illegible, 3; total CONSTANTINOPOLIS. _Obv._ CONSTANTINOPOLIS. Bust of 34 personified Constantinople, helmed, and holding a sceptre, to the left. _Rev._ A winged Victory, with _hasta pura_ and shield; her feet upon the prow of the galley, to the left.

_Exergual letters_: TR . P., 20; P . L . C . or S . L . C., 9; O . SIS, 1; S . CONST., 1; illegible, 3; total VALENS. _Obv._ D . N . VALENS . . . 1 Diademed head, to the right. _Rev._ SECVRITAS . . . Victory with wreath and palm branch, marching to the left. Much corroded Rude copies of some of the 6 foregoing Extremely corroded 6 Total number 132

This is, I believe, the first instance which has occurred in this country, in which we have had the opportunity of ascertaining what particular coins, as being then in daily circulation, an inhabitant of a Roman town in Britain, at the moment when the Roman domination in this country was expiring, carried about with him. Mr. Roach Smith, speaking of the great majority of these coins, these of the Constantine family, remarks to me—“I suspect these coins were sent into Britain even after the time of Valens, because they are all comparatively sharp and fresh. It is not improbable that the procurators at Treves and at Lugdunum may have had large stores of these coins by them, which they sent out at intervals.” A consideration of these coins gives us an approximation, at least, towards the date at which Uriconium must have been destroyed; Mr. Roach Smith agrees in the opinion that a comparison of them points to the very latest period previous to the establishment of the Anglo-Saxons. At a later period the freshly struck coins of the Constantine family could not have been brought over. They shew us that at that time the great mass of the circulating medium consisted of coins of the Constantine family, which again explains to us why the first coinage of the Anglo-Saxons was nearly all copied from the coins of the emperors of that family. Again, the care with which these small copper coins (for only one is of plated silver) seem to have been hoarded up, and the anxiety of their possessors to preserve them in the midst of a frightful calamity, may perhaps assist us in forming an estimate of the relative value of money at this period.

The rooms which joined up to the south side of the Old Wall, and which have been more recently uncovered, were five in number, and it appears from the remains, which are distinctly visible on the face of the Old Wall, that they had vaulted roofs of the kind technically called barrel roofs. In one of these rooms was found a quantity of burnt wheat, which would lead us to suppose that this might have been a store room. The most easterly of these rooms has had the interior surface of its walls ornamented with tessellated work instead of fresco-painting; the lower edge of which, consisting of a guilloche border, still remains. The floor below has a plain pavement of small white tessellæ, and is apparently that of a bath. To the south of these rooms a long passage was discovered, which appears to have communicated at one end with the floor of the room in the hypocaust of which the skeletons were found. In this passage was a square pit of very good masonry, through which a drain runs, nearly north and south. The stucco of the southern face of the wall, forming the southern side of the passage just alluded to, presented an inscription scrawled in large straggling characters incised with some sharp pointed instrument, and closely resembling in character similar inscriptions which have been found on walls in Pompeii. When first uncovered, two lines of this inscription, perhaps the whole of it, seemed to have been perfectly well preserved, but before anybody had had the opportunity of examining it, two casual visitors, with walking sticks, amused themselves with breaking off the plaster, in order apparently to try its strength, and were not observed by the workmen until the first line had been completely destroyed, and the second, which had been a shorter one, was very much broken into, though just enough remained to show that it must have been written in Latin. Even this small remnant was nearly destroyed during the interruption of the excavations, and not a trace of it can now be seen. Thus all the advantages of a discovery which might have been singularly important for our knowledge of the state of Britain at this period, have been lost through mischievous wantonness.

During the month of May, 1859, the work of the excavators was interrupted; when it was resumed, they proceeded to explore the building to which these hypocausts belonged, beginning from the side of the field adjoining to the Watling Street Road,—that is, from the side of one of the main streets of the old Roman town,—and they found walls in the line, or nearly in the line, of the western wall of the great public building just described. Another street has since been discovered to the south, running east and west, parallel to that met with to the north of the buildings first excavated. The excavations have since that time been followed in various parts of the two acres first inclosed by the Excavation Committee, and a large extent of ruins is now laid open. But I will here interrupt my narrative, while I give an account of the general character of the buildings, the ruins of which have already been brought to light.

* * * * *

As yet, the excavations on the site of Uriconium have not been carried far enough to enable us to form any idea of the general distribution of the Roman town, but it is evident that the buildings on which the excavators are employed were inclosed by three main streets, crossing at right angles, forming a square mass. It has been stated that the few discoveries hitherto made as to the character of the streets in the Roman towns in Britain would lead us to think that they were little more than narrow alleys, but this was certainly not the case with these three streets of Roman Uriconium, which seem to have been fine wide streets, and in the one to the north, the pavement of small round stones appears to have occupied only the middle part of the street, designed probably for carriages and horses. A tolerably wide space on each side seems, as far as can be traced, to have been unpaved. But, although we have as yet made little advance towards discovering the general character of Uriconium as a city, and the manner in which the houses were distributed over the Roman town, we had found sufficient fragments of different kinds to give us a tolerable notion of the houses themselves.

The average thickness of the walls of a house, even where they only separated one small room from another, was three feet. They are rarely less than this, and it is only in one or two cases of what appeared to be very important walls that they exceed it, when they reach the thickness of four feet. This measure of three feet was no doubt a well understood one for the wall of a house, and it was continued in the middle ages, when, in ordinary dwellings, only the division walls between house and house were of solid masonry. Municipal regulations then fixed these partition walls at a minimum of three feet in thickness, the cause of which limitation was probably the fear of fires; and in these mediæval municipal regulations, it was further ordered, that closets or cupboards in the wall should in no case be made more than one foot deep, so that if your own cupboard and your neighbour’s happened to back each other, there would still be a foot of solid masonry between the two houses. And the masonry of the Romans may well be called solid. Its character may be seen perhaps to most advantage in the Old Wall above ground. The process of building seems to have been to raise first, gradually, the facings of neatly-squared stones, supported no doubt between frames of woodwork, the supports of which left holes which are still seen in the face of the wall. The interior was then filled up with rubble mixed with liquid and apparently hot cement, which formed the mass of the wall, and in setting has become in course of time harder than the stones themselves. After a certain number of rows of facing-stones, the Roman builders almost invariably placed a string-course of broad thin bricks, the object of which is not at all evident, for they do not go through the wall so as to form real bonding-courses. The Old Wall still standing in probably nearly its original height, will also give us a notion of the elevation of the principal houses of the Roman towns.