Part 4

In spite, however, of this rather considerable elevation, which, reckoning for dilapidation at the top and the portion buried under ground, cannot have been much less than thirty feet, it seems nearly certain that the Roman houses in Britain had no upper stories, and that all the rooms were on the ground floor. No traces of a staircase have ever been found, and all the fragments which are met with, indicate that the rooms were open to the roof. These roofs appear to have been of substantial construction, and were probably supported on a strong frame of woodwork. The common coverings of the Roman houses of this island consisted of large square tiles with strongly flanged edges, and these tiles being joined side to side, a curved tile forming the half of a cylinder was placed over the flanges of the two tiles which joined, thus holding them together, and at the same time protecting the juncture so that rain could not pass through it. These tiles, and the manner in which they were arranged, will be understood by our figures, (_pl_. IV., _figs._ 1, 2, 3). The Roman houses were also very commonly roofed with slates, or rather flags, and this appears to have been the more usual description of roofing in Uriconium. These roof-flags are found scattered about abundantly on the floors, sometimes unbroken. They are formed of a micaceous laminated sandstone, which is found on the edge of the north Staffordshire and Shropshire coalfield, at no great distance from Wroxeter, and must have produced a glittering appearance in the sunshine. Their form is represented in our cut, (_pl_. IV., _fig._ 5); it was that of an elongated hexagon, with a hole at one end, through which an iron nail was passed to fix it to the wooden frame-work. The nail is often found still remaining in the hole. These flags, which are very thick and heavy, were placed to lap over each other, and thus formed a roof in lozenges or diamonds, as represented in _fig._ 6. Slates forming one half of the hexagon (_fig._ 4), were placed at the top of the roof, so as to make a strictly horizontal line. It is a curious circumstance, that in the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts we find roofs of houses which evidently represent both these methods, and which appear, therefore, to have been continued long after the Roman period. In fact they are still used in Yorkshire, and perhaps in other counties, and have been used very recently on the Welsh border. In the towns which were the head-quarters of a legion, as at Caerleon, Chester, and York, or which had been occupied for some length of time by legionary detachments, we often find the name and number of the legion stamped on the roof-tiles. These roof-tiles were frequently used for other purposes. They are sometimes employed in the string-courses in walls, when the builders appear to have run short of the ordinary square tiles or flat bricks; and they are still more frequently used to form the beds of drains and aqueducts, when the flanged edges were turned up and, set in the cement, formed the side of the water-course. A very good example of this use of the roof-tiles may be seen in the drain at Wroxeter mentioned above.

Internally, the walls of the Roman houses were covered with fine hard cement, which was painted in fresco, that is, the colours were laid on the cement while it was wet, and they thus set with it, and became almost imperishable. In some of the houses in Roman Britain, and especially in the large villas, the internal walls were covered with fine historical subjects as in the walls at Pompeii, and sufficient remains have been found in this island to show that they were here also executed in no mean style of art. Nothing of this kind has yet been discovered in Uriconium; but numerous fragments are picked up in the diggings, on which the colouring is perfectly fresh, and which exhibit portions of designs which are always elegant and in good taste. In one case a piece of the stucco from the internal surface of a wall contained some letters of an inscription. One of the walls near the hypocaust where the three skeletons were found presented a singular and rather laborious method of ornamenting its interior surface. Instead of being painted, it was tessellated, the surface being covered with tessellæ, one half of an inch by three-fifths in dimension, set in the cement, alternately of dark and light colours, in horizontal lines, so as to produce somewhat the appearance of chequer-work. Perhaps, when entire, it presented an ornamental pattern. I have already stated that a similarly tessellated wall was found in the easternmost part of this line of rooms. Circumstances have come to light which show that the exterior of the walls of houses were also plastered and painted. The exterior of the semicircular end of the largest hypocaust yet opened was thus plastered over, and painted red with stripes of yellow.

It is worthy of remark that in the walls, to the certainly not very great elevation they now generally reach, few doorways are discovered, a circumstance which is by no means easily explained. Small rooms are found without any apparent means of access. Perhaps, in such cases, the doorway was at a certain elevation in the wall, and was approached on both sides by wooden steps, which have long perished, and left no traces of the means of entrance. Of course none of the walls of the houses remain sufficiently high to enable us to judge of the manner in which light was admitted into the rooms, whether from side windows, or from openings in the roof. Probability, however, is in favour of roof-windows being in common use, and an interesting circumstance connected with the excavations at Wroxeter seems decisive as to the material of the windows. Considerable quantities of fine window glass have been found scattered over the floors of the houses, of an average thickness of full one-eighth of an inch, which have been duly deposited in the Museum at Shrewsbury. It is the more curious as it has been the common opinion, until recently, that the Romans, especially in this distant province, did not use window-glass; and the fragments of window-glass which have been found more recently in the excavations on the sites of Roman villas have been much thinner than that found at Wroxeter, and of very inferior quality. It is evident, that some of the rooms, all the walls of which were only walls of separation from other rooms, must have received light from above, or have been quite dark.

I must now describe a peculiar characteristic of the domestic economy of a Roman house in Britain, and in the other western and northern provinces of the empire. The Romans did not warm their apartments by fire lighted in them, as was the case in the middle ages, and in modern times, but by hot air circulated in the walls. The floor of the house, formed of a considerable thickness of cement, was laid upon a number of short pillars, formed usually of square Roman tiles placed one upon another, and from two to three feet high. Those of the largest of the hypocausts yet found at Wroxeter were rather more than three feet high. Sometimes these supports were of stone, and in one or two cases in discoveries made in this country, they were round. They were placed near to each other, and in rows, and upon them were lain first larger tiles, and over these a thick mass of cement, which formed the floor, and upon the surface of which the tessellated pavements were set. Sometimes small parallel walls, forming flues instead of rows of columns, supported the floors, of which an example has already been found in the excavations at Wroxeter. Flue-tiles,—that is, square tubes made of baked clay, with a hole on one side, or sometimes on two sides,—were placed against the walls end-ways, one upon another, so as to run up the walls. These arrangements,—which were called hypocausts, from two Greek words, signifying _heat underneath_, and were used in Italy and Greece chiefly for warming baths, are represented in _plate_ IV., _fig._ 7, where AA is the floor of cement, BB the pillars supporting it, and CC the flue-tiles running up the wall of the room. They had an entrance from the outside, somewhat like the mouth of an oven, and fires being lighted here, the hot air was driven inward, and not only filled the space under the floor, but entered the flue-tiles by the holes in the sides, was carried by them up the inside of the wall, and no doubt had some way of escape at the roof. The ashes and soot of the fires have been found in the hypocausts at Uriconium, just as they were left when the city was overthrown and ruined by the barbarians. The ashes are chiefly those of wood, but considerable remains of mineral coal have been discovered. These hypocausts must sometimes have become clogged and out of order, and it would be necessary to cleanse them, as people in aftertimes cleansed chimneys. A sort of alley across the middle of the large hypocaust last-mentioned was probably intended for this purpose. It communicated with another hypocaust adjoining it to the north by a doorway, and this other hypocaust was entered by a rather large archway at the foot of the steps already mentioned. People appear to have been sometimes satisfied with having the hot air merely under the floor, and the flue-tiles were not always used. Comparatively few of them, indeed, have been yet found in the hypocausts of Uriconium.

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THE requirements of agriculture have rendered it necessary to cover up again all the excavations to the north of the Old Wall, and the walls of the great public building at the corner of the two streets can no longer be seen by the visitor. A piece of ground, however, immediately to the south of the Old Wall has been taken by the Excavation Committee at Shrewsbury upon a rent, and in this piece of ground the excavations are now carried on. It forms a parallelogram, 319 feet long, by 279 feet wide, containing an area of exactly two acres, including the Old Wall at its northern edge. This piece of ground has been strongly fenced round with hurdles, and it is entered by a gate from the Watling Street Road. By the liberality of the Excavation Committee the public are admitted to this inclosure freely, and it is to be hoped that the visitors will acknowledge this liberality by carefully abstaining from committing any injury on the Roman remains, or by walking upon or entering into the parts in the course of excavation.

The plan annexed (_pl._ 5) of the excavations now in progress will enable me to explain them to the visitor. The darkly-shaded mass _a a_ represents the Old Wall, or portion of Roman masonry standing above ground; to the north of which lay the extensive building formed by the walls _b b_, _c c_, _d d_, running parallel to the Old Wall. The wall _d d_, bordered upon a wide street. To the east of these walls lay an inclosure, e, perhaps a court-yard, and a large space, _f_, which has been conjectured to have been a garden, but which has been very imperfectly explored. All these remains have been explained above; they have been buried again, and the ground is now covered with crops. The Old Wall, which stands just within the north-eastern corner of the space separated from the rest of the field by a fence of hurdles, now forms the northern boundary of the excavations.

The visitor is introduced into this space by a gateway from the road, nearly at its north-western corner. Opposite this gateway he will see an apartment, which the excavators are now in the course of exploring. It is nearly a square, and is about thirty-four feet in its longest dimension. The side towards the street seems to have been open, or at least the masonry of the wall presents the appearance of having had wide folding doors, or a framework of wood of some kind in two compartments 6, 6. In the centre of the room is a large pier of masonry (1), perhaps a table for workmen. More towards the north-western corner, a sort of furnace or forge (2) was found, built of red clay, with a hole or cavity in the upper part sufficiently large for a man to thrust his head in. As the surface of the cavity, internally, is completely vitrified, and as there was much charcoal strewed about, there can be no doubt that the cavity had been occupied by a very fierce fire. A low wall has been traced, running across the room east and west in a line with this furnace; and two transverse low walls of similar character. Upon the low wall a little behind the forge (at 3), the excavators came upon what was supposed to be the lower part of a column with its base; but it is formed roughly, and I think it more probable that it was a stone table for the use of the workman at the furnace. It was at first supposed that this might belong to a colonnade running along the wall; but no trace of such a colonnade has been found, although a large piece of a shaft of a column lies in the middle of the room. This column, however, is of larger dimensions than the supposed base (3). Had such a colonnade existed, it seems so little in accordance with the existence of a forge, that we might be led to suspect that the room had, at some late period, been diverted from its original purpose, and occupied by a worker in metals, or even in glass, as fine specimens of glass were found scattered about, and also many fragments of metal. But objects of all kinds seem to have been thrown about in such a manner, when the town was plundered, that it would be unsafe to argue upon the purpose of any particular building, merely from moveable articles found in it. Among other things found in this room were nearly a dozen hair-pins, two of which were much more ornamental than any we had found before; a much greater quantity of fragments of Samian ware, and of higher artistic merit, than had previously been met with in one spot; a portion of a large bronze fibula; a number of coins, and other things. One of the vessels of Samian ware is a fine bowl, with figures in high relief, representing a stag-hunt. Upon the low wall of the sill (6) a number of copper Roman coins (about sixty) were found together; and near them the fragment of a small earthen vessel, in which probably they had been carried by some one who dropped them here as he was hurrying out of the place. Turning from the gate of the field to the right, or south, along the inside of the hedge, the visitor will come to a portion of uncovered wall, _h h_, running north and south, upwards of eighty feet, in which there are two entrance gateways, _i_, _p_. The first of these is about twelve feet wide, and was approached by a sort of inclined plane, formed of three large squared masses of stone, each about four feet square by eleven inches in thickness. The other entrance which was only five feet wide, was approached by two steps, each similarly formed of one mass of stone; of which the lower step is worn very much at its south-west corner, in a manner to lead us to believe that the great majority of the people who passed through this entrance came up the street from the south. The upper step, or stone, is so much worn by the feet of those who passed over it, that it broke into three pieces under the workmen’s picks. On one side of it there is a deep hollow, representing nearly the form of a small human foot, which seems to have been scooped into the stone for some purpose with which we are not acquainted. These two entrances lead into one square court, the floor of which, proved by the steps and inclined plane to have been on a higher level than the street without, was paved with small bricks laid in herring-bone work, like the great inclosure to the north of the Old Wall. It is found to have been much damaged and mended in ancient times, which seems to countenance the supposition that the wide entrance and the inclined plane by which it was approached were intended for horses and perhaps for carts or for heavy barrows. Among the objects found in excavating here was a portion of a horse-shoe. On each side of this court a row of chambers is found, _m m m_, four on the north side and four on the south, from ten to twelve feet square. The westernmost of these chambers, on the north side of the court, has been cleared out, and was found to be ten feet deep, with a low transverse wall at the bottom, the object of which is at present quite inexplicable. A quantity of charcoal was found in this room, as though it had been a store-room for that article. One of the other rooms, on each side of the court, seemed to have been a receptacle for bones, horns, &c.; and as some of these had evidently been sawn and cut, and others partly turned on a lathe, they suggested the idea of having belonged to manufacturers of the various objects made of this material which are found so commonly in the course of the excavations. They may, therefore, have been the magazines of manufacturers and tradesmen, a notion which is somewhat confirmed by the circumstance of several weights of different sizes having been found in this part of the excavations; or they may have been mere depots for the stores and refuse of a large mansion or other establishment. These rooms are, perhaps, all deep like the one already cleared out, but it is remarkable that, as high as the walls remain, that is, about two feet above the floor of the court, there is no trace of entrances to them, which must, therefore, have been rather high in the wall, and they were entered perhaps by a ladder.

The back part of this court consists of a long narrow inclosure, which is divided into compartments by four transverse walls proceeding from the western wall about halfway across the inclosure, thus leaving a passage along the eastern side. These compartments have much the appearance of small shops or stalls for selling, and seem to confirm the notion that this building may have been a market-place. The workmen, finding a doorway in the wall of the back of this inclosure, at _n_ in the plan, a trench was carried through the ground to the eastward. At about twelve feet from the opening at _n_, they came upon a wall at _h_, running parallel to the wall _o o_ of the court, and beyond this they found first a narrow passage, and then a rise with a pavement of cement which extended some four or five feet, and then suddenly sank to a floor of large flag-stones, at a depth of upwards of four feet from the floor of cement. This flagged floor, the position of which is marked by the letter _q_ in the plan, was perhaps a reservoir of water; the bottom was found covered with black earth filled with broken pottery and other things, such as may easily have been supposed to have been thrown into a pond. The water appears to have been only between two and three feet deep, as the floor on the opposite side runs about level with the ledge or step just mentioned, and is continued eastward until, at _r_, we come upon the rather massive walls of a building, the nature of which cannot be determined without further investigation. At a short distance within this wall, at a depth of about three feet below the cement floor, we find a floor at _s_, about ten feet wide by thirty long, formed of flat Roman tiles, twelve inches by eighteen inches square. This floor has been uncovered, and as there was an indentation in the middle which seemed to indicate that it was hollow underneath, a hole was made there, but it led to no discovery. This seems also to have been a tank of water, perhaps a cold water bath. The cement floor was continued easterly until it was terminated by a wall, _t_, which ran at right angles to the eastern end of the Old Wall, and appears to be the eastern termination of the buildings now in course of exploration. The earth and rubbish from the excavations have been here thrown into a great mound, from the top of which the visitor can enjoy a bird’s eye view of the excavations. A few yards to the north, he will come to the important line of excavations nearer to the Old Wall. A small chamber, about eight feet square, with a herring-bone pavement in very good preservation, projects beyond the line of this eastern wall at _u_ in our plan. To the west of this is a small hypocaust _v_, the floor of which has been a little lower than that of the room _u_. In this hypocaust were found the remains of two skeletons, one of which was that of a young person. The northern wall of the room _v_ is particularly interesting, because in its whole height of full nine feet, it presents the remains of the lines of flue-tiles which ran up it, hardly an inch apart, and which show that this room must have been intended to be very much heated. It was, perhaps, a _sudatorium_ or sweating room. The opening from _u_ to _v_ occupies nearly the whole width of the former room, and was perhaps closed by a wooden door. On the western side of the hypocaust, at _w_, the wall has a sort of basement, formed of large stones scooped out in a singular manner, the object of which is by no means evident. We here come upon a series of passages, _x_, to the north of which were four rooms, _z z z z_, extending to the Old Wall. On the face of the Old Wall, we can distinctly trace the springing not only of the walls of division, the lower parts of which are found underground, but of the vaulting, from which it appears that these rooms had what are technically called barrel-roofs of masonry. They were slightly explored at the beginning of the excavations, and in one of them was found a quantity of burnt wheat, as though it had been a store-room.