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.
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.
* * * * *
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.