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Title: Londinium Architecture and the Crafts
Author: Lethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
Language: English
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CRAFTS ***
LONDINIUM
ARCHITECTURE AND THE CRAFTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+LONDINIUM+
ARCHITECTURE
AND THE CRAFTS
BY
W. R. LETHABY
WITH 175 FIGURES
[Illustration]
LONDON
+DUCKWORTH & CO.+
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
First Published in 1923
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., TANFIELD, EDINBURGH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. BUILDING MATERIALS AND METHODS 7
II. BUILDINGS AND STREETS 33
III. WALLS, GATES AND BRIDGE 57
IV. CEMETERIES AND TOMBS 84
V. SOME LARGER MONUMENTS 101
VI. SCULPTURE 120
VII. THE MOSAICS 142
VIII. WALL PAINTINGS AND MARBLE 162
LININGS
IX. LETTERING AND INSCRIPTIONS 176
X. THE CRAFTS 193
XI. EARLY CHRISTIAN LONDON 214
XII. THE ORIGIN OF LONDON 228
INDEX 247
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THESE chapters were first printed in “The
Builder” during the year 1921. For that
reason, and because the earlier records of
Roman discoveries in London given in this
Journal seemed to have been less worked
over than other sources, a large number of
references are given to its pages. The
account of Roman London in the “Victoria
County History,” C. Roach Smith’s
“Illustrations of Roman London,” and Mr.
T. Ward’s “Roman Era in Britain,” and
“Roman British Buildings,” may be
specially mentioned among the works
consulted. The first named is cited as
V.C.H. Mr. A. H. Lyell’s “Bibliographical
List of Romano-British Remains” (1912) is
indispensable to the student.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+LONDINIUM+
+CHAPTER I+
BUILDING MATERIALS AND METHODS
IT is curious that Roman buildings and crafts in Britain have hardly
been studied as part of the story of our national art. The subject has
been neglected by architects and left aside for antiquaries. Yet when
this story is fully written, it will appear how important it is as
history, and how suggestive in the fields of practice. This provincial
Roman art was, in fact, very different from the “classical style” of
ordinary architectural treatises. M. Louis Gillet in the latest history
of French art considers this phenomenon. “It is very difficult to
measure exactly the part of the Gauls in the works of the Roman epoch
which cover the land, such, for instance, as the _Maison Carrée_ and the
Mausoleum at St. Remy. There is in these _chefs d’œuvre_ something not
of Rome. The elements are used with liberty and delicacy more like the
work of the Renaissance than of Vitruvius. In three centuries Gaul had
become educated: these Gallo-Roman works, like certain verses of
Ausonius, show little of Rome, they are already French.” We should
hesitate to say just this in Britain, although the Brito-Roman arts were
intimately allied to those of Gaul. In fuller truth and wider fact, they
were closely related to the provincial Roman art as practised in Spain,
North Africa, Syria, and Asia Minor. Alexandria was probably the chief
centre from which the new experimenting spirit radiated. We may agree,
however, that in the centuries of the Roman occupation, Britain like
Gaul became educated and absorbed the foreign culture with some national
difference. In attempting to give some account of Roman building and
minor arts in London, I wish to bring out and deepen our sense of the
antiquity and dignity of the City, so as to suggest an historical
background against which we may see our modern ways and works in proper
perspective and proportion.
_Tools, etc._—Roman building methods were remarkably like our own of a
century ago. The large number of tools which have been found and brought
together in our museums are one proof of this. We have adzes and axes,
hammers, chisels and gouges, saws, drills and files; also foot-rules,
plumb-bobs and a plane. The plane found at Silchester was an instrument
of precision; the plumb-bob of bronze, from Wroxeter, in the British
Museum, is quite a beautiful thing, and exactly like one figured by
Daremberg and Saglio under the word _Perpendicularum_. At the Guildhall
are masons’ chisels and trowels; the latter with long leaf-shaped
blades. At the British Museum is the model of a frame saw. Only last
year (1922) many tools were found at Colchester. (For the history of
tools in antiquity, see Prof. Flinders Petrie’s volume.)
A foot-rule found at Warrington gave a length of 11·54 in. The normal
Roman foot is said to be 11·6496 in. (also 0·2957 m.). This agrees
closely with the Greek foot and the Chaldean. (What is the history of
the English foot?) The length of the Roman foot, a little over 11½ of
our inches, is worth remembering, for measurements would have been set
out by this standard. For example, we may examine the ordinary building
“tile” used in Londinium. In the Lombard Street excavations of 1785 many
Roman bricks were found which are said to have measured about 18 in. by
12 in. I have found this measurement many times repeated, and also three
more precise estimates. Dr. Woodward said that bricks from London Wall
were 17-4/10 in. by 11-6/10 in., and he observed that this would be 1½
by 1 Roman foot. Mr. Loftus Brock gave the size of one found in London
Wall as 17 in. by 11⅝ in. Dr. P. Norman gave the size of another tile as
about 17½ in. by nearly 12 in. At the Guildhall are several flue and
roof tiles about 17½ in. long, and a large tile 23¼ in. long. We shall
see when we come to examine buildings that the dimensions in many cases
are likely to have been round numbers of Roman feet.
_Masonry._—Walling had three main origins in mud, timber and stone.
Walling stones were at first, and for long, packed together without
mortar. Mud and stone were then combined; later, lime mortar took the
place of mud, being a sort of mud which will set harder. In concrete,
again, the mortar became the principal element. Stone walling was at
first formed of irregular lumps. When hewn blocks came to be used a
practice arose of linking them with wood or metal cramps. There are also
three main types of wall construction—aggregation of mud, framing of
timber, and association of blocks of stone. A later development of mud
walling was to break up the material, by analogy with hewn stone, into
regular lumps separately dried before they were used; thus crude bricks,
the commonest building material in antiquity, were formed. Roofing tiles
were developed from pottery, and such tiles came to be used for covering
the tops of crude brick walls. Then, later, whole walls were formed of
baked material, and thus the tile or brick wall was obtained. An
alternative method of using mud was to daub it over timber or wattle
(basket work) of sticks; and this seems to have been a common procedure
in Celtic Britain.
Interesting varieties of concrete walling were developed by Roman
builders. One of these was the use of little stones for the faces of a
wall, tailing back into the concrete mass and forming a hard skin or
mail on the surfaces, very like modern paving. Triangular tiles with
their points toothed into the concrete mass were also used. Then tile
courses were set in stone and concrete walls at every few feet of
height.
I have been speaking of general principles and history, not limiting
myself to Britain and Londinium, but the evolution of the wall is an
interesting introduction to our proper subject.
[Illustration:
FIG. 1.
]
In Londinium wrought stonework must have been very sparingly used
because of the difficulty and cost of transit. There were columns,
pilasters, plinths, cornices, etc., but it may be doubted whether there
were any buildings other than small monuments wholly of such masonry.
Even in the first century the “details” of masonry were far from being
“correctly classical,” and ornaments were very redundant and inventive.
Provincial Roman building was something very different from the grammars
propounded by architects. As we may study it in the fine museums of
Trèves, Lyons, and London, it seems more like proto-Romanesque than a
late form of “classic.” The Corinthian capitals of Cirencester are very
fine works indeed; the acanthus is treated freshly, the points of the
leaves being sharp and arranged as in Byzantine work; a sculptured
pediment and ornamental frieze at Bath are also free and fine. On the
other hand, moulded work is usually coarse and poor. An interesting
architectural fragment found in London was the upper drum of a column
which had several bands of leafage around the shaft and was a remote
descendant of the acanthus column at Delphi (Fig. 1). Parts of small
columns and their bases have been found, the latter with crude
mouldings. I mention them because small circular work was usually turned
in a lathe like Saxon baluster-shafts. A small capital from Silchester
in the Reading Museum is of the bowl form so characteristic of
Romanesque art.
[Illustration:
FIG. 2.
]
A few fragments of mouldings and other stones are in our museums (Fig.
2), and a considerable number of semicircular stones have been found
which must have been copings. Large wrought stones were usually cramped
together; lewis holes show how they were hoisted; smaller wall-facings
were, I think, cut with an axe instead of a chisel. We find mention of
one stone arch (a small niche?) in a Minute of the Society of
Antiquaries: “Mar. 8, 1732: Mr. Sam Gale acquainted the Society, yt in
digging up some old foundations near ye new Fabric erected Anno 1732 for
ye Bank of England Mr. Sampson ye architect discovered a large old wall,
eight foot under ye surface of ye ground, consisting of chalk stone and
rubble, next to Threadneedle Street, in which was an arch of stone and a
Busto of a man placed in it standing upon ye plinth, which he carefully
covered up again: there was no inscription but he believed it to be
Roman.”
_Mortar and Concrete._—Roman builders early learnt how to make good
mortar and concrete, being careful to use clean coarse gravel and finely
divided lime. They also found that an addition of crushed tiles and
pottery was an improvement, and for their good work used so much of this
that the mortar became quite red. “Roman mortar was generally composed
of lime, pounded tiles, sand and gravel, more or less coarse, and even
small pebbles. At Richborough the mortar used in the interior of the
walls is composed of lime and sand and pebbles or sea-beach, but the
facing stones throughout are cemented with a much finer mortar in which
powdered tile is introduced” (T. Wright).
One of the advantages of coarsely-crushed tiles is that it absorbs and
holds water so that the mortar made with it dries very slowly and thus
hardens perfectly. In _Archæologia_ (lx.) an analysis is given of
“mortar made with crushed tiles as grit in place of, or in conjunction
with, sand.” In Rochester Museum a dishful of the crushed tile is shown
which was taken from a heap found ready for use at the Roman villa at
Darenth. I may say here that I have found mortar prepared in this way
wonderfully tenacious, and suitable for special purposes like stopping
holes in ancient walls. A strong cement made of finely powdered tiles,
lime and oil was used by Byzantine and mediæval builders and probably by
the Romans also. Villars de Honnecourt (thirteenth century) gives a
recipe: “Take lime and pounded pagan tile in equal quantities until its
colour predominates; moisten this with oil and with it you can make a
tank hold water.” The use of crushed pottery in cement goes back to
Minoan days in Crete.
In London a long, thick wall of concrete formed between timbering was
recently found between Knightrider and Friday Streets; it showed prints
of half-round upright posts and horizontal planking; it bent in its
course and may have been the boundary of a stream. On the site of the
old Post Office a Roman rubbish pit was found, about 50 ft. by 35 ft. in
size. “In late Roman times the whole pit had been covered with concrete
about a foot thick and a building had been erected on the spot”
(_Archæol._ lxvi.). At Newgate the Roman structure was erected on a
“raft” of rubble in clay finished with a layer of concrete. Rubble in
clay formed the foundation of the City Wall.
[Illustration:
FIG. 3.
]
Many walls, described as of chalk, rubble or rag-masonry, have been
found in London—one instance at the Bank has been quoted above. Chalk
and flints were the most accessible material after local gravel, clay
and wood. Mr. F. W. Troup tells me that “in the foundations for the
Blackfriars House, New Bridge Street, we exposed a remarkable foundation
(possibly not Roman). It consisted of rammed chalk, fine white material
about 4 ft. wide and high, laid on great planks of elm 6 in. thick,
which appeared to be sawn. These were laid side by side in the direction
of the length of the wall, which ran along the west bank of the Fleet
River.” I mention this, although it was probably a mediæval wall, as an
example of a record; we ought to have every excavation registered. The
walls of a room found in Leadenhall Street in 1830 were of rubble
forming a hard concretion, with a single row of bond tiles through the
thickness of the wall at about every 2 ft. in height. A sketch of this
wall at the Society of Antiquaries shows it plastered outside and in.
This was one of the common types of walling. Better stone walls were
formed with face casings of roughly-squared little stones—what the
French call _petit appareil_—as described above. An immense amount of
piling was used in wet ground under streets and wharves, as well as
walls. Foundations have been discovered of three rows of piles close
together with a wall coming directly on their heads (Fig. 3). A wall
found on the site of the Mansion House seems to have had only one row of
piles; it was plastered outside.
_Tile Walling._—The brick commonly used in Rome was a crude or unbaked
block; the burnt walling tile was, as said above, developed from
pottery, and it always remained pottery-like in texture and thin in
substance. As Mr. T. May has said of bricks: “They were made of heavy
clay, well tempered and long exposed; the modern practice is to use the
lightest possible clay right off without tempering.” Walling tiles were
used in Londinium not only as bonding courses, but for the entire
substance of walls. It is usual to write “Roman tiles or bricks”
interchangeably, but in origin and character the thing was a tile, and,
indeed, roofing tiles with flanged edges were used as a walling material
occasionally. Tiles were of various sizes and shapes, but an oblong, 1½
ft. by 1 ft. and about 1½ in. thick, was most usual. In the Guildhall
Museum are several triangular tiles which must, I think, have been used
for facing walls with concrete cores. Solid tile walling was used in
Londinium so extensively that it was evidently a common material for
better buildings. The Lombard Street excavations of 1785 exposed “a wall
which consisted of the smaller-sized Roman bricks, in which were two
perpendicular flues, one semicircular and the other rectangular; the
height of the wall was 10 ft. and the depth to the top from the surface
was also 10 ft.” Here we have evidence of a brick wall rising the full
height of one story at least (_Archæol._ viii.). Roach Smith noticed a
wall in Scott’s Yard “8 ft. thick, entirely composed of oblong tiles in
mortar.” Mr. Lambert has recently described some walls of brick 3¼ ft.
thick found at Miles Lane. A building in Lower Thames Street had walls
of _red_ and _yellow_ tiles in alternate layers. This fact I learn from
a sketch by Fairholt at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and such use of
bricks of two colours was a common practice. In Hodge’s sketches of the
tile walls of a great building discovered at Leadenhall Market it is
noted that some of the courses were red and buff. Price recorded of
walls, 2½ ft. thick, found in the Bucklersbury excavations, that “the
tiles were the usual kind of red and yellow brick.”
More recently a bath chamber has been found in Cannon Street built of
tiles which on the illustration are indicated in alternate courses of
red and yellow. In the description in _Archæologia_, it is remarked: “It
would appear that the yellow was preferred, the red being employed where
they were not visible.” Years ago Charles Knight observed that the tiles
used in the City Wall at America Square varied from “bright red to
palish yellow.” This has been confirmed by more recent accounts in
_Archæologia_. Finally, Roach Smith, describing the discovery of a part
of the South or River Wall of the City (_Archæological Journal_, vol.
i.), says that the tiles used as bonding bands were straight and
curved-edged (that is, flanged roof tiles), red and yellow in colour. At
the Guildhall there are a roof tile and a flue tile of yellow colour.
Building with tiles may for long have been customary, but the use of red
and yellow tiles in the way described would probably have been a fashion
during a limited time only, and in that case it follows that the
buildings erected with red and yellow tiles are likely to be nearly
contemporary; the date would, I suppose, be the fourth century.
Specially made tiles were used for columns. At the Guildhall are several
round tiles 8 in. diameter, suitable for the piers of a hypocaust. Also
some semicircular tiles 12 in. in diameter. In Rochester Museum are some
quadrants making up a circle about 1½ ft. in diameter. Tiles, eight of
which made up a circle, have lately been found at Colchester, and in the
Guildhall Museum is a course of a round column made up of twelve tiles
around a small central circle. A large number of columns were evidently
of such bricks plastered.
[Illustration:
FIG. 4.
]
_Arches and Vaults._—The arches in the City Wall, where it passed across
the Walbrook, described by Roach Smith, were of no great span (3¼ ft.).
They were constructed of ordinary tiles and were of a roughly-pointed
shape. Arches of this form were not infrequently used in Roman works;
they were not the result of inaccurate building. About a dozen years ago
a well-built pointed arch of alternate tile and tufa, found at Naples,
was described in _Archæologia_. The tiles, although thin, were sometimes
made slightly wedge-shaped, and the city gates at Silchester seem to
have had arches of such bricks.
The only London vault which I can find mentioned is one found exactly
two hundred years since at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. A Minute of the
Society of Antiquaries reads: “May 2, 1722: Mr. Stukely related that the
Roman building in St. Martin’s Church was an arch built of Roman brick
and at the bottom laid with a most strong cement of an unusual
composition, of which he has got a lump. There was a square duct in each
wall its whole length, of 9 in. breadth; there were several of these
side by side: this building is below the springs on the gravel.” This
building that was an arch, with its many flues, and cement
floor—doubtless _opus signinum_—was obviously a Roman bath chamber, but
probably it was quite small.
[Illustration:
FIG. 5.
]
Evidence of the existence of fairly large vaults has been found at the
Baths of Silchester, Wroxeter and Bath. These were all constructed in a
most interesting and suggestive way of voussoirs made as hollow boxes in
the tile material. Similar box voussoirs have been discovered at
Chedworth and elsewhere.
[Illustration:
FIG. 6.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 7.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 8.
]
I have found two such box voussoirs in the Rochester Museum, each about
9 in. by 6 in. on the face and 5 in. on the soffit (Fig. 4). The
surfaces are roughly scored across with parallel lines forming an X.
These two tiles together show an obvious curvature; they came from a
villa at Darenth. In the Guildhall Museum I have also found a box
voussoir which is almost identical with those at Rochester. It is thus
described: “74, Flue (?) tile, red brick, the front decorated with
incised cross lines; in the centre both front and back is a circular
perforation: 9½ in. long, 6¾ in. high, 6½ in. wide.” The longest
dimension is not in the direction of the tube, and the height is greater
at one end than the other, so that the wedge form is quite apparent. The
small holes in both the larger sides were doubtless to give better hold
to the mortar in which they were set (Fig. 5). Roach Smith recorded what
must have been broken parts of similar voussoirs as found in Thames
Street in 1848 (_Journ. Brit. Archæol. Assoc._, vol. iv.), but here they
seem to have been used as waste material in building the little piers of
hypocausts. Roman builders also constructed vaults of pipes and pots set
in mortar concrete as were our box voussoirs, but I know of no British
examples. Vaults of wide span seem to have covered large chambers in the
Basilica at Verulam (see _Victoria County History_). The method of using
the box voussoirs has been well explained from the Silchester examples
by the late Mr. Fox in _Archæologia_ (cf. Fig. 6). A fragment at
Westminster Abbey is either part of a voussoir or of a short flue tile
(Fig.7).
Some notes made at Bath further explain the interesting methods of
building vaults with box voussoirs. There are several such voussoirs in
the ruins of the Great Bath, 12 in. to 13 in. deep by 6 in. and 6½ in.;
6¾ in. and 7½ in.; 8¼ in. and 10 in.; 8 in. and 11 in. at the top and
bottom. Fig. 9 is a sketch of the third; it is scored on the face. The
notches cut in the sides take the place of the holes in the London
examples, and doubtless were for the mortar to get a better key; Fig. 10
is from a vault of this construction which was further strengthened by a
series of curved tiles set in the outer concrete mass, which was 6 in.
thick; Fig. 11 shows the ridge of such a vault—this may be an
imagination of my own. One of the fragments showed six or eight flat
tiles set longitudinally crossing the lines of the box-tiles (Fig. 12).
The ridge termination (Fig. 16) is also from Bath.
[Illustration:
FIG. 9.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 10.
]
Some large voussoir box-tiles from Gaul are shown in the British Museum,
No. 394, in the section of Greek and Roman life.
[Illustration:
FIG. 11.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 12.
]
Well-constructed arched sewers have been found in the City (see
_Victoria County History_).
Many socketed water-pipes are in our museums. Such pipes were
occasionally used in Rome as down-pipes, and we might do worse than
revert to the custom and get rid of the iron rust nuisance. In the
British Museum there are some larger socketed pipes with small holes cut
in them along a line. These must, I think, have been for draining
surface water, for which purpose flue tiles were also used. Larger
sewers were of brick or stone.
_Carpentry._—In mediæval days the carpenter was the chief house builder,
and much timber would have been used in Roman London. In 1901-2 remains
of piling was found in the bed of the Walbrook at London Wall. These
piles had served as supports for dwellings. “The large quantities of
loose nails indicated that the superimposed dwellings were of timber”
(_Builder_, December 13, 1902). Timber piling has also been found at St.
Martin’s le Grand and other sites. There was clearly much soft wet
ground in the City. The better-class dwelling in Bucklersbury, to which
belonged the fine mosaic floor now at the Guildhall, seems to have been
largely of timber. In December last (1921) Mr. Lambert described at the
Society of Antiquaries a remarkable piece of wharfing on the river bank
at Miles Lane. This was a solid wall of squared balks of timber about 2
ft. square, laid one over the other and having ties into the ground
behind. The construction showed an interesting set of tenons, halvings
and housings. A bored wood pipe was also found. In Thames Street a house
found in 1848 had a well-made drain made with 2 in. planks forming
bottom and sides, which is said to have been covered in with tiles.
_Wattle and Daub._—It was ever a problem in London how to build without
stone. Wood, gravel and mud were plentiful, and these were the common
walling materials during the Middle Ages. As lately as the eighteenth
century some of the suburban churches were described by Hatton as being
of “boulder work,” that is, a concrete of coarse gravel; and the walls
of the Temple Church, before the falsifying restorations, were of some
sort of concreted rubble skinned over with plaster on the face. Hearne
reports that Wren said that there were few masons in London when he was
young. Mud walls are mentioned in mediæval records, and “daubers” were,
I suppose, primarily those who did the filling in of post and pan work.
The smaller houses of Londinium were largely of wattle and daub, and
doubtless others were of crude brick. For the use of wattle and daub we
have plentiful direct evidence. In the account of the excavations in and
about Lombard Street in 1785 (_Archæol._ viii.) curious fragments were
found which are thus described: “About this spot and in many other
places large pieces of porous brick were met with of a very loose
texture, seeming as if mixed with straw before they were burnt. They are
commonly channelled on the surface; their size is quite uncertain, being
mere fragments, their thickness about 1½ in. or 2 in.” Again,
chalk-stone foundations and “channelled brick” are mentioned together.
The “brick” fragments were of daubing, and the channels were the marks
of laths, as has been shown by other finds. Similar remnants have
recently been discovered on the Post Office site and in King William
Street. “Débris of a wood and daub house which had been destroyed by
fire.... In several cases the plaster was still adhering to the daub”
(_Archæol._ lxvi.). Other fragments are preserved in the Silchester
collection at Reading. The London fragments were found under conditions
which showed that they had belonged to first-century dwellings. This
method of building had been practised by the Celts, and we may imagine
that the “populace” of Londinium was housed in small huts of wattle and
clay roofed with reed thatch. In the country, old garden walls are
occasionally found, I believe, built of mud daubing on both sides of
wattle work, and sheep shelters of wattle-hurdles and dry fern are, I
suppose, direct descendants of the old British manner of building.
Mr. Bushe-Fox has remarked that one of the earliest houses at Silchester
and the earliest houses at Wroxeter were of wattle and daub
construction. See also Mr. Lambert’s paper in _Archæologia_, December
1921.
_Hypocausts and Flue Tiles and Wall Linings._—Several examples have been
found in London of the Roman system of heating buildings by hypocausts.
These were low under-floor spaces a foot or two high connected with an
external stoke-hole in one direction and having a flue or flues in the
other. When the hypocaust, as was frequently the case, occupied the
whole space below a chamber the floor was supported on a large number of
roughly-built little piers with a row or two of flat tiles above
spanning the intervals, and over them a layer of concrete and a mosaic
or other floor. The flues were usually box-tiles, and in the case of the
hot chambers of a bath one side of a wall or even more might be lined
with them. A hypocaust with its stoke-hole and flue or flues was really
a kiln of low power, in which people were warmed on a similar principle
to the baking of pottery. The box-tiles were much the shape of a modern
brick, and about twice as big; they were hollow and usually had scorings
or impressed patterns on the surface to make mortar or plaster adhere
(Figs. 6 and 7). Frequently they had a hole or two holes in their narrow
sides, so that the mortar might better hold them in place. In the
British Museum there is a long and large pipe with ornamental
scratchings on the surface which may possibly be a chimney.
The system of central heating by the hypocaust seems to have been an
admirable contrivance. Lysons illustrated an example at Littlecote where
flue tiles ran up in the angles of a room like Tobin tubes, being cased
round only by the plaster. The two best known London hypocausts were
found in Lower Thames Street and in Bucklersbury. The former extended
under the floors of two adjoining apartments. The Bucklersbury example
had channels under the floor spreading to several wall flues, each being
of two box-tiles placed side by side. (See Price’s account and _V.C.H._)
Occasionally flue tiles had two smaller channels; there is a broken
example of such a tile in the British Museum. Flue tiles were sometimes
of a rounded form ∩, and in this case the wall itself must have served
to enclose the flue. In the excavations in Lombard Street in 1785
(_Archæol._ viii.) a brick wall is described which had two flues, one
being “semicircular.” A long and well-made ∩-shaped flue in the British
Museum, with an impressed lozenge pattern on the surface, is described
as a ridge-tile. There is also a fragment of still larger diameter at
the Guildhall. Similar flues found at Woodchester were used as
horizontal heating channels under the floor.
Here also one of the walls was found to be lined with flanged tiles, set
thus, │__││__│, with the flanges against the walls. This may have been a
provision against a damp wall. I have seen a similar wall in Rome—I
believe subterranean—also another very similar where large flat tiles,
having four projections at the back like short legs to a low stool, were
used as linings. Each of the four studs was pierced for a nail.
Fragments of tiles found at Newgate in 1877 were about 1½ ft. square and
1¼ in. thick, “with rough clay stubs for attachment”; they were scored
over the surface with wavy lines, and were probably used internally. (In
_V.C.H._ it is said that these may have been mediæval, but the examples
just given show that they were Roman.) In the British Museum and at the
Guildhall are some flat tiles, scored on one side to receive plastering,
and with four notches in the sides to allow of nails being driven
between two adjoining tiles. These, too, must have been for wall
linings.
The impressed patterns on the surfaces of some of these flue tiles are
quite neat and pretty, and they are interesting in the history of design
as being “all-over patterns.” In some cases at least, they seem to have
been produced by a roller having a unit of the design cut on it in the
style of a butter print. A tile found in Kent, illustrated by Haverfield
(_Romanization_, p. 33), has the inscription: “Cabriabanus made this
wall-tile” (_parietalam_)—“The man who made the tiles apparently incised
the legend on a wooden cylinder and rolled it over the tiles, producing
a recurrent inscription.” The patterns superseded the scorings and seem
to have been for the same purpose—to afford a better hold for the
plaster than a plain face. Fig. 13 is of tiles found in Thames Street.
Fig. 14 is a fragment illustrated in Roach Smith’s Catalogue.
[Illustration:
FIG. 13.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 14.
]
Inscriptions roughly scratched on tiles led the late Dr. Haverfield to
the conclusion that ordinary workers in Britain wrote Latin. At the
Guildhall a tile has a humorous note about a workman who went off “on
his own” too often. In the British Museum a tile has _Primus_, and one
from Silchester has _Satis_.
_Floors._—The floors which have been found were most generally of
concrete, tiles and mosaic. In Rochester Museum are some lumps of
material from concrete floors. There were also floors of “rough stones”
and of “chalk stones.” A better kind of concrete floor was that known as
_opus signinum_, made of lime and broken pottery polished on the
surface; this made an admirable floor. Another excellent and much used
surface was obtained by coarse tesseræ of tile from 1 in. to 2 in.
square; sometimes pieces of yellow, black and white were intermixed. In
Rochester Museum is a tile fragment subdivided by indented lines
imitating this coarse kind of mosaic, also a square of light buff tile.
At the Guildhall is a tile a Roman foot square, having incised squares.
Tiles were of various forms and sizes. In the Reading Museum are round
and polygonal tiles, and a very pretty floor formed of such tiles with
coarse tesseræ intermixed. Some small paving tiles have been found (not
in London) with patterns impressed on the surface (Fowler’s engravings).
In the British Museum is a tile 7 in. square, and a large tile about 18
by 14 in. is scored on the surface neatly, like the crosses of a Union
Jack (cf. Fig. 7); it seems to be abraded on the surface, and may be a
paving tile—if so, it must have made an excellent floor. Roach Smith
mentions large tiles about 2 ft. square and 3 in. thick, and some of
these are in the British Museum. Such tiles, as large as paving slabs,
were useful in covering hypocausts, spanning the intervals between the
little piers on which the corners rested.
In the British Museum and at the Guildhall are portions of paving of
small tiles set on edge in a herring-bone pattern. The former is
described as having been found at Bush Lane, the latter near Dowgate
Hill on the Walbrook. “Near by was piling and the cill of a bridge which
crossed the brook from E. to W.” This seems to be the same pavement as
that described in _The Builder_, 1884, as being on the west bank facing
the brook; there was a second landing-stage in Trinity Square Gardens,
on “the edge of a haven,” with a pavement over oak piling. (The haven at
the tidal inlet to Walbrook was doubtless the original port of London.)
I have seen similar herring-bone pavement of tiles on edge in Rome. I
doubt there having been a bridge here.
_Plastering._—External walls would mostly have been plastered. C. Knight
mentioned the discovery near the Bank of traces of a Roman building, and
of what was “apparently the basis of a Roman pillar (circular?) built of
large flat bricks incrusted with a very hard cement, in which the
mouldings were formed exactly as is done in the present day.”
Rome itself must have been a city of plastered walls; the Pantheon, the
great Basilica of Constantine in the Forum, and the splendid Baths were
all, as may be seen to-day, plastered. The tile walls of the Basilica at
Trèves were covered with red plastering. The Baths at Silchester were
plastered externally. Of the great villa at Woodchester we are told the
walls were “plastered on the outside and painted a dull red colour” (T.
Wright). At Caerwent the Basilica was plastered a reddish-brown colour.
The best description I have found of such plastering is that in
_Archæologia_ of a round temple or tomb building found at Holmwood Hill,
which was covered outside with “a mixture of lime and gravel and coarse
fragments of broken tile. On this was laid a coat of stucco composed of
lime and tile more minutely broken, the latter being rendered very
smooth was covered with a dark pigment ... a sort of ochre.” It is clear
that external plastering was generally finished with a red surface.
Of internal plastering we have many fragments covered with painted
decoration in the museums; it was generally very thick and smoothly
finished on the surface; against the floor there was usually a
projecting quarter-round fillet about 3 in. high, of hard cement. Such a
skirting was found around the Bucklersbury mosaic pavement (Price).
Sometimes a similar fillet ran up the angles of a room, as at a bath at
Hartlip Villa, illustrated by T. Wright. I have seen a similar treatment
in Rome, also a hollow curve.
_Roofs, Windows, etc._—Roofs were generally covered with tiles,
stone-slates, and doubtless thatch. Examples of the two former are in
our museums. The flat tiles had turned-up edges; these were removed near
the top for the next tile to lap over. The flanges were covered by
half-round tiles, larger below than above, so that one lapped over the
other. The flat tiles were frequently if not always of a key-stone
shape, so that the bottom of the upper one set into the wider top of the
lower one. (See one figured in Allen’s _London_.) Some have a single
nail-hole near the top; but others, I suppose, can only have been nailed
against the slanting sides. (See V. le Duc’s article “Tuille” for the
Romanesque system.) In better work ante-fix tiles covered the
terminations of the round tiles at the eaves. “Part of an ante-fix of
red terra-cotta in the form of a lion’s mask” was found in the Strand
(_V.C.H._). There are several in Reading Museum and one in the British
Museum from Chester. The slates were thick and of a pointed shape below,
forming diagonal lines when laid. Both the stones and tiles were very
heavy, and must have required strong roof timbering.
[Illustration:
FIG. 15.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 16.
]
Ridges were of tile or stone. A fragment in the Reading Museum from
Silchester has a knob rising from the saddle-back of a ridge-tile
strangely mediæval in appearance (Fig. 8). Probably one came at each end
of the ridge only (cf. V. le Duc’s “Faîtière”). Ridges were frequently
terminated by stone gable knobs, which have been found in many places
(see Ward’s _Roman Buildings_), and occasionally in such a position as
to show that a gable end fronted a street. A ridge termination in Exeter
Museum is shown upside down as if it were a corbel (Fig. 15 is a memory
sketch, and compare Fig. 16 from Bath). These terminations are late
derivations from acroteria and prototypes of gable crosses; they are
links in a continuous chain from Greek to Gothic.
[Illustration:
FIG. 17.
]
Little joiner’s work has survived to our day. Doors would not have been
very different from our own, as is shown by many examples of framed
panel work from foreign sites in museums. A bronze pivot in the Museum
at Westminster Abbey must have been a hinge of a door (Fig. 17). Iron
strap-hinges in the museums are very similar to our own. There are two
in the British Museum (Fig. 18). The plane found at Silchester is
evidence for joiner’s work. In Leicester Museum is a fragment of a
lion’s head and leg from a piece of furniture—probably a table. Turning
in a lathe was practised, as some wooden dishes at the Guildhall show.
There are many excellent locks and keys and hinges and handles in our
museums.
[Illustration:
FIG. 18.
]
The use of window glass was very general. It was cast in small panes, as
is shown by the large proportion of existing fragments which have edges
and corners. Practically a whole pane, about 12 in. by 12 in., is in the
Rochester Museum. Near Warrington, on a Roman site, was found a stone
slab with a shallow recess 12 in. by 8 in., which Mr. May regarded as a
mould for glass (Ward). The average size of panes would have been about
one Roman foot long. Glassware seems to have been made in London,
Silchester and elsewhere, doubtless from imported “metal.” Some windows,
possibly unglazed, were protected by iron gratings. An iron star X in
the Guildhall Museum came from such a window guard as is shown by a
complete example I sketched many years ago in the Strasbourg Museum (see
_Arch. Rev._, May 1913) (Fig. 19). It had been suggested that such
X-pieces were “holdfasts,” to keep the glass panes in position (Ward);
but this is not the case; moreover, the pane at Rochester shows that it
was “cemented” into place.
[Illustration:
FIG. 19.
]
Lead must have been largely used; there are a dozen large “pigs” in the
British Museum. Melted lead was found at Verulam in a position which
suggested that it had been used on an important building. In the
Guildhall Museum are some sections of lead water-pipes found in London,
and at Westminster Abbey is a piece 4 in. in diameter, which must, I
think, be Roman (Fig. 18, C).
A study of Roman building methods may suggest to us many points for our
consideration and emulation. I would especially mention their excellent
mortar made of crushed tile, _opus signinum_, and coarse tesseræ floors,
cement skirtings, red external plastering, the tile-shaped brick, tile
wall linings and down-pipes, hip and gable knobs, vaults of box-tiles
and pipes, the hypocaust system of heating, turning of stonework,
painted decorations, marble linings, cast leadwork. Some day I hope our
sterile histories of “architectural styles” will make way for accounts
of practical building methods.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER II+
BUILDINGS AND STREETS
“Set we forward friendly together, so through Lud’s-town march;
And in the temple of great Jupiter
Our peace we’ll ratify; seal it with feasts,
Set on there!”
CYMBELINE.
_BASILICA._—In 1880 the extensive foundations of an important building
with massive walls were found on the site of Leadenhall Market, and a
survey of the ruins made by Henry Hodge was published in _Archæologia_
(vol. lxvi.). This great building was exceptional, not only in its scale
but in its manner of workmanship. I know no other case where the walls
of a building had wrought and coursed facings like the City Wall (Fig.
20).
[Illustration:
FIG. 20.
]
In 1881 Mr. E. P. L. Brock exhibited at a meeting of the British
Archæological Association “plans of excavations recently carried out in
Leadenhall Market, showing the foundations of an apse 33 ft. wide and
indications of four different conflagrations. He also exhibited
fragments of fresco painting with ornamental patterns.... The building
appears to have had the form of a Basilica in some respects, with
eastern apse, western nave, and two chambers like transepts on the south
side” (_Archæol._ lxvi.). From the wording of this it appears that Brock
meant that the building had a general resemblance to an early Christian
church. Mr. Lambert in publishing Hodge’s drawings in _Archæologia_
seems to have understood Brock to mean that it was the Civil Basilica of
Londinium. This, indeed, I have no doubt it was, but at the time Brock
wrote such buildings in Britain were hardly known.
[Illustration:
FIG. 21.
]
The Civil Basilica or Public Hall was generally the “complement of the
Forum; it was, in fact, a covered Forum used for commerce, exchange, and
administration, or simply as a promenade” (Daremberg and Saglio). At
Silchester the Forum and Basilica filled an “island” site, about 315 ft.
by 280 ft., at the centre of the city. The Forum was a quadrangle
included within a single row of buildings on three sides, having a
colonnaded walk on the inside, while the Basilica occupied the fourth
side facing the central avenue of the town. It was 233 ft. long by 58
ft. wide, and was divided into a “nave” and “aisles,” the former being
terminated at _each end_ by a large apse. In the interior were two
ranges of Corinthian columns about 3 ft. in diameter, some capitals from
which are now in Reading Museum. Cirencester Basilica was still larger,
being about 77 ft. wide, divided into nave and aisles by fine Corinthian
columns; at one end a great Hemicycle embraced both nave and aisles. It
must have been a noble building (Fig. 21 is a restored plan of one end).
At Wroxeter the Basilica was 67 ft. wide, divided into nave and aisles
by ranges of Corinthian columns.
The columns in the interior of the Basilica at Caerwent were also of
Corinthian fashion: the shafts were 3 ft. in diameter and decorated with
a leaf pattern. Under the floor were wide sleeper walls, one of which
ran across the front of the Tribune. The exterior was covered with
reddish-brown plastering, and the interior had painted decorations of
large scale.
The Basilica at Verulam had a very long hall, 26 ft. wide and about 360
ft. in length. From it three great chambers opened at right angles. The
central chamber was 40 ft. wide. The others were 34½ ft. wide, having
apses at the farther ends included within square outer walls. There was
evidence that these side chambers had been vaulted. Some painted wall
plaster was found, and it was clear that the whole of the interior walls
and vaults had been painted, mostly in floral designs, in dark olive
green and other colours. Fragments of drapery indicated that there had
been figures also. In front of the Basilica was a great quadrangle
court, with a block of masonry on the central axis, which can hardly
have been other than a pedestal for a statue (see _V.C.H._).
The Basilica at Trèves is built wholly of tile-bricks, and was once
covered with red plaster, of which some fragments remain in the window
jambs. It is about 240 ft. long, the flank wall having six bays recessed
between pilasters each containing an upper and a lower window. A large
apse exists at one end, about 40 ft. wide. It has been restored to serve
as a church, and is a noble building, big and bare. The British
Basilicas, so far as they are now known, were of the following
dimensions in width. The English measures may probably be equated with
Roman feet as suggested: Silchester, 58 (60); Caerwent, 62 (65);
Wroxeter, 67 (70); Cirencester, 78 (80); Chester, 76 (?).
The foundations discovered on the site of Leadenhall Market represented
some very large and exceptional structures. The following account is
condensed from Mr. Lambert’s description in _Archæologia_: “The plans
show at the eastern end a quarter-circle of 27 ft. 7 in. radius, which
seems to represent the eastern apse mentioned by Brock; and in
continuation of its southern line, a wall about 150 ft. long, having the
extraordinary breadth of 12 ft. 7 in., runs to the line of and
apparently underneath Gracechurch Street.... From the south side at the
east end, spring at right angles three walls, which doubtless enclosed
the ‘two chambers like transepts’ mentioned by Brock.... It is probable
that work of different periods is included in this plan.... The northern
half of the great wall appears to be brick, the rest stone or rubble, as
though one wall had been built along the face of another.... It is clear
from the drawings that the bulk of the eastern portions of the remains
is homogeneous in structure. The extra thickness of the great wall and
the fragments of solid brick walls at either end of the site represent
perhaps later additions.... These remains form the most extensive
fragment of a Roman building recorded within the Walls of London.” From
the thick mortar joints of the brick walls, Mr. Lambert concludes that
they were probably built in the third or fourth century. The more or
less alternating use of red and buff bricks, as I have already
suggested, is also evidence that this part of the work should be
assigned to the fourth century. Concrete, tessellated and herring-bone
floors were found, also flue tiles (Price, _Athen._, 1881).
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.)
[Illustration:
FIG. 22.
]
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).
[Illustration:
FIG. 23.
]
_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.
[Illustration:
FIG. 24.
]
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.
[Illustration:
FIG. 25.—(A, old masonry; B, brickwork with a flue tile; C,
foundations of chamber.)
Foundations discovered in Lower Thames Street in 1859.
]
“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.
[Illustration:
FIG. 26.
]
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.)
[Illustration:
FIG. 27.
]
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.
[Illustration:
FIG. 28.
]
It has been mentioned above how in several cases, as is clear even from
our imperfect records, that later walls were founded directly on Roman
walls. Modern buildings were thus in direct and unbroken succession to
Roman ones and maintained the same alignment. In the Archer collection
at the British Museum is a drawing of “a Roman pavement and foundations,
supposed to be remains of Tower Royal” in Cannon Street; this again was
square with modern work. Roman remains have been found under several
churches. Massive walls of chalk were found under St. Benet’s,
Gracechurch. Roach Smith, speaking of a floor found at the corner of
Clement’s Lane, says: “This adds another to the numerous instances of
churches in London standing on foundations of Roman buildings.” In 1724
Roman foundations were found under St. Mary, Woolnoth, and “three
foundations of churches in the same place” (_Minutes Soc. Ant._, June
17). Even Westminster Abbey and St. Martin’s in the Fields were built on
Roman sites, and so probably was St. Andrew’s, Holborn.
This continuity of the buildings from the Roman Age is not only an
interesting fact, but it is a strong argument for the general continuity
of the street lines as well. The plan of the extensive finds in and
about Lombard Street in 1785 shows the building to have conformed very
much to lines parallel with, and at right angles to St. Swithin,
Sherborne, Abchurch, Nicholas, Birchin and Clement’s Lanes, and I cannot
doubt that these lanes are in some degree the successors of Roman
streets. In “Lombard Street and Birchin Lane the discoveries are said to
have indicated a row of houses” (_V.C.H._). If all the evidence as to
the “orientation” of buildings and walls was laid down on a plan, merely
marking the direction of the minor ones with a cross, we might build up
further results in regard to the direction of the streets. At the same
time it would be vain to expect any large and simple scheme of lay-out
of the chess-board type, the Walbrook and other streams, and probably
the persistence of some earlier lines (Watling Street to St. Albans?)
would have interfered with that. The Walbrook seems to have been crossed
by two chief bridges, which must have been governing facts in the
lay-out. One was at Bucklersbury, the other, Horseshoe Bridge farther
south, is recorded from the thirteenth century. Cannon Street, I cannot
doubt, represents one east to west street. Thames Street must have been
formed when the south City Wall was built. I have spoken of the
north-south lines above. Saint Benet “Gerschereche” is mentioned in a
charter of 1053 (_Athen._, February 3, 1906).
Wren found a “causeway” made up of stones and tiles by Bow Church (under
the present tower). It is suggested in _V.C.H._ that this was an
embankment, but _causeway_ was one of the regular names for a Roman
road. At Rochester one 5 ft. or 6 ft. thick of hard stuff has been found
crossing some soft ground.
The best way now to see again the old Roman City of London is to go to
the foot of the hill below St. Magnus the Martyr and then, turning away
from the riverside quays of the seaport, to walk up the street which
still retains something of the look of a High Street in an old market
town. Behind it we may still discern the ghost of the Roman Axis Street.
Right and left are narrow streets with red plastered houses separated by
little “drangways.” Here at a corner is a small temple with a dedication
to the deified emperor. There is the great City Bath. Farther on is the
civic centre, the market-place and hall; one, a square piazza containing
imperial statues in gilt bronze, and the other a big building having
internal ranks of tall Corinthian columns, a wide apse, and an open
timber roof—sombre but noble. Round about are many isolated and
widespreading mansions, one doubtless being the palace of the Governor
of the province. Beyond are the walls and gates which will be next
described, and in the background rise the northern heaths and wooded
hills now called Hampstead and Highgate.
“On alien ground, breathing an alien air,
A Roman stood, far from his ancient home,
And gazing, murmured, ‘Ah, the hills are fair,
But not the hills of Rome.’”
MARY E. COLERIDGE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER III+
WALLS, GATES AND BRIDGE
“Gem of all Joy and Jasper of Jocundity, Strong be thy walls that
about thee stand; London, thou art the flower of cities all.”
WILLIAM DUNBAR.
THE walls, gates and bastions of the City may be traced by the record of
early maps such as that of Braun and Hogenberg. The bastions of the east
side are particularly shown on a plan of Holy Trinity Priory made in the
sixteenth century; the west side from Ludgate to Cripplegate plainly
appears in Hollar’s plan after the fire, 1667. There were two bastions
between Ludgate and Newgate, then an angle bastion to the north; three
more on the straight length to Aldersgate, then one beyond that gate at
the angle where the wall turned north again; two bastions occurred
between this angle and the bastion at the corner where the wall again
turned east, which now exists in Cripplegate Churchyard.
Several of the gates stood until 1760. In an old MS. book of notes I
find under the heading “Remarkable Transactions in ye Mayoralty of Sir
J. Chitty.”—“In July, ye gates of Aldgate, Cripplegate and Ludgate were
sold by public auction in ye council chamber, Guildhall, and were
accordingly taken down without obstructing either ye foot or cartway,
and their sites laid into ye streets. Aldgate for £157, 10s.;
Cripplegate, £93; and Ludgate for £148.” Many old drawings of parts of
the wall are preserved in the Crace, the Archer and other collections.
The exact line of the wall and positions of the bastions has been
verified by modern excavations and discoveries. For full description and
a plan, see the _Victoria County History_ and _Archæologia_, lxii.
(1912). A good description of what was visible in 1855 is given in _The
Builder_ for that year.
[Illustration:
FIG. 29. See p. 61.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 30.
]
In September 1903 an important section of the Roman wall was found in
excavating the site of Newgate Prison; in some parts it was about a
dozen feet high. I saw it in October and noted—“The wall is about 8½ ft.
wide. On the outside and inside one or two courses of facing stones were
first raised and the core of rubble was then filled in to that height;
first there was a thick couch of mortar, then a layer of rubble stones,
then another liberal supply of mortar running down between the stones as
grout; there were two or three such levellings-up in the heights between
the tile bonding courses.” The wall had a rough rubble foundation, then
a course of plinth stones on the outside, with three tile courses
corresponding to it on the inside of the wall, then followed five
courses of the fairly square facing stones on both sides of the wall,
then two rows of tile, five courses more stone and two rows of tile,
then five more stone courses; above this level the wall had been
destroyed. The stones and tiles were set in mortar, and the latter,
except for the three courses at the bottom on the inside, which served
as a plinth, were carried right through the thickness of the wall; the
“tiles” were Roman bricks about 18 in. by 12 in. and 1½ in. thick, laid
in what we call Flemish bond. The stone facing courses were a little
higher at the bottom than upwards, but all were comparatively small and
square; there was a clear distinction between the wrought facings and
the rubble filling, which was practically concrete. The “facings” were
hard skins adhering to the filling and required by the method of
building as described above (Fig. 30).
The mode of construction of the wall is likely to be misunderstood when
we speak as we almost necessarily do of facings and filling and of bond
tiles. The “facing” stones were small, roughly wrought, and set in much
mortar; they formed outer skins to the concreted mass into which they
tailed back. The whole was homogeneous. The method was analogous to the
facing of concrete with triangular bricks notching back into the core.
The tile courses in the City Wall were doubtless bonds, but they also
divided the wall into strata locking up the moisture of the mortar from
too rapid absorption and evaporation. I have little doubt that the wall
was carried up a stratum at a time over long lengths; it would thus have
been available as a defence from an early stage, and scaffolding would
not have been required. The building of this wall and casting the ditch
about it required a great constructive effort. A strip of ground some
100 feet wide must have been cleared as a preliminary. Then the immense
quantity of stone required would have been brought by ships and barges.
It is often said that old material was not re-used in the wall, but I
can hardly think that two miles of chamfered plinth had to be provided
out of new stone at the very beginning of the work. And material from
destroyed monuments was doubtless broken up for the small facing stones.
The lime-burning, brick-making, stone-cutting, as well as the actual
building, called for much labour. It would be interesting to have the
quantities taken out and an estimate prepared.
The south wall along the river front is well described in _V.C.H._ Roach
Smith, in an article in vol. i. of the _Archæological Journal_, recorded
the fact that it had “alternate layers of red and yellow plain and
curve-edged (_i.e._ flanged) tiles”; the rest being of ragstone and
flint. It was founded on piles. In _The Builder_ (January 19, 1912) it
is recorded that in digging for a foundation at No. 125 Lower Thames
Street, between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane, there was found the
base of the Roman wall resting upon long and thick timber balks laid
crosswise, with piles beneath them; there were three courses of rough
rag and sandstone capped with two courses of yellow bonding tiles, all
in reddish mortar; what remained was about 3 ft. high and 10 ft. wide,
and was at 24 ft. below the existing pavement. Full evidence of the
course of the City Wall along the river front has been found (_Archæol._
xliii.). It may be noticed that in mediæval regulations foreign sailors
might not go beyond Thames Street; that is, pass where the wall had
been, into the City proper. This south wall, like the bastions,
contained remnants of Roman monuments.
The south wall would have been interrupted at the outlet of the
Walbrook, which must have been a tidal creek. This was doubtless the
original harbour, and there would have been quays within the line of the
wall. Daremberg and Saglio’s plan of Bordeaux shows a remarkable
parallel to Londinium, standing on the bank of a great river, flanked by
a little stream and with a port within the walls (Fig. 29). It seems
probable that the strong wall which Roach Smith reports as having been
found on the east side of the Walbrook may have been a quay wall. The
Thames has been much encroached on where it passes the City. In making
the approach to new London Bridge three successive embankments were
found, one being of squared trunks of trees. A similar timber wall has
just been found in Miles Lane. In Lower Thames Street the Roman house
found on its north side was built on piles, “probably on the river bank”
(_Athen._, 1848), and the south City Wall was wholly built on timbering.
In earlier Londinium, Cannon Street must have been the southern
thoroughfare.
_Bastions._—In July 1909, when the angle bastion near Giltspur Street
was excavated, I noted that close to it the City Wall was badly
fractured, and inclined outwards; there had evidently been a serious
settlement here, which was sufficiently accounted for by the nature of
the ground—wet clay on the bank of a stream. The wall was taken lower
than the ordinary level here, and the bastion was founded at a lower
level still. The bastion was not bonded to the City Wall, but merely
built against it with a straight joint; it was of horseshoe shape on
plan and projected about 27 ft., the masonry was rubble in thin courses,
and the whole looked mediæval to me. In the careful report in
_Archæologia_ it was said that some evidence for Roman date was
discovered in the foundation. The facts suggested to me not only that
the bastion had been built against the wall, but that it was probably
built at a point of failure in the original wall. It is agreed that the
bastions were built later than the wall, and with a straight joint
between them and it, and I would suggest that they were built to cover
cracks and form buttresses as well as for their additional defensive
value, and this may very well have been the general procedure. It would
have been impossible to build a wall measured by miles on inferior
foundations without bad settlements; the Egyptians provided for them by
building such walls in sections with inclined straight joints at
intervals.
M. Blanchet, writing of the walls of the cities of Gaul, says: “Often
the curtains are not bonded with the towers. This independence reminds
one of a precept of Philo’s, which advises that the method should be
followed so as to prevent the consequences of unequal settlement between
the two. But there is a more simple explanation—the town under immediate
danger ensures itself first with the curtain and adds the towers after.
Most of the fortifications are those which the Romans built on the
approach of the Barbarian invasions. To this period belong the walls of
Rome and those of the cities of Gaul.” Choisy again has an interesting
account of the towers of the walls of Constantinople, with a diagram of
arches in the sides of the towers at the ground level, which were built
so that the effective part of their foundations should be kept clear of
the wall. Now, the foundations of the London bastions provide evidence
of a similar way of thinking.
[Illustration:
FIG. 31.
]
In Fig. 31 I give a sketch of this angle bastion made on July 5, 1909.
Here is seen the City Wall curving round from the north to the west, and
against it the bastion. The Roman wall was badly cracked and leaning
outward (A); in the corner by the bastion the plinth and the foundation
are seen, and below a sloping bank of wet clay (C), and farther out
water (W). The bastion was built of rubble, and was hollow to the base;
the form was different below and above (see B). In the sketch the tile
courses are seen going through the thickness of the wall.
The bastions which have been most carefully examined are those on the
site of the General Post Office, described in _Archæologia_, lxiii.
(1912). One is said to have been built in “the usual manner of random
rubble”; it was separate from the City Wall, and the foundation was
deeper than that of the wall. A second was built in a very soft spot.
“Why it should have been selected is not easy to see, as at a little
distance either way the builders could have found firm soil.” Its site
was an old stream bed, and the conditions might well be the cause of a
settlement at the point. This, as suggested above, may have been the
reason the bastion was erected just here. (For the bastion by Giltspur
Street, see _S. A. Proceedings_, 2 S. xxii. 476.)
[Illustration:
FIG. 32.
]
Nothing very definitely Roman was found in these bastions, but one at
All Hallows was certainly Roman. This is described as (I condense)
“built of stonework which, like the rest, so far as they have been
observed, is of random rubble, built principally of irregular pieces and
ragstone with portions of Roman tile (none complete) and other material;
much of it appears to have done duty in some previous building. A base
was formed of large square stones a uniform height of 2 ft.; they had
been employed in some former building; several had lewis holes. This
base rested on a table of large flat stones 9 in. thick. Most of these
seem to have been portions of a cornice. Roman origin was shown by red
mortar in which the joints had been set.” The foundation was about 3 ft.
below that of the City Wall, and projected into the original Roman
ditch. What is called the “table” above was a square-fronted lower base;
the back of this base was set in advance of the City Wall; indeed, it
was 3 ft. in front of it on the eastern side and “the gravel in this
intervening space was undisturbed.” This gap is specially to be noted.
The description of the masonry as random rubble must apply mainly to the
core of the work, for the illustrations show an approximation to courses
on the face; indeed, on the east side, thirteen courses may be counted
in the photograph up to a line which seems to be the top of a sloping
plinth; these courses averaged about 4½ in. high. The full significance
of this account is only brought out on comparing it with Price’s
description of what was found in excavating the Camomile Street bastion.
This bastion was founded on two deep courses of heavy stones taken from
Roman buildings, many sculptured, and having lewis holes in them. These
masonry courses were set 1½ ft. in advance of the City Wall, one over
the other, forming a straight joint, and leaving a gap “separated from
the wall by an intervening space filled with rubble” (Price) which was
filled with small stones. This curious and carefully-arranged
construction in both bastions was clearly with the object of making the
foundations of the bastions take their bearings away from the wall so
that they would tend to lean inwards against the wall; it is analogous
to the arches of the Constantinople towers. This bastion had a batter or
slope at the bottom of about 4 ft. high. Price describes the masonry as
“rag rubble walling faced with random courses. The size of the blocks of
which the facing was composed varied from 3 in. to 8½ in. thick [high]
and from 5 in. to 14 in. long.” This account is supported by the
carefully-executed illustrations which show coursed facings of small
stones which seem almost identical with the facings of the City Wall.
Such masonry of small facing “blocks” with concreted rubble behind is
certainly Roman. The masonry at the All Hallows bastion seems to have
approximated to the same character; there it may be noticed the courses
became narrower upwards. This was certainly not so regular as the
masonry of the City Wall, but it may be said to have resembled it (Fig.
32).
At the Guildhall Museum is “a group of architectural remains and
fragments of sculptured stones from tombs, public buildings, etc., found
in a bastion of London Wall, Duke Street, Aldgate, 1881.” This find is
best described in _The Athenæum_ for that year. Mr. Watkins, while
excavating in Houndsditch and Duke Street, found the City Wall and a
mass of masonry extending 18 ft. outward from the wall; the stones were
dressed and weighed from 1 cwt. to 1½ tons. “In the structure he
observed a channel 15 in. deep by 18 in. wide, which showed signs of use
as a watercourse. It had been filled with concrete composed of chalk and
flints. The site was the foundation of one of the bastions composed of
sculptured stones in character similar to those previously recorded,
upwards of twenty in number.” This was the second bastion east of
Bishopsgate. The channel filled with concrete suggests a gap dividing
the bastion from the City Wall as already described; but see also
account in _V.C.H._
In 1887 Mr. Loftus Brock reported to the British Archæological
Association the removal of part of the City Wall on the east side of
Wormwood Street. Nearly opposite Bevis Marks Synagogue the foundation of
a circular-fronted bastion was found of worked freestones and not bonded
into the main wall (_The Builder_, May 28, 1887). A paper by J. E. Price
in 1884 (London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc.) referred to the discovery
of a bastion containing several sculptured stones in St. Mary Axe (_The
Builder_, November 22, 1884, and compare _V.C.H._).
[Illustration:
FIG. 33.
]
In 1852 an excavation was made against the outside of the City Wall on
Tower Hill, and a number of large wrought and carved stones were found
(_The Builder_, September 4, 1852) (Fig. 33). In an account given in the
_Journal of the British Archæological Association_ the workmen are said
to have discovered a “complete quarry of stones cut in various forms and
evidently belonging to some important building ... 125 making 40 cart
loads.” Fairholt made an etching of the place while the work was in
progress, which shows that the “quarry” was heaped against the external
face of the wall like the bases of the other bastions, and that, in
fact, it was a ruined bastion Fig. 34 from Roach Smith’s _Roman London_,
slightly modified). Another account is given in the Antiquarian Etching
Club by A. H. Burkitt, with a plate: “These interesting remains were
discovered during the excavations in June 1852, which laid bare the wall
to its base. The various portions of stone, which amounted to about
forty cart loads, bear evidence of having belonged to an important
building. The inscription and band of laurel leaves, which probably
formed an ornament above it, indicate a monument of considerable
magnitude to the memory of a commander of the Roman Navy. There were
found at the same time fragments of frescoes with inscriptions.” (In
Fig. 33 the fragment with laurel leaves is represented upside down.)
[Illustration:
FIG. 34.
]
The two stones specially mentioned are now in the British Museum. It
appears from the accounts and illustrations that this bastion was built
against the wall without being bonded to it in the lower part, that its
foundation was formed of large carved and moulded stones, and was at a
lower level than that of the wall. (The part below the plinth in Fig. 34
on the left is rough foundation.)
We thus have clear record that several of the bastions on the east and
north sides of the City were constructed in a similar way. Those farther
west near the Post Office were probably rebuilt in mediæval times. These
were hollow at the base, not solid like the others.
[Illustration:
FIG. 35.
]
The towers of the city wall of Carcassone, described by Viollet le Duc
(_Dict._, vol. i.), were so similar in construction that it is plain our
bastions were constructed according to general custom. In the
illustration we see big stones at the base of the bastion only; large
window-like openings closed with woodwork above; and an upper storey
rising higher than the wall top. Fig. 35 is a suggested restoration of
one of the London bastions, showing the foundation gap A, and an upper
storey overlapping the City Wall.
It is probable that most, or all, of the bastions from Tower Hill to
Cripplegate were built in the same way as those just described, and
there is evidence to suggest that the western bastions were also
similar. In 1806 fragments of Roman monuments were found near Ludgate;
“these may have come from a later Roman gate or from the adjoining
bastion” (_V.C.H._). Allen says: “At the back of the London
Coffee-house, Ludgate Hill, a circular tower and staircase was
discovered; and about 3 ft. below the pavement some remains of Roman art
were found.” An etching of the stones published by T. Fisher in 1807
describes them as “dug out of the foundations of the wall of the City, a
few yards north of Ludgate.” Archer, speaking of an inscribed pedestal,
says it was found “in extending the premises at the back of the London
Coffee-house. It appeared in a bastion of the City Wall, and was built
in with the masonry near some remains of a circular staircase” (_Illust.
Family Jour._, _c._ 1850). Now, Horwood’s plan of 1799 shows the back of
the Coffee-house adjoining the line of the old wall and extending a long
way north—apparently much more than sufficient to overlap the bastion
numbered 55 on Mr. Reader’s plan. The Post Office excavations recently
made down Ludgate Hill show that the natural ground is here only about
10 ft. below the modern level.
The Camomile Street and All Hallows bastions were about 20 ft. wide and
projected about 16 ft. In mediæval days the bastions rose above the
parapet walk on the main wall, and each formed a round-ended chamber
having loopholes. This is well shown on the Survey of Holy Trinity,
Aldgate, 1592, which I published about 1900 in _Middlesex Notes and
Queries_. (Several round-fronted bastions are planned as well as Aldgate
itself.) The mediæval arrangement, I have no doubt, followed the Roman
scheme. The openings in the original bastions would, we may suppose,
have been wider than mediæval loops, and have had semicircular arches of
brick over them. (See Viollet le Duc’s _Dictionary_, vol. i. p. 333.)
The walls and bastions which still exist at Le Mans and Senlis more
closely resemble those of Londinium than any others I have seen. At Le
Mans a long portion fronting, but some way back from the river Sarthe,
has three bastions 60 yds. to 70 yds. apart, round on the front about 20
ft. wide, and 15 in. or 16 in. projection. The curtain is about 30 ft.
high, and the bastions rise higher—say, to 45 ft.; they rise sloping for
some way from the ground (Fig. 36). The bastions at Senlis are very
similar, but some of these have two storeys of large openings, three in
each.
[Illustration:
FIG. 36.
]
For a long time it was argued that the bastions of the Wall of London
were mediæval; then very considerable difference of construction from
the City Wall has been alleged. It has been said that their masonry was
unlike the other, and that there were no tile bands. We only know with
any certainty the lower parts of the bastions now recognised as Roman,
and there is no reason for asserting that there were no tile bands in
the upper parts. The bastion illustrated by Roach Smith from a sketch by
Gough had bands of brick, but in the illustration this bastion appears
as square, and this is unlikely (see _Archæol._ lxiii.). It is possible,
however, that the form is a misreading of a rough sketch. This, I think,
is more likely than the suggestion in _V.C.H._ that it was mediæval. An
illustration of a round-fronted bastion near Falcon Square given by
Thornbury (_Old and New London_), shows two bands of tile. This seems to
be bastion 40 of _V.C.H._, which was about 40 ft. high; “in the upper
part was a row of tile-brick, probably due to later patching.” There are
also some other references to tiles in bastions, and on the whole I
conclude that they probably had tile bands more or less like the wall.
Both the bastion just mentioned and that of Gough’s sketch had openings
below the upper storey, showing that in these bastions there were
chambers below the level of the parapet. So there must have been at Le
Mans (Fig. 36) and Senlis. Compare also V. le Duc’s _Dictionary_, vol.
i. p. 333.
In an article on the City Walls in the _Journal of the London Society_
(November 1922), Dr. Norman says: “Last summer the remains of another
bastion were laid bare not far from the west end of the Church of St.
Anne and St. Agnes.” This was “the inner angle bastion” near Aldersgate.
It is not exactly known when the City was protected by walls. Stow says:
“It seemeth not to have been walled in the year of our Lord 296, because
in that year the Franks easily entered London.” He accepted the legend
that “Helen, the mother of Constantine, first enwalled this City.”
Camden held the same view, and has a note: “Coins of Helena often found
under the walls.”
It is now agreed that the walls were built around a late and extended
city, for rubbish pits and burials have been found within the walls. A
belt of the former occupied the site of St. Paul’s and the Post Office.
It was Roach Smith’s impression that the walls were probably built
“after the recovery of the province by Constantine, or even later, when
Theodosius restored the towns” (_Archæol. Jour._, 1844).
Mr. Lambert, from planning the find-spots of Roman coins, comes to the
conclusion that the wall was not in its later position until the fourth
century. The type of walling is especially characteristic of the fourth
century. Haverfield has pointed out some earlier cases of the use of
bonding tiles, but these seem to be exceptional. (See also what is said
of Colchester in _J.R.S._, 1919.) Daremberg and Saglio give 309 as the
date of the earliest wall of our kind in Rome. (They illustrate an
example from Timgad, in North Africa, which closely resembles the wall
of London.) I suggest that a point of evidence may be found in the
Constantinian coin, which has a city gate or fortification for device,
and the inscription PROVIDENTIAE CAESS, with the mint mark of London
(Fig. 37). This device was not invented for London, but I cannot think
that at such a time it could have been adopted if Londinium still
remained an open city—it would have invited too obvious irony after what
had happened in 296. This coin was issued between 320 and 324, and I
suggest that it may be accepted as a record of the walling of the City,
or, perhaps more probably, the beginning of the works. The coins of
Helen mentioned by Camden were issued about this time. In the later half
of the fourth-century London acquired the title of Augusta, and this
change of style probably followed on the change of status of its having
then been completely walled. (I find that Mr. Reg. Smith has already
made this same suggestion in _V.C.H._) Sir Arthur Evans has recently
called attention to a silver coin of Valentinian the Elder as having in
an abbreviated form the monetary stamp of _Londinensis Augusta_. “A
group of coins shows that the Mint at London, which had been closed
since the time of Constantine, was restored by Valentinian in A.D. 368”
(_Proceedings, S. A._, 1915, p. 105). I suggest that this is a probable
date for the completion of the river wall. Several of the cities of Gaul
were protected by walls at a still later time.
[Illustration:
FIG. 37.
]
Many of the carved fragments found in the bastions can be little earlier
than the year A.D. 300. The important monuments of which remnants have
been found must have been destroyed when the long, wide strip required
for the original wall and its ditch was cleared, for the bastions
themselves did not go beyond this ground. It seems possible that the big
stones were reserved for founding bastions; this is more likely than
that distant monuments were destroyed to provide foundation stones.
“To put an end to incessant pillage the Gallo-Roman towns sacrificed
their faubourgs, and, retrenching their extent, surrounded themselves
with strong walls, which were very often supported on sculptured blocks
taken from destroyed edifices. Le Mans, like the towns of Senlis, Tours,
Autun, Bourges, Fréjus, etc., girded itself with ramparts flanked with
round-fronted towers, of which important remains still exist, especially
along the river Sarthe. The _enceinte_ of Le Mans enclosed an area about
500 by 200 metres” (A. Ledru, 1900).
[Illustration:
FIG. 38.
]
_Gates._—The excavations of 1903 at the Old Bailey revealed some
remnants of the Roman gate on the site of Newgate. The most significant
of these was a portion of plinth on the City side, with a return at the
south end. This, as shown in _Archæologia_, lix., by Dr. P. Norman, when
linked up with earlier discoveries made in 1875, allowed of the recovery
of the plan of the gate (Fig. 38). The plinth had been removed from its
place before I saw it, but the stones were certainly shaped in Roman
days; they had a chamfer 8 in. wide, with a square face of similar width
below, and they had been strongly cramped together; one had a “return
end,” and clearly came from a corner (A and B). A portion of the western
plinth was discovered in 1909 (_Archæol._ lxiii.). The gate, with its
towers on either side, had a frontage of about 96 ft.—probably 100 Roman
feet, as a Roman foot was about 11·60 in. The space between the towers
appears to have been about 35 ft., which is not more than sufficient for
two large archways. The great gate at Colchester, which was about 107
ft. wide, had two carriage-ways 17 ft. wide, and two small side openings
6 ft. wide as well (see _J.R.S._, 1919). Enough of the walling was found
in 1875 to show that the London gate was of stone bonded with tiles; it
was erected on a thick platform of “clay and ragstone,” which raised the
plinth about 5 ft. above the plinth of the adjoining City Wall. Fig. 39
is a restoration of the front.
[Illustration:
FIG. 39.
]
Several years ago a mass of masonry with a face to the south was found
under Bishopsgate Street a little within the line of the wall;
underlying it was “puddling of flint and clay” over a wide area. It was
suggested at the time (_Archæeol._ lx. p. 58) that this masonry and
foundation might have belonged to Roman Bishopsgate, and the finding of
what seems to have been a similar platform at Newgate strengthens the
hypothesis. It had long ago been pointed out by T. Wright that the gate
at Lymne was raised on a platform of big stones. At Lymne and Pevensey
entrance gates had round-fronted towers, and the great gate at
Colchester had quadrants.
Mediæval Aldgate had two round-fronted towers; these are shown in the
Survey of Holy Trinity Priory mentioned above, and they are so similar
to the bastions of the wall that I was led to suggest that the double
gateway and towers were probably substantially Roman work (Fig. 40).
Some confirmation of this is given in _V.C.H._, but compare
_Archæologia_, xliii. Fitzstephen, writing at the end of the twelfth
century, says that London had “double gates,” and this was doubtless so
from Roman days.
[Illustration:
FIG. 40.
]
The Roman ditch outside Aldersgate, with a foundation for a bridge
pointing towards the gate, was found about thirty years ago, and this is
evidence for a Roman gate on this site (_Archæol._ lii.). Ludgate is
guaranteed as Roman by the antiquity of the Strand and Fleet Street.
Stow says that in 1595 he observed on the north side of Fleet Street
from Chancery Lane to St. Dunstan’s Church, 4 ft. below the surface, “a
pavement of hard stone, more sufficient than the first, under which they
found in the made ground piles of timber almost close together, the same
being black as pitch and rotten, which proved that the ground there, as
sundry other places of the City, had been a marsh.” Close piling was
such a common Roman procedure that it may not be doubted that what Stow
observed was the Roman road to Ludgate.
Mediæval Aldgate can be restored very fully by comparing the plan
mentioned above with the view of the City given by Braun and Hogenberg
(_c._ 1550). The gate is so accurately represented that two stair
turrets appear over the positions where stairs are shown in the plan. If
this gate is so accurately drawn, then the other indications may be
accepted. In the Pepys collection, Cambridge, is an engraved view of a
gate dated 1688; in the list of contents this is described as
Cripplegate, but I believe it is rather Bishopsgate. It was an unaltered
mediæval structure, with corbelled battlements and three statues in
niches, one on each of the towers and one in the centre. Newgate is also
represented in a woodcut view of about the same time, and in an
engraving of considerable accuracy, from a book entitled _Herba
Parietis_; here even Whittington’s coat-of-arms plainly appears. For a
possible view of the Bridge gate, _c._ 1416, see an article by Mr. Weale
in the _Burlington Magazine_, 1904.
A Roman road on piles has recently been found in Southwark (_Archæol._
lxiii.). Adding the Bridge gate, we now have evidence for the existence
in Roman days of the six chief gates of Londinium. It has been suggested
that there may have been an earth bank inside the walls, as at
Silchester, but the different relation of the fronts of the gates to the
walls in London are contrary arguments.
_Ditches._—When the site of Newgate was excavated I saw the slope of the
ditch clearly defined by the blacker earth lying above the clean yellow
gravel. The latest and clearest account of the ditches is in
_Archæologia_, lxiii. There was first a narrow V-shaped ditch dug when
the wall was first built. A second wider ditch was excavated outside the
other, which was at least partly filled when the bastions were built.
There were similar double ditches at Silchester, and it has been pointed
out that there the earlier V-shaped ditch probably supplied the gravel
for building the wall; possibly this was the case at London too. The
wide ditch was probably further expanded in front of the gates; it was
about 75 ft. wide at the top of the bank outside Aldersgate.
_The Original Port of London and the Bridge._—The space within the
completed walls has been computed to have been about 330 acres by Dr.
Philip Norman. Dr. Haverfield says: “At London, Silchester, Trier,
Cologne, the walls seem to have enclosed the town at near its largest”
(_Romanization_). Roach Smith first remarked that from the position of
burials within the area of the City we might infer the position of an
earlier Londinium. Loftus Brock also, following Woodward, in pointing
out that the northern cemetery had come within the space enclosed by the
City Wall at Bishopsgate, used the same argument. Mr. Reginald Smith
plotted all the known burials on a plan. Mr. Lambert has also laid down
the find spots of coins of different dates. In his recent paper in
_Archæology_ he suggests that a stratum of charred material between
London Bridge and the Walbrook represents the early Londinium destroyed
by Boadicea. A large number of rubbish pits have been found within the
walls. Putting these facts together it is evident that the original site
of Londinium must have been by the inlet of the Walbrook, and it is
probable that this little tidal creek was the first port of London—the
seaport of Celtic Verulam, to which an old road led by Aldersgate and
Islington. It is likely that before the Roman walls were built some
defensive bank would have been thrown up between the Fleet and the
Walbrook; compare the earth banks at Colchester. Can Barbican represent
such a defence?
London Bridge is mentioned in the tenth century. Stow tells us that it
was first of timber. Then in 1067 a charter speaks of “Botolph’s Gate,
with a wharf which was at the head of London Bridge.” He goes on: “About
the year 1176 the stone bridge was begun near unto the bridge of timber,
but towards the west, for Botolph’s wharf was, in the Conqueror’s time,
at the head of London Bridge.”
Nothing was known of a Roman bridge until last century. Then when the
old stone bridge was destroyed evidence was found which convinced
observers of the time that a Roman bridge had preceded it on the same
line. Recently some writers, while accepting the Roman bridge as proved,
have preferred to put it back to Stow’s line. Haverfield says: “No
traces of a Roman bridge have yet been found (_Archæologia_, lx.): the
oldest mediæval bridge (eleventh century) is said by Stow to have been
near Botolph’s wharf (see plan).” This plan shows the bridge “temp.
William the Conqueror” far to the east of Fish Street Hill (see also
_V.C.H._). Exactly what Haverfield meant by saying that no traces of the
bridge had been found is hard to say; it seems to have been as loose a
statement as the one which seems to imply that the earliest mediæval
bridge was of the eleventh century.
Roach Smith, a cautious observer, was entirely convinced by the evidence
that the mediæval bridge followed the course of the Roman bridge.
“Throughout the line of the old bridge many thousands of Roman coins,
with abundance of Roman pottery, were discovered, and beneath some of
the central piles brass medallions of Aurelius, Faustina and Commodus.
The enormous quantity of Roman coins may be accounted for by the
practice of the Romans ... they may have been deposited upon the
building or repairs of the bridge, as well as upon the accession of a
new emperor.... The beautiful works of art which were discovered
alongside the foundations, the colossal bronze head of Hadrian, the
bronze images of Apollo, Mercury, Atys ... and other relics were
possibly thrown into the river by early Christians” (_Archæol. Jour._,
vol. i.). This seems substantial evidence. The charter cited by Stow
only speaks of a wharf as being at the head of London Bridge; it does
not tell us that the bridge ran into the middle of the wharf. The Roman
bridge was linked up with an approach from the south over a raised
causeway; the bridge-ends would have required much consolidation, and
the foundations in the great tidal river must have been extremely
difficult to construct. We should need very clear demonstration before
we could believe that the early Saxons did more than patch up the work
of skilled Roman engineers. Altering of the bridge to the Gracechurch
Street line on the City side in 1176 would have meant replanning on a
big scale. The ancient line of approach on the south side is guaranteed
by the area of Roman finds (see _V.C.H._ plan). Gracechurch Street is
known to have existed before the Conquest, and the positions of the
ancient churches of St. Magnus’s and St. Olaf’s at each end of the
bridge are significant: the bridge, I believe, was in the parishes of
these two churches.
Much more might be said, but I cannot think it is necessary. I conclude
that the Roman bridge followed the line between the “Borough” and
Gracechurch Street, and that the phrase in the charter was nothing more
than a general indication of the position of the wharf.
After the building of the Roman bridge, Billingsgate may have succeeded
the Walbrook creek as the chief port of London.
One of the sights of Londinium which may best be imagined is the
approach over the bridge. Or we may think of the ring of turreted walls
of the City by the river as seen from the northern heights. Or, again,
we may think of the sights from the walk on the City Walls; the Kent
hills beyond the Thames estuary, with ships coming up to make fast at
Dowgate; then, turning to look inward over the City, we may imagine the
narrow streets and plastered, red-tiled, houses. It must have been grim
and grey when the roofs were covered with snow, and we may wonder what
dwellers from the south thought of our fogs. Yet Londinium was a
romantic city, a little Rome in the west, and we want some good story
about it which shall bring it out of archæology into the minds of the
citizens and the hearts of the children.
[Illustration:
FROM A CARVING ON AN ALTAR AT RISINGHAM.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER IV+
CEMETERIES AND TOMBS
“O more than mortal man that did this town begin, Whose knowledge
found the plot so fit to set it in. Built on a rising bank within a
vale to stand, And for thy healthful soil chose gravel mixed with
sand.”
DRAYTON’S _Polyolbion_.
CEMETERIES
THE site of London by a noble tidal river, or rather at the head of a
long estuary, on clean gravel ground intersected with streams, was well
chosen. The ground was open heath with scrubby vegetation, except for
woods here and there where the soil was suitable. Sir Thomas More
planned his “Utopia” on a site similar to that of London. The buildings
of London have spoilt an excellent golf course! The walled city set down
in the fair land must have been beautiful indeed, as seen from the
Hampstead or Surrey hills. On approaching the turreted walls by the
straight and narrow roads, the traveller would have had to pass through
a wide belt of cemeteries. Around Londinium in its later state, the
gardens of the dead would have come right up to the city ditch, just as
at Constantinople the beautiful Turkish cemeteries, with their noble
cypresses, lie close beside the walls of the city.
“Around Rome was a great belt of cemeteries; the sides of the main roads
issuing from the gates were especially favoured sites; the chief region
of all was that crossed by the Via Appia and Via Latina” (Lanciani).
“An immense field of the dead had extended all along the north-eastern
quarter of ancient London, from Wapping Marsh to the fen beyond
Moorfields” (C. Knight).
Goodman’s Fields, Moorfields, Spitalfields, were all cemeteries, and it
is curious that they all have in common the name of fields. In the
valley of the Fleet River by Ludgate and Blackfriars on the west were
also cemeteries; and others lay beyond Southwark (Battersea Fields and
St. George’s Fields?). The city of the dead must have been impressive on
account of its extent and the number of its population, and doubtless it
was beautiful. The harsh horror of modern cemeteries is a new thing on
the earth. In antiquity, cemeteries had beauty, poetry, history.
The monuments of Londinium would have been of many kinds, small and
big—columns, sculptures, mausolea, altar-tombs, tomb-houses, and steles
or slabs. These tombs were not cold and pale, but profusely carved, and,
doubtless, in most cases, coloured. The monuments in the museum at
Trèves show many traces of colour—red, green and yellow, if I remember
aright. Dr. Ashby recently described a huge Roman necropolis at Syracuse
in words which might apply to Londinium. “Fragments of memorials were
found, varying from simple steles and columns to the chapel with rich
architectural forms, the decorative portions being in soft limestone
with considerable traces of polychromy.” Painting over coarse soft stone
was a general tradition, and bright colour liberally applied would
greatly change the aspect of rather crude carvings. At Bath an
inscription mentions the repair and repainting of a building. This might
be internal painting, but it was an external inscription and probably
included outside work. The Corinthian temple at Bath was decorated with
colour on the exterior. Mr. Irvine says of a piece of the cornice:
“Considerable portions of the red paint with which it had been covered
remained among the carving.”
Finds of burials are still not infrequent in London; as specimen cases I
quote two recent newspaper clippings: “A workman excavating in Cannon
Street Road, Stepney, has unearthed an urn containing bones at a depth
of 2 ft. below the road level; Sir C. H. Read observed that it provided
a link in the track of the Roman road eastward, as the custom was to
deposit these urns at the sides of the roads” (December 19, 1919). “The
discovery of two Roman urns in Mansell Street, Goodman’s Fields, is of
considerable importance. The urns were found about 10 ft. below the
garden of a house. Both contained inner cinerary urns with calcined
remains. The perfect one resembles an ordinary jar with a cover; the
outer urn is perfectly round, and has handles on each side by the mouth.
It is believed that the site was that of a Roman villa; bricks and tiles
having been discovered in other parts of the site” (1913). The urns are
now in the London Museum.
The actual monuments once on the east of the City are represented by the
fragments found in the Tower Hill bastion; those to the north, by the
stones found in the Camomile Street and other bastions; those on the
west, by the soldier’s monument found at Ludgate Hill by Wren, by later
discoveries near Ludgate Hill, in 1806, and the fragment of the monument
of Celsus found on the Blackfriars site.
_Steles._—A memorial slab in the Guildhall Museum is particularly
interesting, as it is obviously in the tradition of Hellenistic art. It
is a true stele of the usual small scale, about 2 ft. wide and 2½ ft.
high; it bears a relief sculpture of a soldier in a panel bordered by
pilasters and finished with a pedimental top (Fig. 41). This broken slab
is in the reserve collection and is not usually visible, nor is it in
the catalogue; the supposition is that it was found in one of the
bastions with so many other remnants of tombs. It must, I think, be one
of the earliest Roman monuments discovered in London.
[Illustration:
FIG. 41.
]
At the Guildhall is shown a sculptured slab thus described: “Monumental
tablet, marble, bearing in relief the figure of a man armed with a
trident and sword (?), and having a shield-like protection to the upper
portion of his left arm; above is a fragmentary inscription; Greek; 21¾
× 15½ × 3½ in.: Tottenham Court Road.” It was illustrated in an early
volume of _Archæologia_ (xi. p. 48). On the original drawing at the
Society of Antiquaries is written: “This white marble slab was found by
Mr. Miller among the ruins of a house at Islington. It is now fixed up
on the front of a warehouse in High Timber Street, near Labour-in-Vain
Hill.” (This was south of Thames Street in the City.) The inscription is
given by Hübner. With the writer in _V.C.H._, we may doubt whether this
slab is not an importation like the Arundel Marbles; but other works in
white marble will be described in this section, and gladiators were well
known in Londinium (Fig. 42).
[Illustration:
FIG. 42.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 43.
]
In the British Museum is a small stele with a well-carved relief of a
man heavily draped in a dignified pose and classical taste, and also
having a Greek inscription. This stone slab is little more than 1 ft.
wide by about 2½ ft. high (Fig. 43). It was obtained in 1911, but it was
drawn by Archer about eighty years ago. It was found in White’s Conduit
Fields, that is, near Lamb’s Conduit Street. This, too, has a Greek
inscription of which I can only make out the last word and a few other
letters:
. . . . . ΟC
. . . . . ΟΥ
. . Ε ΧΑΙΡΕ
The last word is Farewell. I have felt some doubt as to this really
pretty little work being a London antiquity. My sketch is given from
Archer’s drawing. Although he may have restored it to some degree, it is
probable that it has suffered from decay since he drew it. Other Greek
inscriptions have been found in Britain.
There is another stele at the Guildhall which is so similar in several
respects to the one just described that it might have been carved in the
same shop. It is described in the catalogue as a “Monumental slab,
limestone, on which is represented a figure of a man and child; the
former is clothed in a toga, the folds of which he is holding in his
left hand; 26 × 13½ × 2¼ in.” That two slabs so much alike should be
discovered in one city, is a strong argument in favour of their having
originated there. Notice, further, how the little pediment over the
British Museum slab resembles that of the slab of the soldier first
described. Again, the wide, plain margins are like those of the
Gladiator slab. The evidence seems to be in favour of our accepting all
the four slabs described as truly London works.
In the British Museum (the Roman corridor) is a tall inscribed slab of
the headstone type, about 6½ ft. high (Fig. 44). We may see clearly that
it is a descendant of the steles by noting a few little points. It has
the side pilasters and a pediment on which some lumps carry on the
tradition of acroteria. An inscription occupies the field where the
steles have sculptured reliefs, and a lower space is occupied by a
festoon. From the inscription, NA ATIENI, it seems that it commemorated
a man born in Athens. This slab is especially like a large stele at
Cirencester which had two panels, the upper one having a relief and the
lower an inscription. Proportions, pilasters, pediment are all like our
London slab. Haverfield assigned the Cirencester slab to the end of the
first century, and the London one can only be a little later. The
inscription terminates with the early formula: H[IC] S[ITUS] EST.
[Illustration:
FIG. 44.
]
This slab is much weathered and it stands at the Museum in a bad light,
where it is difficult to make out the details. Running stems, with
flowers on the pilasters, are quite pretty (Fig. 45), and, indeed, the
whole thing has dignity. The lettering was free and doubtless more
elegant than the painted forms now suggest.
Several larger memorial slabs have been found in London which had big
reliefs of soldiers. One at the Guildhall and another at Oxford will be
described under sculpture. There are two fragments in the British Museum
which may stand for the type and be discussed here. One is a head a
little less than life-size, part of a standing figure in a round-topped
recess. Above is an inscription naming Celsus a _speculator_; it was
found at Blackfriars in 1876 (_The Builder_). This much-injured fragment
appears very rude, but the others of this class were competent works of
sculpture. The second is only a head now in the upper gallery at the
Museum; both were probably works of the first half of the second
century. Four _known_ examples of this type must represent many—perhaps
dozens which once existed.
[Illustration:
FIG. 45.
]
At the Guildhall is a fragment of sepulchral sculpture, which may have
been part of a larger monument rather than of a stele, but I will speak
of it here. Just enough remains to allow of the restoration of the
scheme. A winged Cupid at the end of a panel which doubtless bore an
inscription, would have been one of a pair. The Cupid holds an ivy-leaf,
symbol of the grave, and above is a festoon with a bird perched on it
(Fig. 46). Two or three grave slabs at Chester with reliefs of
sepulchral banquets have similar festoons and birds which must have had
symbolic reference to an after-life.
[Illustration:
FIG. 46.
]
A much-battered fragment of relief sculpture at the Guildhall may, I
think, be a remnant of a sepulchral banquet; it shows the upper part of
a man in a recess with the point of what looks like the arm of the usual
sofa-like bench behind him.
_Chests and Coffins._—In earlier Roman Britain bodies were cremated and
the ashes disposed in urns, lead boxes, and in other ways. There is in
the British Museum a truly magnificent urn of hard porphyry-like stone
which was found in Warwick Square. At the Guildhall is part of a
sarcophagus-like chest about 2 ft. by 2½ ft. (Fig. 47). Its discovery
was recorded by Price thus: “A coped stone of a marble tomb has been
discovered near to the west door of St. Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate;
associated with it was a coin of Constantine Junior, A.D. 317-340”
(_London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Trans._, vol. v. 413). The material
has shining particles, and seems to be white marble. In this respect it
should be compared with the gladiator relief already described, and the
fine Clapton sarcophagus mentioned below. The association with the coin
must have been accidental, for this chest cannot, I think, be later than
the second century. It would have contained an urn holding burnt bones;
compare a rude stone cist from Harpenden in the British Museum.
[Illustration:
FIG. 47.
]
An excellent account of London graves is given in _V.C.H._ Stow
described the finds in Spitalfields in his day thus: “Divers coffins of
stone, and the bones of men without coffins, and great nails of iron
were found a quarter of a yard long. I beheld the bones of a man lying,
his head north, and round about some such nails, wherefore I considered
them to be the nails of his coffin.” Many plain coffins of stone have
been found in the City and suburbs. In an old MSS. collection which I
have, is the note: “About Dec. 1717, was taken up out of ye ground near
ye new church of Rotherhithe, a stone coffin of prodigious size in which
was ye skeleton of a man 10 foot long” (!). A Minute of the Society of
Antiquaries (July 28, 1725) reads: “An ancient glass vase of bell-shape
found in a stone coffin, 14 ft. under the ground by the portico of St.
Martin’s Church [in the Fields]; ’tis now in Sir Hans Sloan’s
collection.” The “vase” was doubtless one of the little ⊥-shaped
bottles. Price described a stone coffin found in Fleet Lane nearly 8 ft.
long, containing a skeleton in lime.
The wooden coffins must have been still more common. Conyers, about
1670, recorded the finding of one in an excavation at Fleet ditch.
“About ye middle of the new ditch as low as ye bottom of ye old wall
there were found an oak coffin turned black, of boards with bands, a
man’s length from ye old ditch wall, upon the old wharfing, or, as I
suppose, natural ground wharfed upon. In this coffin was a glass vial in
ye fashion ⊥ [an expanded base with long neck], and brass like a hinge,
these lay amongst the bones, the glass I have by me” (Conyer’s MS.).
This was evidently one of the chests described by Mr. Ward: “Wooden
coffins or chests were in common use, as the presence of iron nails,
iron or bronze bindings, hinges, and other mountings prove.” An oak
coffin was found in Moorfields in 1873, the objects from which are now
in the British Museum.
Two stone coffins are preserved in the Guildhall collection. Two
containing lead coffins were found at Pie Corner, St. Bartholomew’s, in
1877 (_London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Trans._, vol. v.). Lead
coffins were usually ornamented, and will be further considered. It is
probable that some of the coffins of wood and of stone were Christian
burials.
The coffins of stone described were roughly wrought, and they were
buried in the ground. Others, however, have been found which are
handsome pieces of workmanship, and bear inscriptions.
[Illustration:
FIG. 48.
]
Three well-decorated stone sarcophagi found in London are at the
Guildhall, the British Museum and Westminster Abbey. The sarcophagus at
the Abbey is the earliest in style. It was found under the green at the
angle between the north transept and the nave in 1869, and now rests by
the entry to the Chapter House. On the cover is a large cross which
seems to have been cut on the old stone in the twelfth century. Yet the
evidence seems to have been against reuse in Christian times. It was the
opinion, however, of the discoverers that it had been moved from its
original site, but it was found close to the presumed Roman road to the
river bank. The front has a panel with an inscription in excellent
lettering, giving the name of Valerius, a superventor in the army, and
beginning MEMORIAE. This form is found in two or three other British
inscriptions, and was frequently used on tombs at Lyons. The Westminster
inscription and the panel in which it is placed are of comparatively
early style, and it is difficult to think that such work can be later
than about A.D. 200. On the other hand, it is said that the new mode of
burial at full length in a sarcophagus was not adopted in Britain until
about A.D. 250. I do not suppose that our example is so late as this.
The front may be compared with a slab in Edinburgh Museum, _c._ A.D. 160
(_J.R.S._, ii. p. 128). The Lyons inscriptions of a similar type are
also of the age of the Antonines. Altogether, I cannot think that the
Westminster tomb is later than A.D. 200. It is possible that it may
first have contained cinerated remains and not have been a sarcophagus
proper.
[Illustration:
FIG. 49.
]
The sarcophagus at the British Museum was found in Haydon Square,
Minories, the site of a part of a cemetery where in 1797 “many curious
fragments of Roman pottery as well as glass vessels were discovered, and
two complete urns with bone ashes, etc., were taken up.” This stone
sarcophagus contained a lead coffin, now also in the British Museum. At
the Society of Antiquaries is an accurate drawing of both made at the
time of the discovery. The cover was securely clamped down with iron
(Fig. 48). At the centre of the front is a simple medallion portrait
head, the rest is filled with flutes (Fig. 49). The outer face of the
cover, which slants up to a ridge, is carved with acanthus leaves (Fig.
50), the inner slanting side is plain, and this shows that it stood in a
building or against a wall. At the two ends are carved baskets of
fruits, and these must be symbolical (Fig. 48). This tomb had no
inscription; it belonged to a time when inscriptions were few. Whether
itself the tomb of a Christian or not, it is of a Christian type, and I
should date it about A.D. 340.
[Illustration:
FIG. 50.
]
The sarcophagus now at the Guildhall was found at Clapton in 1867; it
resembles that last described, and must be very nearly of the same date.
It lay east and west, “the Christian orientation,” as Mr. Reginald Smith
notes. The cover was attached to the lower part by strong iron straps
(cf. Fig. 48). It is described as white marble or oolitic limestone, and
there are many sparkling particles in the material. The front, which is
80 in. long, has a portrait bust at the centre in a circle, above a
panel in which is the inscription, and the rest is filled with vertical
flutings (Fig. 51).
[Illustration:
FIG. 51.
]
The cover is lost, the back and ends are plain, and it probably stood in
a building. The portrait relief is curiously early Christian in
character. The fluting is exceptionally refined and effective. This is a
truly beautiful work, and doubtless if it were in an Italian museum it
would be much better known to Englishmen than it is. A full and
excellent account of it is given by Price (_London and Middlesex
Archæol. Soc. Proceed._, vol. iii.), in which he compared it with some
tombs in the Lateran Museum, showing that it is in the style of early
Christian monuments _c._ 340-50. (The same paper contains descriptions
of several plain stone coffins.)
The inscription on the Clapton tomb was very short, hardly more than
names, and it does not seem to have contained any expression of faith.
The Haydon Square tomb had no inscription. This reticence is
characteristic. “The historical inscriptions of this age can be counted
on the fingers of one hand.... It is curious to find a noteworthy lack
of ordinary sepulchral inscriptions of private persons in the fourth
century; there are very few Christian tombs, but it is much more
surprising to find a lack of those of the ordinary heathen type.
Conceivably fourth-century tombs were handiest for the Saxon invader”
(Sir C. Oman, _England before the Norman Conquest_). Christian
inscriptions are very few in France also; there are not, I believe, half
a dozen of the fourth century existing.
This tomb and the other are good examples of the skilful way in which
forms were obtained in a block of stone without cutting to waste;
observe how the mouldings in Figs. 49 and 50 lie just on the surfaces.
This is a lesson for our own days.
I have felt that this able work in fine material could hardly have had
its origin in Britain, but further consideration suggests that the
balance of evidence is in our favour. We have seen that other works are
in white marble; there are in the British Museum two or three fragments
of white marble slabs, while in the London Museum there is a complete
one. Several fragments of dado linings are also known. In the heyday of
the mosaic pavements there must have been some “firm” of marble
importers in London. The general resemblance of the Clapton sarcophagus
to that found at Haydon Square is strongly in favour of their common
origin. The cover was attached to the receptacle in a similar way with
iron straps in both; in each case the flutes are separated by a sunk
line. The man’s bust is very similar to the upper parts of the figures
on the third and fourth steles above described. Altogether, I could
suppose that both sarcophagi came from one shop, and that they were both
the resting-places of Christians.
[Illustration:
FIG. 52.
]
A number of tablets which have been found must have been fixed in
buildings or against walls. At the British Museum is a small fragment
with a part of an animal incised, probably one of a pair facing a
central object. (Compare the griffins on the enamelled plate found in
London, in the British Museum.) Some of these tablets are of Purbeck and
other native marbles, and this shows that we had competent marble masons
settled here—probably the same as the mosaic workers.
A small tablet, found in Goodman’s Fields, about 12 in. by 15 in., now
at the Society of Antiquaries, was described by Roach Smith as of native
green marble; and a fragment in the British Museum, found in Philpot
Lane, is of green marble. The former (Fig. 52), judging by the wording
of the inscription and style of the lettering, may be dated about A.D.
100.
On the whole, these Roman tombs had dignity and beauty, and a study of
picked examples throughout Britain would be worth making. The lettering
is admirable, and the inscriptions often have a quite human sound which
is touching. The portrait reliefs are competent common work. We should
now have to go to an R.A. for such things, and come away again without
getting them. Some of the symbolic decoration speaks a universal
language; the flowering scroll border and festoon of the slab, and the
baskets of fruits on the sarcophagus, both in the British Museum, are
more than ornaments. A stele at Colchester having a relief of a seated
woman putting away her spinning into her work-box is really poetical.
The sculpture is crude, but the idea is as fresh and beautiful as any
tomb in the world can show.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER V+
SOME LARGER MONUMENTS
“The Cemetery had for years been overcrowded with burned and
unburned burials; rains had caused the mounds to settle and the
ground had resumed its even surface.... I beg you to see that the
earth is raised to a mound again, and to have a smooth slab placed
upon it.”
—SIDONIUS, A.D. 467.
JOVE AND GIANT COLUMNS
A FEW of the more important sepulchral monuments have been reserved for
special consideration. First among these I wish to discuss the fragments
of what I suppose to have been examples of Jove and Giant columns, a
class of monument frequently found on the Continent. These columns, it
has been thought, were not naturalised in Britain. In _Archæologia_,
lxix., Professor Haverfield, calling attention to an inscription at
Cirencester, which seems to have formed part of a small column of the
kind, said that except for this inscription no other evidence had been
found in Britain for the existence of such columns. Again, in another
place, after speaking of figures of the Mother Goddesses, he added, “We
may ascribe to another immigrant the _Colonne au géant_ found at
Cirencester” (_Romanization_). A large number of these monuments has
been found in north-east Gaul. The main element was a decorated column
the capital of which supported a sculptured group of “Juppiter and a
fallen barbarian giant.” Such a column usually stood on a pedestal
having an inscription to the god; around the pedestal were relief
sculptures of several figures, and there were four busts on the capital.
Professor Haverfield, whose description I have been condensing, agreed
with a suggestion made by Mrs. Strong that a fine Corinthian capital at
Cirencester, which has four busts set among the acanthus leafage, may
have belonged to the Jove and Giant pillar. This, however, is negatived
by the scale of the capital as compared with the inscribed stone, which
is only about 1½ ft. square. Further, as he himself allowed, a second
capital similar to the other exists, except for its upper part. Both the
complete capital and the fragment were found on the site of the
Basilica, and we may hardly doubt that both belonged to that building.
[Illustration:
FIG. 53.
]
Jove and Giant pillars, as I have called them, have been exhaustively
treated in a German work (_Hertlein_, 1910). Espèrandieu, in his volumes
on Roman sculptures in Gaul, very fully illustrates two of these
monuments, one at Cussy-la-Colonne, near Autun (2032), and another at
Merten (4425), also a large number of fragments. He describes the Cussy
column as having been about 44 ft. high (including the sculptured group)
and 2 ft. in diameter; the bottom of the pillar was carved in a trellis
pattern (Fig. 53). The column at Merten was about 48 ft. high with a
diameter of 2¼ ft. Under the number 4130, Espèrandieu says of a square
sculptured stone: “It is generally agreed that these ‘four-god stones’
are not altars but pedestals. They supported a second stone, usually of
octagonal form, with representations of the Gods of the Week upon it.
From this rose a column and capital, and, crowning all, a god riding and
crushing under the hoofs of his steed a giant who terminates in two
snakes.” Such columns had a religious significance, and “their
frequency, above all on the banks of the Rhine, is surprising” (No.
4425). A good résumé of what had been said of these monuments was given
by Mrs. Strong in 1911 (_J.R.S._); the general conclusion was that the
Jove of the pillar was a sun and thunder divinity, “A Romanised
sun-god”; the columns embodied “a whole allegory of times and seasons.”
“Hertlein interprets the columns as Irmin-säulen, symbols of the
universe; columns such as, according to Teutonic mythology, supported
the heavens, here typified by Juppiter as lord of the skies.” Some
writers had preferred to see a Roman emperor riding over a barbarian.
In the British Museum there is a carved fragment of a highly decorated
column which, I have little doubt, belonged to a Jove and Giant column.
This stone was found built into the lower part of the City Wall along
the river bank. Roach Smith, in whose collection it was, described it
first in 1844 (_Archæol. Jour._, vol. i.) as: “A portion of a decorated
stone which appears to have formed part of an altar.” Later he visited
the Jove and Giant column near Autun, and in describing it in
_Collectanea Antiqua_ (vol. vi.) he refers to our stone. Subsequently in
the Catalogue of his collection he spoke of the stone as: “Fragment in
green sandstone, with a trellis pattern with leaves and fruit. It
appears to have formed part of a sepulchral monument, and was taken from
the foundations of a Roman wall in Thames Street.” In saying this he
doubtless had the Cussy monument in his mind, for that was understood to
be a sepulchral monument. Our fragment is from a circular shaft which
must have been about 2½ ft. in diameter. The surface is carved over with
a pattern like a trellis of laths, in the interspaces of which appear
leaves and bunches of grapes Fig. 54 is restored from the fragment).
[Illustration:
FIG. 54.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 55.
]
There is another stone in the British Museum which also probably formed
part of a Jove and Giant column (Fig. 55). This was found at Great
Chesterford, an important Roman site in Essex. It is described as a
“Basin with bas-reliefs of the Roman deities.” These figures have long
ago been identified as four of the seven gods of the days of the week
(Thos. Wright). The fragment was made into a basin in modern times; it
is really half of an octagon, and on the top surface appear the sinkings
for two big cramps which linked this to an adjoining similar stone (Fig.
56). For what is known of it, see Roach Smith’s account in _Collectanea
Antiqua_ and the _Journal of the Archæological Association_, vol. iii.
In the latter it is said that it is irregular and not semi-octagonal;
but the breaking down of the upper part into the recesses which contain
the reliefs gives the appearance of irregularity—that is all. The
octagon was 3¾ ft. in diameter. One of the sides was blank. One-half of
this blank side remains, and also half of the opposite side, which
retains enough of the sculpture to show that the figure carried a spear
over the right shoulder. The next figure, going clockwise, was Mercury;
he had a mantle over his left shoulder and carried his wand; points
remaining by his hair show that his cap was winged. The third figure was
Jove, a mature figure with broad breast, bearded head, and long hair.
The fourth figure, who carried a hand-mirror, was Venus. These figures
agree very closely with a set of the planets arranged in similar order
on a mosaic floor found at Bramdean, and by this comparison it is
evident that the one with a spear was Mars. The eighth, or blank, side
followed the figure of Venus, so that the series must have begun with
Saturn, in the Roman way. We may now say that the eight sides contained
figures of the Deities of the Days in proper order: Saturn, Sol, Luna,
Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus.
[Illustration:
FIG. 56.
]
Espèrandieu illustrates two stones from a very similar monument found in
France at D’Yzeures (iv. p. 136). These are the halves of an octagon
about 3 ft. 7 in. across which was built up in courses. One of the
stones comes from a lower course, the other from an upper. The vertical
joints ran from an angle to an angle so that they should not cut through
the sculptures on the sides. These reliefs were “possibly the Divinities
of the Days of the Week.” We have also in England remnants of a similar
sculptured octagon which was built up in courses. These are in
Northampton Museum, and are illustrated in _V.C.H._ One of two stones
shows the tops of the heads of a series of figures, the other stone has
their feet. They are described as “Two fragments of an octagonal
monument having figures in shallow niches, possibly the Deities of the
Days of the Week” (Haverfield, vol. i. p. 181). Both these stones were
of little height, the upper one only contained the crowns of the heads
of the figures and flat curves forming the tops of the niches (compare
Fig. 56).
We are now in a position to restore the Chesterford octagon (Fig. 56).
The heads of the figures on the stone in the British Museum are not
complete, for a bed joint runs just over the eyes, and the crowns of the
heads must have been on another stone, as at Northampton. Two other
courses, at least, beneath what is represented by the existing fragment,
would have been required to complete the figures, and indeed their feet
were possibly on a narrow base-course, as at Northampton. The
Chesterford stone and the fragments at Northampton must represent
important Jove and Giant pillars. The size of the former, it should be
observed, seems most suitable for a column shaft of about 2½ ft. in
diameter, the size of the lattice column represented by the fragment in
the British Museum (Fig. 54), which probably, as said above, was itself
part of a Jove and Giant column. There is thus high probability that
there were important Jove and Giant columns, having pedestals sculptured
with the Deities of the Days, at London, Chesterford and Northampton. If
this is so, such columns must have been frequently erected in Britain,
and we may look for evidences for the existence of others.
[Illustration:
FIG. 57.
]
In vol. iii. of _Collectanea_ Roach Smith illustrated a small highly
decorated column found at Wroxeter, 13 in. in diameter. It was similar
to the Cussy column in having a lattice pattern below and a scale
pattern above. Here and there were little relief subjects—a Cupid and a
youthful Bacchus with grapes. This was probably part of another Jove and
Giant column, or at least of a single sepulchral column; there would
hardly have been more than one so decorated.
Several pieces of small highly decorated columns have been found in
London, which must, I think, have belonged to memorial pillars and not
to edifices. One of these found in the Houndsditch bastion, only 9 in.
in diameter, was decorated with a simple lattice pattern (Fig. 57).
Another is in the London Museum, which, in the part preserved, has a
scale pattern (Fig. 58). A third fragment, at the Guildhall, has again
both lattice and scale patterns (Fig. 59).
[Illustration:
FIG. 58.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 59.
]
Jove and Giant columns were doubtless sepulchral, but they were also
religiously significant. They were intended to suggest ideas of the
conquest of evil powers and of renewal. Dr. Haverfield was, I think,
mistaken in the passage quoted above in speaking of the giant as a
barbarian; he was rather a power of darkness, and this is brought out by
a piece of British evidence. Figures of four such creatures, each
terminating in two serpents, fill the corners of a mosaic floor found at
Horkstow; they support a large circle divided into two rings and a
centre; in the outer ring are Nereids and swimming creatures, in the
inner one little genii with baskets of flowers, etc. The rings are
divided into four parts by radial bands, and the general suggestion must
be of the seasons and the cosmic order. The snake-legged creatures in
the corners are the _Aloadæ_, the giants who attempted to scale Olympus
by putting Pelion on Ossa. They are here in their proper places in the
chaos outside the circle of the ordered world, “the wheel of nature.”
This pavement helps to explain the general idea which led to the
erection of Jove and Giant pillars, and shows that these ideas were
current in Britain. The column is the world-axis set round by planets
and seasons; above, the power of light and order hurls back the giant of
gloom and strife (see Daremberg and Saglio, _Aloadæ_). In the foreign
examples of the sculptured groups which rested on the capitals of the
columns Jove sometimes had a wheel as his weapon, and wheels have been
found carved in Roman altars in Britain. “The sides of two large altars
to Jupiter at Walton House bear the thunderbolt for Jupiter and a wheel,
which possibly equates the Jupiter of these altars with the Gaulish
‘wheel-god’” (Ward). An altar at Housesteads invokes the sun-god. The
Jove and Giant pillars are evidence of a time when the old mythological
names had been refitted to express ideas of good and evil, cosmic
forces, and supposed planetary influences. The mosaic floors, as we
shall see, provide further evidence of what was “higher thought” in
third-century Roman Britain.
[Illustration:
FIG. 60.
]
_Mausolea._—When the bastion of the City Wall in Camomile Street was
destroyed, many sculptured stones from small but very richly decorated
edifices were found. Price recognised that some of them must have
belonged to an important sepulchral monument comparable with the Igel
monument near Trèves. I saw, in 1912, some stones at Trèves which had a
scale pattern cut on a roof-like slope, and soon after my return I
noticed a stone of the same sort in the Guildhall Museum. Without having
Price’s words in my mind I came to the conclusion that in the cemeteries
of Londinium there must have been mausoleum-like monuments of the kind
which the Museum at Trèves had shown me were common in the neighbourhood
of that city. Several of these mausolea are now illustrated in
Espèrandieu’s great work on the Roman sculptures of Gaul. In 1913 I
offered a tentative restoration of a London monument of this type in the
_Architectural Review_.
[Illustration:
FIG. 61.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 62.
]
In Fig. 60 I have roughly sketched two stones at the Guildhall which
evidently came from a mausoleum of the Trèves type, also a course from a
fluted angle pilaster, showing part of an inscription. Compare No. 5153
in Espèrandieu’s work, where we find a similar scale pattern, angle
pilasters bonded in courses with masonry, and the lettering of an
inscription coming close up to the pilaster. Another stone at the
Guildhall has a capital of a small angle pilaster on a similar course.
This capital has heads set amongst the leaves almost exactly like the
capitals of the Igel mausoleum at Trèves (see Fig. 61). Another stone at
the Guildhall is part of a frieze in two bands, the upper one of
festoons and the lower one of trees, and dogs coursing hares (Fig. 62).
Similar hunting subjects are found on foreign monuments; the festoons
and the scale of the work are also appropriate for a structure of the
mausoleum kind, and these five stones may very well have belonged to the
same monument (Fig. 63). On another stone at the Guildhall is part of an
inscription in widely-spaced lines containing the letters ... R LXX,
doubtless part of ANNOR LXX, which actually occurs on the tall headstone
in the British Museum. At least two mausolea are probably represented by
the stones at the Guildhall. Like the Igel monument, they were probably
the tombs of rich merchants. There must have been a large number of
tombs of this type in Britain. Bruce and Roach Smith illustrated and
described foundations of three tombs by the Roman road near High
Rochester, one circular and two square; the first was possibly big
enough to have been a tomb-house. At Bath, some years ago, I noticed a
stone which could only have been part of a square monument (Fig. 64).
This had the tops of the niches cut like shells.
[Illustration:
FIG. 63.
]
Another stone at the Guildhall, found like the others in the Camomile
Street bastion, has a short length of a decorated angle column recessed
as a “nook-shaft” and about a foot in diameter (Fig. 65). This, I think,
must have formed part of a similar monument. (This stone is not, I
think, given by Price, but it appears in an illustration in _J.B.A.A._)
The mausolea of Londinium must have been very similar to the monuments
at Trèves, and it may not be doubted that they would have been coloured
as some of those were coloured. (I have a note that sculpture, as well
as the decorative carving, was coloured.) The braided work of Early
Saxon monuments would have been “picked out” in colour in a similar way,
and I believe that fragments which have been found prove this.
[Illustration:
FIG. 64.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 65.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 66.
]
ALTAR-TOMBS
Another type of tomb, of which many examples exist in the Museum at
Trèves, is an altar-like structure having a square body surmounted by a
slab ending in two big bolster-like rolls covered with scale or leaf
ornament (see Espèrandieu). Tombs of this type have been found in
Pompeii. We have in the British Museum parts of a very fine monument of
this class. One of two stones is a great roll, and another has an
inscription in handsome letters. These were found together in the
foundations of one of the bastions of the City Wall at Tower Hill, as
described in _The Builder_, September 4, 1852. In the illustration which
was reproduced before (Fig. 33), a pile of other stones is shown, one of
which, a moulding with a return, may have been the base of the same
monument. The inscribed stone in the British Museum shows that the body
of the monument was made up of four stones arranged as in the plan (Fig.
66), and cramped together; the size of this part was probably 7 by 5
Roman feet. It was not a sarcophagus, as the form seems to suggest, but
a chest in which an urn containing ashes was placed. The examples at
Trèves show that it was lifted on a high base. The covering part of our
monument was made up of three stones of which one of the two end-pieces
is in the Museum. The two end-pieces had large volute-like rolls similar
to those on altars—for example, the little altar of Diana at Goldsmiths’
Hall. On these altars the central part usually rises again between the
rolls into a gable-like shape, and that this type was followed in our
tomb is shown by several examples at Trèves, as well as by the existing
end stone which was evidently one of three; the little relief decoration
on the remaining edge is suitable to have followed from relief carving
in the central stone (Figs. 66 and 67). This tomb was a work of high
quality, but it is badly shown; the two stones could be set up together
so as to show the size and importance of the monument. If this were done
and the Haydon Square and Clapton sarcophagi were shown with it, we
should obtain a better understanding of the monuments of Londinium.
[Illustration:
FIG. 67.
]
Other memorials had sculptured figures. The hexagonal base of one of
these found at Ludgate in 1806 (see before p. 71), and now at the
Guildhall, bears an inscription in memory of Claudia Martina, aged
nineteen years. A much-injured female head found with it is accepted as
having belonged to the same monument, and a dowel hole on the pedestal
confirms the idea that it supported a figure which was probably a
portrait statue. It may be observed that the capping of the pedestal is
cut with rolls in the tradition of the altar-tombs. The good form of the
letters, and the formula beginning D.M. and ending H.S.E., date this
monument about A.D. 100. I give in Fig. 68 a sketch from a careful
etching published by Thos. Fisher in 1807. The ornamentation of the
altar-like top can hardly be made out now, and even the inscription
cannot be read in the imperfect light of the Guildhall Museum. A careful
copy based on a rubbing should be put on record, for the surfaces of
such stones are all the time falling away in dust.
[Illustration:
FIG. 68.
]
Several large half-round coping stones have from time to time been found
in the bastions of the City Wall; they cannot have been taken from the
wall itself, and so probably formed parts of monuments. Espèrandieu
shows such a coping to a dwarf wall surrounding a statue, and in the
little sketch (Fig. 69) I suggest such an arrangement. Many half-round
copings from monuments have been found at Chester.
Several small inscribed memorial tablets suggest that there were some
buildings of the “Columbarium” type where the ashes of the dead might be
placed. When after about A.D. 250 burial in coffins superseded the older
way of burial, individual or family tomb-houses were erected to contain
the sarcophagi, and several such would doubtless have been found outside
the walls of Londinium. Tomb-houses were not uncommon in Britain; they
were usually square or circular (T. Ward, _Roman Era_, p. 139). At
Holmwood Hill, Kent, a circular buttressed building 30 ft. in diameter
(_Archæol._ xxi., p. 336) seems to have been such a tomb-house. Of the
stone sarcophagus from Haydon Square it has been observed that “as the
back is quite plain it evidently stood against a wall, perhaps the back
of a small tomb-house” (J. Ward). Even the back slope of the cover was
left plain; and the back of the Clapton sarcophagus is also plain.
[Illustration:
FIG. 69.
]
TOMB-HOUSES
Some of the sculptured fragments found in the Camomile Street bastion,
while doubtless parts of sepulchral monuments, as Price thought, are of
too large a scale to have belonged to mausolea of the Igel type. Two of
the stones evidently came from angle pilasters of considerable scale. As
Price said: “The size and weight of the stones indicate that the edifice
was of proportions to bear comparison with the sepulchres in the
vicinity of Rome: such monuments were placed near the city gates.” One
of the fragments just mentioned has a nude boy or Cupid carved against a
background of foliage on one face, while the return of the same stone
contains similar ornament without the boy. Probably on the front face
there were several little figures one over the other. This treatment for
a pilaster is found on the monuments of Trèves. The boy on the stone at
the Guildhall carries an object which Price thought might be a trident,
but it is rather a torch; amorini and torches had a sepulchral
significance. These big stones must have formed part of the angle
pilasters of a large square tomb-house. They are more than 1¾ ft. wide,
and one is over 3 ft. high, and contains two units of the fine carved
pattern of very similar character to the carving on the Haydon Square
sarcophagus. I should doubt if it is much earlier, say, _c._ A.D. 300
(Fig. 70). The pattern is evidently a simplification of the scheme shown
in Fig. 61 from a tomb sculpture at Trèves, illustrated by Espèrandieu.
[Illustration:
FIG. 70.
]
At the Guildhall is a niche-head cut out of one stone into an arch form
(Fig. 71). It came from the Camomile Street bastion and very possibly
formed part of a monument—perhaps a built-up niche surrounded a larger
scale figure than the usual reliefs of the steles. Price associated this
niche-head with the stele now at the Guildhall, but that was rather all
in one stone (see my restoration in _Arch. Rev._, 1913). A man’s head of
larger size than that of the stele and separate from any background was
found at the same time as the niche fragments, and the figure to which
it belonged may have stood in the niche. Possibly, however, the stone
formed the head of a small doorway. Another monument at the Guildhall is
a crude and late sculpture of a lion seizing some other animal. Many
similar groups have been found in Britain and abroad. It would have had
some symbolical significance. “Mythological” figures, such as Hercules
and Atys, seem also to have been used for tombs.
[Illustration:
FIG. 71.
]
This examination of the few broken remnants of monuments that have been
accidentally preserved, which obviously represent but a small percentage
of those once existing in the cemeteries of Londinium, brings out a new
criterion for an estimate of the dignity and opulence of the Roman city.
To this evidence we may add the extent of the walls and the importance
of the port, and the fact that the city was the key of the road system
of the country. It was probably a seat of the Governor; in the
Constantinian age it became a bishopric and a mint town. Then we have
the quantity and costly nature of the imports which are known to us from
objects in our museums—an immense quantity of Samian pottery, decorated
glassware, silver, fine bronzes, etc. We also see how closely the
monuments of London resembled those of Trèves, the later capital of
Western Europe. Altogether I get the impression that Londinium must have
been one of the most important commercial cities in the West. In the
rote education of our schools, the great facts of our history are too
much buried under an avalanche of minor details, and mere dates and
names. If we can get a story written about Roman London, one scene must
be set among the Tombs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER VI+
SCULPTURE
“Fantastic and even grotesque, it possesses a wholly unclassical
fierceness and vigour, and not a few observers have remarked that it
recalls not the Roman world, but the Middle Ages.”
—HAVERFIELD on the Corbridge lion.
IMPERIAL STATUES
[Illustration:
FIG. 72.
]
A FEW broken fragments only remain to us, but they are sufficient to
suggest to our imaginations the sculptures of Londinium. The finest work
of sculpture found in London is the magnificent head from a bronze
statue of the Emperor Hadrian, which was taken from the river near
London Bridge in 1834. The head, with the neck, is 16½ in. high. It is
really a masterly work of art, of Hellenistic character, and may, I
think, be Alexandrian. The treatment of the head and beard is
surprisingly like that of the marble Hadrian from Cyrene in the British
Museum. Here we have the close-clipped beard and moustache; also the
double row of curly locks of hair over the forehead from ear to ear, and
the hair close cut behind, an arrangement suitable for the support of a
wreath. The beard is again similar on a bronze head of a man found at
Cyrene, in the British Museum. The projecting ears of the head of
Hadrian are like the ears of the bronze head of Augustus in the British
Museum, found in Egypt. That the bronze head of Hadrian represents a
statue and an erect figure is shown by the facts that one shoulder is
higher than the other and the axis of the head and neck is bent. The
figure must, I think, have had the left arm uplifted. The statue must
have been a splendid object in some public place—possibly the square of
the Forum, or on the bridge. In a cast, when seen close by, it looks
lumpy and even dull, but the original bronze as set up in the Museum is
not only powerful but vivid; notice the sharp eyebrows, the way the nose
is set into the brow, the line on the forehead, and the strong
expressive mouth (Fig. 72, from Roach Smith). There is also in the
British Museum a bronze hand, found in Thames Street, which seems
similar to the head in scale and excellence of workmanship; moreover,
faults in the casting have been repaired in a similar way on the neck
and the wrist. Roach Smith seems to have thought that the head and the
hand did not belong to the same statue. Speaking of the head he said:
“It belonged to a colossal statue, two of which we may probably reckon
among the public embellishments of London, for excavations in Thames
Street, near the Tower, brought to light a colossal bronze hand 13 in.
in length, which has been broken from a statue of about the same
magnitude, and, apparently, judging from the attitude, from a statue of
Hadrian also. The posture is similar to that of the marble statue in the
British Museum.” Dr. Haverfield says of the head: “It appears to have
belonged to a colossal statue of the emperor; the forehead is too short;
the ears set out too obliquely; and the back of the head projects too
strongly; the beard, too, is more closely cut than Hadrian usually wore
it.” In another place he speaks of it as “a life-size head of the
emperor Hadrian; whether it belonged to a colossal statue of the emperor
I do not know, nor does it much matter”(!). In one aspect, Dr.
Haverfield was a champion of things Roman in Britain; in another, he, as
will be seen in regard to the mosaics, generally spoke slightingly of
their quality.
I may now sum up my conclusions. The head belonged to a standing statue.
The hand, found separately, may have belonged to the same statue; it
probably drooped and held a roll. The head has the characteristics of
Hellenistic art. The expression is alert and eagle-like; the
close-cropped beard already appears on the head of Mausolus in the
British Museum, and seems to have been maintained as an Alexandrian
tradition. The statue was doubtless imported and may well have been
brought from Alexandria, a chief centre of bronze casting. Notice that
repairs are executed in an exactly similar way on the head of
“Aphrodite,” brought from Armenia and probably an Alexandrian work, _c._
200 B.C. A little silver image of Harpocrates, also found in the Thames,
is, I think, certainly an Alexandrian work. The bronze statue would have
been set up as a memorial of the Emperor’s visit to Britain in 121. A
“big brass” was struck in honour of the same event, inscribed _Adventus
Augusti Britanniæ_, and the profile portrait on the coin is very like
our head. It has the clipped beard and bears a laurel wreath. Hadrian
was the first of the emperors to wear a beard, and we may take our
bronze as evidence that he began with the clipped fashion. Not much
attention has been given to this head as an early portrait of the
emperor, but it is important from that point of view. Compare it with a
small bronze bust of a later time found at Winchester and also in the
British Museum.
Other remnants of large bronze statues have been found in London. Two
fragments at the Guildhall are thus described: “(19) Arm of a bronze
statue broken off below the elbow, 19 in. long; (21) Left hand of a
statue, bronze, of heroic size, with traces of gilding, 9½ in. long.
Found in a well to the east of Seething Lane.” From a notice in _The
Builder_ (May 3, 1884), it appears that the latter was found with coins
of Nero and Vespasian during the construction of the Metropolitan
Railway. An article in the _Journal of the Archæological Association_
(vol. xxiv.) discusses other fragments of bronze statues. There must be
evidence for the existence of four or five large bronze statues in
Londinium. A bronze leg of a horse at the Society of Antiquaries, found
in Lincoln, shows that equestrian figures—probably of emperors—were also
known in Britain (cf. the Marcus Aurelius in Rome).
_Other Portraits._—In the Guildhall is a tomb with a relief of a
soldier, larger and in higher relief than usual, which was found in the
Camomile Street bastion, and probably occupied a place in the cemetery
by Bishopsgate. This figure of a _signifer_ is a little battered, and
this accentuates a certain grimness of expression, but it is really a
masterly work of unflattered portraiture. There cannot be many existing
presentments of a Roman man more real; this has the face of a
functionary, and the details of the costume are made out with careful
accuracy. The mantle, or cape, partly stitched together in front, was
like a chasuble. It was the _pænula_ on which there is an excursus at
the end of Becker’s _Gallus_. The sword had one of the ivory or bone
hilts of which there is an example in the British Museum—every detail
was evidently carefully studied from fact. Soldiers on the Trajan Column
bear similar swords. It is probably an early second-century work. (The
Colchester centurion (_c._ 100) has a similar sword-hilt.[1]) When we
learn to value and make due use of our antiquities a copy of this relief
should be set up to stand for the fact of Roman rule in Londinium. I
gave a restoration of the whole slab in the _Architectural Review_,
1913; it has been wrongly restored in Price’s volume on the Camomile
Street bastion.
Footnote 1:
Cf. Daremberg and Saglio, _Gladius_.
The relief of the Colchester centurion, Favonius Facilis, is really a
fine work, one of the most perfect representations of a centurion which
exist (cf. Daremberg and Saglio). The niche in which the figure stood
had a shell represented on its rounded top; only the hinge-end of the
bivalve appears at the apex, and the rest may have been indicated by
painting.
[Illustration:
FIG. 73.
]
At Oxford there is a soldier’s memorial stone with a sculptured relief
of a similar kind to the centurion of Colchester and the _signifer_ just
described. It was found at Ludgate Hill when Wren rebuilt St. Martin’s
Church (Fig. 73). According to _V.C.H._ the soldier carries a dagger in
his right hand. This object is so long that Pennant called it “a sword
of vast length like the claymore.” In fact, it is a rod held exactly as
the Colchester centurion holds his stick, and I suppose it was a rod of
office of some kind. The scroll the man carries in his left hand also
suggests that he was more than a “private”; so also does the monument
itself, which must have been costly. Roach Smith properly speaks of
“stick and roll.” There is a good drawing of this monument in the Archer
collection at the British Museum. I give here a sketch made from the
original at Oxford. The figure is injured, but it was skilfully cut and
gracefully posed. I should date it in the first half of the second
century. At the Guildhall is a head larger than life-size found in the
Camomile Street bastion, which, although battered, shows character (Fig.
74). The discovery of a marble bust of a girl, near Walbrook, was
recorded in _The Builder_ of March 12, 1887.
[Illustration:
FIG. 74.
]
_Roman Gods and Impersonations._—It is hardly brought out in the history
books that the inhabitants of Britain possessed a great classical
inheritance. I would say possess, but we do not seem to have determined
whether we are British or only English. For a thousand years before the
Teutonic invasions of the fifth century A.D. Britain had been in touch
with Greek and Roman cultures, and for centuries before that again some
overflow from Mediterranean lands had reached this island, and the Celts
themselves were a great European race. During five centuries from 100
B.C. to A.D. 400 Britain became fully Romanised. After that time it was
probably only some small balance of forces which gave us a Teutonic
language, while France under somewhat similar circumstances retained a
Latin tongue. Greek gods and, doubtless, Greek stories were known here
long before the Roman occupation, as the British coins (the most
beautiful money ever coined in these islands) show. Already when Ptolemy
wrote his geography, Hartland Point, in Devonshire, was the promontory
of Herakles, and this is evidence which, together with figures of
Hercules on the British coins, strongly suggests that some Hercules
story became localised in Britain. Possibly, as the seas beyond the
Gibraltar Straits became better known, the “Pillars of Hercules” were
shifted to the headland facing the Atlantic. Hercules rescuing Hesione
appears as a subject on Castor pottery. “This, and the corresponding
scene of Perseus and Andromeda, were popular in Britain and Gaul,” says
Dr. Haverfield, and adds: “Whether the scenes conveyed any symbolic
meaning in these lands I should greatly doubt.” I incline the other way.
It is to be remarked that several altars dedicated to Hercules have been
found in Britain: one at Corbridge is inscribed in Greek to the Syrian
Hercules—that is, the same who had the famous temple at Gades.
During the Roman rule, the Olympian gods and minor classical genii were,
of course, fully adopted, and the monuments show interesting transitions
of thought. Jove became a single supreme deity, while the most of the
other chief gods were associated with the planets and the days of the
week—1 Sol, 2 Luna, 3 Mars, 4 Mercury, 5 Jupiter, 6 Venus, 7 Saturn.
This stage of thought is represented by the Jove and Giant Pillars
before described.
[Illustration:
FIG. 75.
]
On the fragment from Chesterford at the British Museum we have Mercury
with his wand, Jupiter with bearded face, and Venus with a mirror. These
figures can be completed by comparison with others. There is a relief of
Mercury at Gloucester. Another, illustrated by Espèrandieu, is of the
same sort; he seems always to have carried a pouch in his right hand
(Fig. 75). At the Goldsmiths’ Hall is a little altar having a relief of
Diana on the front, a group of sacrificial utensils on the back, and
simple reliefs of two trees on the returns. The figure is charming,
graceful and well proportioned. The pose and setting in the panel are
very similar to the soldier relief at Colchester, and I should date it
about the same time, A.D. 100-150. The figure is very like a small
bronze found near St. Paul’s, of which Allen gave an illustration; that
also held a bow, and with the lifted right hand took an arrow from the
quiver behind her shoulder. The objects carved on the back of the altar
are a table of offerings (compare the leg of a piece of furniture in
Leicester Museum), a jug and probably a dipper (Fig. 76). Archer, who
published etchings of the reliefs, thought he saw a hare here, but this
was a misreading of the obscure forms. This altar must have belonged to
some temple or shrine. As Dr. Haverfield says of a somewhat similar
relief of Diana found near Bath: “We need not doubt that passers-by
worshipped Diana of the Romans.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 76.
]
At the Guildhall is the upper part of a terra-cotta image of Ceres, and
fragments of a Hercules, perhaps from a tomb, were found at Ludgate in
1806. There are many small bronze figures in our museums—altogether
quite a Pantheon could be made up of images found in Britain, and these,
I feel, belong to us in a special way.
In the form of impersonations of the days, the seven gods might still be
available in a modern art language if we had sufficient sense to
construct such an Esperanto.[2]
Footnote 2:
I may say here that I have made some collections for a sort of
Art-language Dictionary, attempting to register such forms and symbols
as might be available for modern use, but I suppose nothing will come
of it.
The Roman impersonations of places and ideas are nearer to us than the
gods, and they indeed belong to universal poetry. Chief of these is
_Britannia_, the “Sacred Britain” of the inscriptions. This
impersonation was “revived” (we may truly say so in this case, for it
had life and reality in it) for our coins in the seventeenth century. It
is astonishing evidence of the paralysis of modern architectural thought
how little use has been made of this noble imagination which ultimately
derives from the gold and ivory Athene of Phidias, and yet is our very
own. A seated variant of the standing Athene was made to represent the
goddess Rome, and this in turn was the source of our _Britannia_. Next
in importance were the impersonations of cities, and every city and
station had a representative figure which stood for its spirit, its
genius, itself. Our French friends, in their images of the City of Paris
or of Strasbourg, still make use of the idea, but we have ceased to know
that a city is more than a congested area where landlords hire out what
they call houses. I wonder if London were given an image whether it
might not acquire a new sense of soul.
In the London Museum is a pretty and well-sculptured figure which is, I
think, a city impersonation and may be _Londinium_. It is one of two
sculptures in marble which seem to have been found about 1887, together
with a Mithraic relief, on the bank of the Walbrook. It was at first
identified as Fortune, but Dr. Haverfield objected that Fortune would
have been a female figure, and he suggested “_Bonus Eventus_, or a
genius”; at the London Museum it is entitled _Bonus Eventus_. It would
be hardly possible to bring forward any nearly similar figure with such
a designation; on the other hand, a genius of Rome having a striking
resemblance to our figure is one of the commonest types of the later
coinage. Our figure, a graceful youth, holds a great cornucopia against
his left shoulder and pours with his right hand a libation on an altar
from a patera; a serpent rising from the altar winds around his wrist;
by his left leg is the prow of a ship. He has two wreaths or collars
around his neck and is partially draped; his mantle seems to have fallen
from his head like a veil, and this suggests that he wore a mural crown
or a modius. Now the genius of the Roman people on the coins was
represented with a modius on his head, a horn of abundance in his left
hand, and a patera from which he pours, in his right. Such a figure
occurs on several coins which bear the Mint mark of London and the
legend _Genio Populi Romani_. It is quite possible that our statue may
be the genius of Londinium itself. It is known that our British Roman
towns had impersonations wearing mural crowns—a fragment of such a
figure has been found at Silchester. Our figure is clearly of the nature
of Fortune, and the impersonations of towns were their Fortunes. The
ship and the horn of plenty, piled up with fruits, corn and articles of
commerce, are especially appropriate for a busy port. I suggest that
this figure might, and should be, adopted as the impersonation and image
of the City of London.
I had already written this when I found a figure illustrated in Bruce’s
book on the Roman Wall, which is a close parallel to our figure. It was
found at Netherby, and is described thus: “The best piece of sculpture
belonging to this station represents the Genius of the Castrum wearing
the mural crown and engaged in the grateful task of pouring an offering
to the superior powers” (Fig. 77). The resemblance of this figure to
that in the London Museum proves, I think, that that is the genius of a
place, as does also the serpent which rises from the altar. An altar “To
the Genius Loci,” found at Chester, represented the genius holding a
cornucopia. Compare two altars figured by Lysons (_Reliq._, pl. lviii.)
of similar figures apparently male, each with patera, altar, snake and
cornucopia. Fig. 78 is one of those in the British Museum.)
[Illustration:
FIG. 77.
]
Wren, in an early design for the Monument, proposed that it should be
surmounted by a civic impersonation.
[Illustration:
FIG. 78.
]
In Roman days every place and almost every field had its _genius
loci_—an idea which we still timidly preserve as a “figure of speech.”
Many British inscriptions and sculptures relate to Silvanus, Rivers and
Fountains; to the Deities of the Fields of Britain (think of that now!),
to Nymphs of the Springs (think again of ours choked with tins and old
shoes), and to the God of Ways and Paths (perhaps such an image would do
some good at Liverpool Street and King’s Cross).
[Illustration:
FIG. 79.
]
The other marble sculpture found with the Genius is the torso of a river
god of a well-known type—and very well carved. The figure reclined
supported by his left arm; the right hand carried a long water reed
which rested against his right shoulder (Fig. 79). The head, with long
curling hair and beard, is in a tradition which derives from the Zeus of
Phidias, and the body had its prototype in the reclining figures of the
Parthenon pediments. Some reliefs of similar river gods occupy the
spandrels of the Arch of Constantine. Bruce illustrated a very similar
figure which represented the North Tyne (Fig. 80). We have every right
to assume that the torso in the London Museum may be called the Thames.
There is some reason, from the conditions of discovery, to think that
this figure and the Genius before described occupied places in a
Mithraic cell by the Walbrook. That a river impersonation and a genius
of locality should be so found together strengthens the evidence that
they represented London and Father Thames. Modern figures of the Thames
and other rivers existed in seventeenth-century London.
[Illustration:
FIG. 80.
]
_Mithras, etc._—At the London Museum is a Mithraic relief, rough and
small, but a valuable document. In the centre is Mithras and the bull,
surrounded by the circle of the Zodiac. “Outside in one upper corner the
Sun drives up his four-horse chariot, and in the other the Moon is
driving her car downwards. Beneath are two winged heads, probably
symbolising the Winds” (Haverfield). These heads are very well carved
and quite pretty; so are the Zodiac signs. This is one of many cases of
the similarity of monuments in London and at Trèves. On the celebrated
Igel monument is found another Zodiac, the signs of which (so far as
they exist) are practically identical with those on our stone. In the
spandrels are “heads of wind-gods, emblematic of the four cardinal
points.” These heads are winged like those on the London stone, and the
comparison allows us to be sure of the interpretation of the latter: the
rising Sun is East, the setting Moon is West, the bearded head is North,
and the youthful one South.
A small figure found in Bevis Marks, and now in the British Museum, is
usually identified as Atys. I have some doubt whether it was not rather
Silvanus; but it may be a grave monument, and for such a purpose a
figure of Atys would be appropriate. A small figure of Hercules at the
Guildhall was also probably, as before said, a tomb sculpture.
In the London Museum is another small sculpture, this time in relief, of
a figure seemingly in countryman’s costume, standing in a roughly-formed
niche or rock recess. By his side is some implement like a yoke, but I
cannot suggest any explanation. It has “character,” and I should like to
know what it means. It was found in Drury Lane.
[Illustration:
FIG. 81.
]
Bagford, in his letter to Hearne (1714), mentions a Janus head dug up at
St. Thomas Watering on the Dover Road by Bermondsey, also a glass urn at
Peckham, and several other Roman things at Blackheath. The Janus head
was about a foot and a half high, and seemed to have been fixed to a
square column or terminus. It was illustrated by Horsley. One of the two
faces was Jupiter Ammon with ram’s horns, the other was female.
I cannot here do more than mention the dozens of small bronzes, some of
high excellence, which have been found in London; doubtless most or all
of these were imported. Mr. Chaffers saw a beautiful bronze of an archer
with inlaid eyes of silver taken out of the mud in Queen Street,
Cheapside, in 1842. A pretty bronze relief of Hope was found in Thames
Street in 1840 (_V.C.H._). I must just refer to a delightful little
bronze Genius, found at Brandon, and now in the British Museum, which
holds a double horn of plenty. This, again, is probably a locality
genius. Many of the small clay lamps found in London have pretty reliefs
on them, such as a figure of Victory, a head of Luna (Fig. 81), a bird,
or an animal. Altogether we have quite a large gallery of classical
imagery of our own.
[Illustration:
FIG. 82.
]
_Ornament._—Carved decorations were for the most part rude and rapidly
cut, but they show some fresh thought and are very different from the
defunct details which now pass for “classic.” At the Guildhall is part
of a frieze of small scale (Fig. 62) which has running animals
alternating with trees. This suggestion of the forest was a popular
motive of the time, and is found frequently on our native-made Castor
pottery. Haverfield suggested that it might be a Celtic motive, but it
is found on Samian pottery, and Espèrandieu illustrates a similar frieze
of higher quality found at Mainz. All the Roman architectural carvings
found in Britain, it may again be said, very closely resemble works
found in Gaul, and especially at Trèves.
[Illustration:
FIG. 83.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 84.
]
The wide pilaster at the Guildhall (Fig. 70), also mentioned before, has
a boldly designed relief of foliage arranged in a series of oval forms,
one over the other. The interior of each unit is filled by the leafage
being bent downwards. The same scheme occurs on a mosaic floor found in
Dorsetshire, now in the British Museum (Fig. 82). Fine Corinthian
capitals have been found at Cirencester and Bath; even in these we find
the spirit of experiment constantly at work. An example sketched at
Angers in France is given in Fig. 83. The most elegant piece of
architectural decoration executed in Britain, which is known to me, is a
frieze found at Bath, which is somewhat singular in bold freshness of
treatment (Fig. 84). Again, this can be explained by comparison with a
mosaic pattern. At first sight it seems an ordinary piece of scroll
work, but examination reveals that the alternate elements were complete
circles. This frieze is broken at a point which might seem to leave room
for a little doubt as to this, and my figure is slightly restored; but
the border of a mosaic floor found at Frampton furnishes us with a
complete example of the same treatment, and this excludes any doubt
(Fig. 85). Fig. 86 represents a more ordinary scroll frieze from
Chester, but even this is brightened by the little birds set in the
corner spaces. Fig. 87 is the soffit of a corona member from Bath, also
alive and inventive.
[Illustration:
FIG. 85.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 86.
]
All this is very different from the “Roman style” of books and the
commentaries on Vitruvius. We may see in such provincial Roman works an
early stage of Romanesque art and even the beginnings of Gothic. Again,
the fragment of a column at the British Museum, carved over with a
lattice pattern having foliage in the interspaces, is particularly
interesting as an example of an “all-over” diaper pattern, and a
prototype of Romanesque carved shafts. At Trèves there are many examples
of much more elaborate diaper patterns of the same type. Such continuous
surface decorations speak rather of what was to be in the romance ages
than of the past of classical art. Even the series of acanthus leaves
arranged like tiles on the “roof” of the sarcophagus found at Haydon
Square shows adaptive invention and pleasure (that is what it comes to)
in the doing (Fig. 50).
If ever we awake to make use of our inheritance and set about civilising
London, we might yet gain something of value from the Roman sculptures
which have been discussed. A replica of the splendid head of Hadrian
might be joined on to a bronze cast from one of the figures of the
emperor in the British Museum and re-erected, resurrected, as a visible
symbol of the Roman age in Britain and London. Set on a tall pedestal,
it would make a noble monument. Copies of the Ludgate Hill Soldier and
of the “Signifer” at the Guildhall, we might place against each side,
and the reclining River God—the Thames—in front, with an enlargement of
the Genius Loci at the London Museum above it. Such a monument would be
something to tell the children about, and it might even move the
business men to occasional thoughts outside the fluctuations of stock.
[Illustration:
FIG. 87.
]
_Symbolism._—Romano-British sculpture was certainly not over-refined;
indeed, much of it was just the opposite. But ideas were embodied, and
many of the things had simple and poetic meanings. The power of making
impersonations is specially to be noted, whereby an image stood for a
thing as definitely as its name—Sun, Moon and Planets, Seasons, Winds
and Waters, Countries, Cities and localities, events and wishes.
Fragments of a set of reliefs of seasons found at Bath, represented by
nude boys carrying flowers, a reaping-hook, etc.; the winged heads of
Winds; and the rising and setting Sun of the Mithraic panel at the
London Museum talk a universal language.
Some study of the sepulchral monuments of Roman Britain gives many
indications of the thought of the time. The coming in of the coffin, and
then of the double coffin of lead and stone, suggests some concern as to
an awaking after the sleep of death. The lack of late funeral
inscriptions is another indication of transition. The old mythology was
softened and the characters were allegorised and reinterpreted in
harmony with the mystery cults. We have seen that the Jove and Giant
columns suggested triumph over evil. Mrs. Strong has dealt with this
subject in regard to continental monuments (_J.R.S._, 1911): “There is
frequent preoccupation as to survival on these tombstones.” The cult of
Atys was revived under Mithraism, as appears from “countless gravestones
... an expression of hope, of resurrection; so, too, his pine-cone must
be symbolical of the belief; there are numerous examples in
_Britannia_.” In the Roman corridor at the British Museum is a fragment
from the North of England, described as the upper part of a niche, which
can hardly be other than the top of a grave slab; on it are two peacocks
between three pine-cones. Peacocks were symbols of immortality. The
baskets of fruit carved on the Haydon Square tomb could only have one
meaning. Compare a Gaulish tomb illustrated by Espèrandieu (iii., No.
1789), on which is carved a peacock pecking at the fruit from such a
basket, which is upset towards it. The sepulchral banquet symbolises
some sort of paradise. In examples of these at Chester, we find birds
perched on festoons above the main subject, and we have found an example
of birds and festoons in London.
The group before mentioned of a lion seizing another animal was in some
way “apotropaic”—that is, it warded off evil influences like a horseshoe
on a door. At Colchester is a group of a sphinx having a skull between
its paws, which is much finer in style (compare Espèrandieu, No. 4675).
Probably there were similar tombs in London; in the British Museum is a
pretty little bone carving of such a sphinx.
A grave slab at Cirencester has a sphinx and two lions carved on it as
acroteria. A somewhat similar slab, found in the north by the Roman
wall, has two lions with skulls. A lead coffin of specially fine
workmanship, found at Sittingbourne, but doubtless made in London, now
shown at the British Museum, has pairs of lions guarding a vase (compare
Espèrandieu, 4715), and little medallions of the Gorgon’s head on it
(Fig. 152). The most important example of apotropaic sculpture in
Britain is the great Gorgon’s head in the pediment of the small
Corinthian temple found at Bath.
The apotropaic nature of this sculpture has not, I think, been brought
out. It has been explained as a symbol of Minerva, and the building has
been called the Temple of Minerva; but for this there is no evidence. (I
may say here that Lysons assigned to this building a fragment of an
inscription which mentions repairs, but I do not think that this
fragment should be separated from another which clearly belonged to a
second building. Since writing this, I find that Mr. Irvine had already
made a similar observation. Wonder has been expressed that this head
should be bearded, but this appears to be the Italian tradition.)
In any story of life in Roman London, some of the atmosphere of mixed
faiths and symbols suggested in Kingsley’s _Hypatia_ should appear.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER VII+
THE MOSAICS
“Here is grandeur of form, dignity of character, and great breadth
of treatment which reminds me of the best Greek schools. Were I a
painter I should venture to enlarge upon the quality and
distribution of colour.”
—WESTMACOTT.
SOME screen appears to be set up between us and our Roman works of art.
Even the mosaics, which we might have supposed would have been
interesting—even fascinating—seem to be regarded as mere museum objects
and subjects for antiquarian tracts. So far as I know there is only one
book which considers them as a whole (Morgan’s _Romano-British
Mosaics_), and this is rather a full index than a discussion of their
artistic qualities. An excellent chapter in Ward’s _Roman Buildings_
should be mentioned. Even professional scholars apologise for them. Dr.
Haverfield wrote: “They have the look of work imitated from patterns
rather than of designs sketched by artists.”... “We admire them mainly,
I think, because they are old and expensive. Few Romano-British mosaics
are real works of art.”
Against such a judgment I will call three witnesses—Westmacott, the
sculptor, as above, William Morris, the master pattern designer, and Mr.
Alfred Powell. Morris says: “This splendid Roman scrollwork, though not
very beautiful in itself, is the parent of very beautiful things. It is
perhaps in the noble craft of mosaic that the foreshadowings of the new
art are best seen. There is a sign in them of the coming wave of the
great change which was to turn late Roman art, the last of the old, into
Byzantine art, the first of the new.” Mr. Powell, who repaired the
Orpheus Pavement at the Barton, Cirencester, and became thoroughly
acquainted with the powerfully-drawn animals on it, says: “These
creatures of the forest have been set out here in the tiny scraps of
coloured stone with an ease and mastery that is remarkable. There is
grace in their gesture that has seldom been reached in the art of even
the highest period of the life of a nation.” The Woodchester Orpheus
Pavement, which, judging from points of resemblance in design and
details (a horned and bearded griffin, for instance), must have been by
the same master, was a magnificent work, as, indeed, the fragment of its
splendid border in the British Museum is enough to show.
Completer lists of London mosaics than I can attempt here have been
given in other places (see Morgan’s _Romano-British Mosaics_, C. Roach
Smith’s _Roman London_, and _V.C.H._). Here and there all over the city
at depths of from about 8 ft. to 20 ft. pavements have been found
submerged by the rising levels of the ground. Scores have been noted,
many must have been destroyed without a record, and doubtless some yet
lie hidden to-day. In an old MS. Common-place Book I have is the
following note: “On Wed., Aug. 15, 1733, some bricklayers digging
foundations in Little St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, discovered a Roman
pavement, which by ye inscription [?] had been laid about 1700 years
ago. It appeared a very beautiful prospect, being in mosaic working, the
tiles not above an inch square.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 88.
]
My purpose is to record a few fresh observations, to bring out by
grouping and comparison some general inferences and indications of date,
to evoke, if I could, some clear idea of the buildings to which such
things belonged, and to prepare the way for a full study of these
remarkable works.
_The Bacchus Mosaic._—The central panel and fragments of borders of this
mosaic are in the British Museum. A careful original drawing of the
whole is at the Society of Antiquaries, and an admirable engraving by
Fisher was published in 1804 (Fig. 88). It was found in 1803 under East
India House, Leadenhall Street. The patterned part of the pavement
occupied a square of about 11 ft., “the whole was environed by a margin
consisting of coarse red tesseræ an inch square traced to the extent of
5½ ft. on the N.W. side—[note that it and the building it occupied was
diagonal to the points of the compass]—but could not be followed
further. The room could not have been less than 22 ft. square; but was
_in all probability considerably larger_.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 89.
]
The central panel of Bacchus reclining on a Tiger, at the Museum, has
been restored and repolished. It may not now seem very attractive, but
it is most competent in the balance of the forms and the strong, even
fierce, drawing of the tiger; its bold eye, gleaming teeth, powerful
paws, and the baggy skin of the legs are wonderfully truthful (Fig. 89).
Notice that Bacchus carries a wine cup; this is the essential part of
the design of the mosaic which doubtless was the floor of the central
hall of an important house. The brighter coloured tesseræ are of
coloured glass.
[Illustration:
FIG. 90.
]
_The Bacchante Mosaic._—One of the finest of the London mosaics was
found under the old Excise Office, Broad Street. I have an original
drawing of it by Fairholt, dated March 1, 1854 (Fig. 90). The best
authorities are two large original coloured drawings, one by Archer in
the British Museum and the other at the Society of Antiquaries. The
central panel had a white ground and black border; the Nymph had reddish
flesh and a light greenish scarf; the Panther seems to have been a
grey-buff spotted black. There was much black and white in the pattern
work, and some of the fillings were of black and white triangles.
[Illustration:
FIG. 91.
]
It was described at the time of finding as having formed a square of 28
ft.; it was diagonally about north and south and 15 ft. below the
surface. The central subject was “Ariadne or a Bacchante reclining on a
panther.” In _V.C.H._ it was said to be “Europa on the Bull,” but the
drawings agree with the former description. The composition is very
similar to the Bacchus, and doubtless a wine cup was held by the
Bacchante also. Notice that vases appear elsewhere in the design. The
panel was about 2½ ft. square. This fine floor was taken to the Crystal
Palace, where it seems to have disappeared. From its size and subject we
may suppose that it was the floor of the central dining-hall of some big
house. The drawing and balanced design of the central group is
wonderfully skilful as space filling. Fig. 91 is based on original
drawings of the floor at the Society of Antiquaries and the British
Museum and a sketch in the Wollaston Collection at South Kensington.
This mosaic should be compared with a floor found at Bignor, which is
very similar in its details, and probably, I think, by the same artist.
There the centre is occupied by Jove’s eagle and Ganymede, the cupbearer
to the gods.
_Vase-Panel Mosaic._—In his account of discoveries at Bucklersbury,
Price describes a floor found in St. Mildred’s Court which must have
been one of the finer kind. “A square enclosed a circle containing a
vase in brown, red and white with the addition of bright green glass.
Around the vase there appeared portions of a tree with foliage; also an
object resembling an archway with embattled figures and other objects,
the meaning of which is difficult to describe without an illustration.
Around the whole were two simple bands of black tesseræ separating the
circle from an elaborate scroll of foliage and flowers, analogous to
that on one of the pavements at Bignor. At each corner was a flower
showing eight petals of varied colours. From the centre of each sprang
two branches, which united in a leaf in form like that within the
scroll. The entire design is bordered by the guilloche in seven
intertwining bands of black, red, brown and white tesseræ. A drawing of
this interesting floor was in the possession of Mr. G. Plucknett.” The
central panel must have been a formal landscape—a large wine krater
backed by a tree and an arcade with figures on the parapet. In another
place Price names it again amongst mosaics which had glass tesseræ;
probably the tree was of green glass. This pavement also doubtless
occupied a dining-hall. In an earlier account (_London and Middlesex
Archæol. Soc. Proceed._ iii.) Price says: “When perfect it was of some
extent, resembling those discovered at East India House and the Excise
Office. In the centre was a vase similar to those at the Excise Office,
and around it a scroll of foliage beautifully arranged. The fragments
were packed in cases and sent to the workshops of Messrs. Cubitt.”
_An Orpheus Mosaic (?)._—Roach Smith reported the existence, below
Paternoster Row, of what must have been an exceptionally fine pavement,
which was broken up before any proper record of it could be made. This
“superb pavement extended at least 40 ft.; towards the centre were
compartments in which in variegated colours were birds and beasts
surrounded by a rich guilloche border.” The wording suggests a square
room, and the two former examples show that large square rooms existed
in London. In the villa at Woodchester the chief central room was nearly
50 ft. square; the pavement had “a central circular compartment; within
the border was a wide circular band containing representations of
animals, inside was a smaller band containing birds; on the southern
side was a figure of Orpheus.” The description of the London mosaic
suggests that it, too, had for subject Orpheus charming the beasts. It
was found about 1840 at a depth of 12 ft. In 1843 part of a mosaic
floor, “with birds and beasts within a guilloche border,” was found at a
depth of 12½ ft. below the offices of the Religious Tract Society at the
corner of Cannon Row (_V.C.H._). Is it not probable that this was
another part of the pavement described by Roach Smith?
_Inscribed Floor._—A mosaic pavement found in Pudding Lane as lately as
1886, and bearing an important inscription, was destroyed before any
sufficient record of it was made. A printed version of the lettering was
given in the _Archæological Journal_ of the same year by Dr. Haverfield,
with some comments. (Also see _S.A. Proceedings_, xiv. 6, and _V.C.H._)
In the collections of the Society of Antiquaries I find a sketch of it
by Henry Hodge, a careful draughtsman of the time. This drawing is said
to have been made “from a sketch by I. W. Jolly and fragments,” so that
its strict accuracy is questionable. It appears that it was complete on
the right but imperfect on the left-hand side. On the right some parts
of the pattern covering the rest of the floor and a border are shown and
some dimensions are given. It looks as if the panel was about 5 ft.
across and was the centre of a strip 7 ft. or 8 ft. wide. The letters
were about 3 in. high, black on a white ground; the last four seem to
have been D. S. P. D.—_de sua pecunia dedit_—and this would imply that
the mosaic belonged to a temple. The destruction of these mosaics is a
sad witness to the nineteenth-century type of intelligence. Of all of
them only the fragments of the Bacchus pavement are now known to exist.
I should like to find out what became of the Bacchante pavement sent to
the Crystal Palace, and whether the vase mosaic is still in packing
cases at Messrs. Cubitt’s. I wonder, too, what became of Mr. G.
Plucknett’s drawing, and wish I could get tidings of it. The great
pavement in Paternoster Row seems to have been destroyed without even a
drawing being made; while the sketch taken by Mr. Jolly of the inscribed
floor has, so far as I know, been burnt. And this was the high age of
university education!
_Bucklersbury._—The most perfect of the existing mosaics is the complete
and restored pavement with an apsidal end found in Bucklersbury. A good
account of it while yet in its place is given in _The Builder_ (1869):
“It lies fresh and bright as when it was first put down.... It is to be
hoped that some pains will be taken to trace the remaining walls of the
building to which this speaking pavement belongs.” Here, again, although
the apartment was not large and the ornamental mosaic was more than a
central panel, there was a broad border of the coarse tesseræ. Besides
having been a saving, the contrast of the plain red with the variegated
central area seems to have been liked. The interlacing squares of this
pavement resemble those of the Excise Office floor, and its central rose
is like a panel in the same floor. An angle-filling is similar to a
quarter of the central pattern filling the centre of the small India
Office pavement, which, again, had interlacing squares. A single
cross-like pattern filling a panel in the British Museum is again like
that of the India House mosaic. Many such references could be carried
much further, not only in regard to London pavements, but including the
country ones also. I reach the conclusion that they are for the most
part nearly of the same date, and that many were by the same artists.
_Fenchurch Street._—A fragment of what must have been a fine floor was
found in 1859 and is now in the British Museum. It is part of a panel
which contained a vase and two birds. An illustration given in Price’s
_Bucklersbury_ shows that there was a margin of coarse tesseræ beyond,
and that the panel must have been one of a series making up a handsome
border. A fragment of a floor with a wide border divided into panels has
lately been found at Colchester. Roach Smith described the former as
“what would seem to have been an extensive pavement,” and he calls the
bird a peacock. A good coloured drawing, in the Archer collection, of
the fragment shows the bird’s neck a bright blue; the blue tesseræ were
of glass. Fig. 92 is from Price, but I have dotted in on the top
right-hand corner the line of a more modern building from Roach Smith’s
illustration. This is one example of many cases in which more recent
walls have been carried up from the Roman level and square with a Roman
building. (A in fig., and compare Fig. 90.)
[Illustration:
FIG. 92.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 93.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 94.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 95.
]
_Birchin Lane, etc._—In 1785 a small piece was discovered here of “a
fine tesselated pavement of very small bricks and stones; of this, only
one corner appeared, which is composed of black, green, and white stones
and brick, forming a beautiful border.” Another account says that “the
tesseræ measured about one-quarter of an inch and were of various
colours.” I am particular about this, for the bright colours were
doubtless of glass. I find a contemporary drawing of this fragment in
the Guildhall Library, from which it appears that there was a fair blue
besides the colours mentioned. (Fig. 93; compare Fig. 92 and a border
illustrated by Mr. Ward.) Outside it were big red “brick” tesseræ. There
is in the Guildhall Museum a fragment of another mosaic found in Birchin
Lane. It is part of a star-shaped all-over pattern of a well-known type
(the Barton Cirencester, etc.). Fig. 94 A shows the fragment, and Fig.
95 is a diagram of the complete pattern. Another piece at the Guildhall
has a sea-monster of small scale but most skilful execution. The place
of finding is not noted, but it is probably a fragment discovered in
Birchin Lane in 1857, described in _V.C.H._ as part of a pavement
“representing a sea-horse.” Two other small pieces in the same museum
are very similar in colour and quality, and may have come from the same
source. One of these seems to have belonged to a pavement of square
panels of knot-work framed in scroll bands (Fig. 94, B), or it may have
been part of a panelled border similar to Fig. 92. Morsels of painted
plaster were also found in Birchin Lane, where there must have been a
good house.
[Illustration:
FIG. 96.
]
A fragment of mosaic at the London Museum comes from another all-over
star-pattern similar to that at the Guildhall, but this piece was next
to the outer border of the pavement. This fragment is of particularly
beautiful colouring—quite a purple floor. I give a sketch of the
fragment in Fig. 96; it must have come next the border of a pattern like
Fig. 95.
_Threadneedle Street._—Several pieces of London mosaic are shown in the
Roman corridor at the British Museum, but not very effectively. Two are
exhibited as given by Mr. E. Moxhay, but it is not added that they were
found in Threadneedle Street in 1841. One is part of a passage and the
other is a square from the centre of a room. (See illustrations in Roach
Smith’s _Roman London_, from which Fig. 97 is taken.) Another piece
found at East India House, Leadenhall Street, is not set up rightly. The
pattern is of two interlacing squares; the margin should not be parallel
to either of these, but it should touch two of the points of the star
form. (Fig. 98. See Sir W. Tite’s illustration in _Archæologia_; compare
also the Bucklersbury pavement at the Guildhall.) This floor came from
the same level as the Bacchus mosaic and not far away from its position;
probably the small chamber to which it belonged was part of the building
which contained the large square hall of the Bacchus mosaic.
[Illustration:
FRAGMENT OF ROMAN TESSELLATED PAVEMENT DISCOVERED AT THE DEPTH OF 14
FEET UNDER THE FRENCH PROTESTANT CHURCH IN THREADNEEDLE STREET.
APRIL 1841.
FIG. 97.
]
_The Bank._—A fourth piece in the Museum is a square panel from
Lothbury. Allen describes it as “An ornamental centre, measuring 4 ft.
each way, of an apartment 11 ft. square; beyond this were tiles of an
inch square extending to the sides of the room.” It is another example
of the plan of having a comparatively small central panel liberally
framed in much plain red work. The device in the centre is a cruciform
pattern. I can hardly think that from, say, 250 A.D. it would not have
been recognised as a cross indeed. Compare the small cruciform centres
of two squares of mosaic exhibited close by.
[Illustration:
FIG. 98.
]
The floor mosaics at the British Museum are dispersed in two galleries
and a staircase, and even so each one is badly presented. Fragments of
the Bacchus floor are shown without any key-plan of the whole. Of five
on the north wall of the Roman gallery, the place where only one was
found is told. The interesting little Orpheus mosaic discovered at
Withington is shown by three single fragments, although an excellent
restored engraving was published in _Archæologia_ when it was found. I
wish space could be found for setting them in their due relation and
completing the composition in outline. The surface requires careful
cleaning and some repolishing. The floor from Thruxton on the north
staircase has lost its centre since it was engraved. The engraving
itself is shown in the gallery a hundred yards away, without any
reference from one to the other. In this case, I think, the centre
should be painted in on the plaster filling of the original.
These mosaics must have been drawn out on the levelled beds prepared to
receive them by the master artist and filled in by him and his
assistants. The preparation for such a floor is made clear in the
description of a London mosaic found in 1785: “This pavement, as well as
most of the rest, was laid in three distinct beds; the lowest very
coarse, about 3 in. thick, and mixed with large pebbles; the second of
fine mortar, very hard and reddish in colour, from having been mixed
with powdered brick; this was about 1 in. in thickness, and upon it the
bricks [tesseræ] were embedded in fine white cement” (_Archæol._, vol.
viii.). The Bacchus pavement described before “was bedded on a layer of
brickdust and lime of about an inch.” Powdered brick (tile) and lime
made a strong cement which would finish perfectly smoothly and provide
an inviting surface to draw and work upon.
Several mosaics while not quite plain were simpler in design and perhaps
coarser in execution than those already described. A star-shaped
fragment found in Bishopsgate Street, illustrated by Roach Smith, was of
black and white tesseræ. It was probably the central panel of a floor,
as Roach Smith said. A mosaic found at Lincoln had a similar star-shaped
panel at the centre. About 1840 a tessellated pavement was found in
Bishopsgate-Within “of black and white tesseræ in squares and diamonds”
(_V.C.H._). In Bush Lane “a pavement of white tesseræ” is recorded. On
the site of the Guildhall “irregular cubes of dark-grey slate and white
marble” were found (_Journal B.A.A._ xix.).
Another pavement, found in Lombard Street in 1785, was “composed of
pieces of black and white stone one-third of an inch square, probably
deposited in regular order” (_Archæol._ viii.). These black and white
mosaics were doubtless like the counter-changed patterns found at
Wroxeter, Silchester, etc. At the latter the Christian church had a
square space for the altar paved in this way. Several years ago I drew a
fragment of an identical design at Lincoln. This was probably a
fourth-century fashion. The others may be a little earlier generally,
but they overlapped into the Christian period.
Many floors have been found in London which were wholly of coarse
tesseræ of red, or of a few simple colours accidentally distributed. One
of these is described as of irregular tesseræ about 2 in. by 1½ in.,
mostly red, but some black and white. A room 17½ ft. by 14 ft., in
Leadenhall Street, had coarse tesseræ red, black and white, 1¼ in.
square, and a similar floor “of red bricks about an inch square with a
few black ones and white stones” was found in Lombard Street. Some
floors found at Silchester had circular and polygonal tiles used with
mosaic cubes filling up the interspaces. At Bath, if I recollect aright,
there are fragments of pleasant floors in which larger irregular pieces
of marble are set here and there in a floor mainly of large red tesseræ.
At Silchester a polishing tool is said to have been found, being a lump
of marble with an iron socket for the attachment of a handle
(Middleton’s _Rome_).
A general comparison of the British mosaics brings out the resemblances
between the members of certain groups. The similarity of the Cirencester
and Woodchester Orpheus pavements has already been mentioned. The London
floor found at the Excise Office was very like the mosaics at Bignor in
both the patterns and figure work. The same pavements resemble others
found at Silchester, and also the Cirencester and Woodchester mosaics. A
pavement found at Stonesfield, near Woodstock, had a wreath of foliage
springing from a head similar to that of Woodchester. It is obvious that
elaborate works in isolated villas cannot have been home-made, and it is
likely that this group at least was the work of craftsmen established in
some central city. No centre is so likely as Londinium, a wealthy town,
the most conveniently placed for the importation of materials. We think
of these works as “decadent,” but really there was a new life in them.
The centre of origin of the later type seems to have been Alexandria,
and similar works to our own are found in Asia Minor, North Africa and
Gaul. The use of glass in these mosaics is likely to have been an
Alexandrian innovation. Price gives a list of five London mosaics in
which glass was used, and I may add the fragment at Birchin Lane
described above. Glass was also used at Cirencester and Woodchester: the
purple tesseræ in the fine border of the latter in the British Museum
must be glass.
[Illustration:
FIG. 99.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 100.
]
Taking into consideration the great similarity of mosaics found in the
East—those from Halicarnassus, for instance, now in the British
Museum—to those found in the West, the character of the patterns, the
mystical nature of some of the figure designs, and the swift ability of
the workmanship, I am drawn to the conclusion that the craftsmen are
likely to have been Greeks. Some confirmation of this is to be found in
the fact noticed by Wright, that the Greek H sometimes appears for E in
the few mosaic inscriptions which exist. Mosaics must, I think, have
been works of the prosperous Constantinian age. The floor at Frampton
had a XP monogram on it (Fig. 99); the Orpheus pavement at Horkstow,
accepted as Christian by Cabrol, had crosses (Fig. 99); and a second one
at Winterton has a red cross by one of the animals; the pavement at
Thruxton, in the British Museum, has crosses set in the border in what
seems to be a significant way (Fig. 100). The other details on this
figure also have a Christian look; the top one is from Bignor, the
bottom one from Frampton. Fig. 101 is from the Orpheus mosaic at
Withington. If the Orpheus pavement at Frampton was Christian, the
others are likely to have been so too. At least, they symbolise the
Harmony of the Universe; they are not “mythological.” These pavements
are evidence of the cosmopolitan nature of Romano-British culture.
[Illustration:
FIG. 101.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 102.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 103.
]
Any idea of thought in decoration is difficult for us to apprehend. The
records of the pavements which have been found in Britain deserve study
from this point of view. The whole art of the time witnesses not only to
the professional skill of artists, but to the thoughts and desires of
the provincial Romans—and natives too, doubtless—who demanded such
works. They speak of a time when the old beliefs had been for a large
part allegorised and fitted into a sort of poetic cosmogony; the designs
often dealt with the order of Nature. Many interesting details are to be
found in these mosaics; Fig. 102 is a sundial which appears with a
celestial sphere on the pavement at Bramdean. The fragment of
inscription (Fig. 103) is from Thruxton. Large square mosaics which seem
to have been the floors of central halls have been mentioned. In two
cases, such floors found in Britain had sunk water basins at their
centres. At Woodchester four columns were placed about the central
space, and there was doubtless an opening in the roof above. Such a
central hall would have been an _Atrium_, and this helps to explain the
planning of Roman houses in Britain.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER VIII+
WALL PAINTINGS AND MARBLE LININGS
BY putting together, in our imagination, the mosaic floors, the
fragments of wall paintings, and the marble linings, we can gain a
fairly certain knowledge of what the finer Roman interiors in Londinium
were like, and we may further add to the impression by remembering the
many precious objects in silver, bronze, pottery and glass, which are in
our museums. Broken remnants of wall paintings have been found in large
quantities, and pieces are preserved at the British, the Guildhall, and
the London Museums, also at the Society of Antiquaries. Some account of
several of them was given by Roach Smith in his _Illustrations of Roman
London_, from which Fig. 104 is reduced. The fragment (5, Fig. 104), now
with the others in the British Museum, is part of a pilaster-like strip
about 8 in. wide, of foliage springing symmetrically on each side of a
central vertical stem; it is on a dark ground, and marginal lines divide
it off from a red space which covered the main surfaces of the wall.
This “pilaster” was doubtless one of several. The morsels (6 and 7, Fig.
104) evidently belonged together; the one-sided nature of the design
suggests that it was next the angle of a room; and the loop in the upper
part of 7 looks like the end of a festoon; 9 is somewhat similar; and
the others may all have belonged to “pilaster” strips.
[Illustration:
FIG. 104.
]
The method of dividing up the wall space with strips of plain colour or
with “pilasters” was very general. A simpler scheme was to have marginal
borders only, and these were frequently of considerable width, made up
of many bands and lines of colour. Dadoes were very general, sometimes
only a plain band of colour or a horizontal bar running into the
margins; at other times they were fully decorated: two examples lately
illustrated in _Archæologia_, from Caerwent and Silchester, are really
fine work. The latter had a row of “panels,” alternating square and
round, set with leaves and ears of corn, on a red ground between dark
top and bottom bands.
_Stripes and Margins._—A piece of wall of considerable height was found
at Bignor, having a quadrant skirting at the bottom, a plain dark band
as a low dado, and the space above divided into panels. At Cirencester a
fragment was found which showed a band of fair yellow, edged with
margins of white separating spaces of a cool grey-green. At the Society
of Antiquaries is a piece of plaster showing fine red and green spaces,
divided by a white band and a black line—very simple, but beautiful
colour (Fig. 105).
[Illustration:
FIG. 105.
]
Of a great number of fragments in our museums one cannot determine if
they only represent margins or whether they may have come from vertical
strips. A piece of plaster from Silchester shows a broad band of red,
then two white lines separated by one of black, and then a surface of
grey, except for other thin black lines. A piece of plaster at the
Guildhall had a dark green band, probably 3 in. or 4 in. wide, then a
strip of rather transparent crimson 1½ in. wide, finished against a
yellow line, then an interval of white 1 in. wide, followed by the green
again 1¼ in. wide and a yellow line, then 2 in. of white and a single
yellow line followed by a white area. This was certainly a margin, and
here we get an example of a method of gradating the border into the
general field. In 1785 “some large pieces of painted stucco” were found
in Lombard Street (_Archæol._ viii.). Drawings made at the time are in
the Guildhall library. A piece was banded green and black, with the
addition of thin marginal lines. Two of the pieces were from borders
having lines with additional touches. One had merely groups of
comma-like hooks springing from the line [illustration], and the other,
little fleur-de-lis forms on a white band edging a bright blue space.
These were, I think, coarser variants of the treatment shown in 6, Fig.
104. The margins were sometimes “shaded” like mouldings; there are one
or two examples of this treatment at Silchester.
_Pilasters._—In some cases the ornamental vertical strips may not have
been contained within pilaster-like forms. A fragment in the British
Museum, which has an umbrella-like calyx to a number of springing
stalks, may be one of these (Fig. 106). It is on a brown-red ground, and
there are some other small fragments with leaves on a similar colour.
The cast-shadows make me think that it was independent of a pilaster.
The colour and workmanship appear very similar to the festoon of foliage
from Southwark, described below; probably such uprights usually upheld
festoons. The head rising from a calyx illustrated by Roach Smith came
from another similar vertical composition (8, Fig. 104). Two small
pieces at the Guildhall represent a similar upright (Fig. 107). Again,
in the British Museum is a very simple vertical upright, something like
a prolonged ear of corn (9, Fig. 104).
[Illustration:
FIG. 106.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 107.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 108.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 109.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 110.
]
Figs. 108, 109, 110, at the British Museum, are from pilasters. Fig. 110
is a restoration of 3, Fig. 104. Fig. 111 is a small fragment at the
Society of Antiquaries; this, too, probably came from a vertical stem or
a pilaster. Sometimes the pilasters imitated marble.
_Dadoes._—A sketch at the Society of Antiquaries shows the walls of a
plain little room found in Leadenhall Street, which had pink margin
bands along the skirting and up the angles, and another pink stripe
about 2 ft. above the floor. The general surface was white.
[Illustration:
FIG. 111.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 112.
]
Other dadoes seem to have been divided up into small plain “panels” or
diagonal lattices. At Silchester there is a fragment with a green band,
about 1¼ in. wide, crossing another at right angles, having a red line
parallel with the green band with a “blob” at the angle. This seems to
have represented a dado treatment (Fig. 112). At the British Museum are
pieces of plaster painted with narrow red bands on a green ground,
apparently parts of a plain lattice pattern. At the Guildhall is a small
piece of plaster having a blue band edged by a white line and with a
yellow line beyond the red ground, and another at right angles (Fig.
113). This is probably part of a dado; there may have been little
subjects or sprigs in the square spaces. This is a notable example of
adding “pearling” to the edges of bands or the lines, a favourite method
of the painters of Londinium, as several of the other sketches show.
[Illustration:
FIG. 113.
]
A large fragment of decoration at the British Museum imitates marble. A
circle of green speckled “porphyry” has a margin of red “porphyry,” with
figured “marble” of pink-yellow beyond. The circle is defined by
scratched lines drawn on the plaster by a compass as a guide for the
decorator. This was doubtless part of a dado for which the size of the
circle is entirely suitable. Further, fragments of a similar dado were
found at Cirencester in position at the foot of a wall. This is
described by Buckmann and Newmarch, but they did not recognise the
marbling as such. One square panel contained a circle speckled “dark
pink and black”; the panels on either band were yellow with wavy
markings. Here, again, porphyry and marble were imitated. At Silchester,
fragments of marbling have been found, and in the Rochester Museum are
many other pieces. Most of these would have been from dadoes. A wall was
discovered in January 1922, in the centre of Gracechurch Street, the
plaster of which “still retained the lower part of square panels painted
in black outline, with a simple ornamentation around, and the painted
plaster gave the impression that it had been coloured in imitation of
marble.”
Two fragments at the British Museum, which were illustrated by Roach
Smith and Wright, are covered with a diaper arranged thus,
× × ×
× × ×
with little flowers and figures in the intervals. These must, I think,
have come from a dado. The little figure on one of the pieces is now
broken, but a sketch by Fairholt in the Victoria and Albert Museum shows
it complete with a level band at the top. It is so engraved by Thomas
Wright, and I think that part must have been broken off since it was
drawn rather than that the drawing was restored. Wright says that these
fragments were from a large building near Crosby Square. This pattern is
on a fine red ground.
At the Guildhall Museum is a piece which is fortunately larger than
ordinary, and allows for the pattern to be restored (Fig. 114). The
ground was covered with circles, small and great, the latter containing
sprigs of flowers, all on a dark ground. This, I suppose, was also from
a dado. The larger outer circle is made up of curious forms, which
comparison shows were rose-petals. A fragment found in the Lombard
Street excavations of 1785, of which there is a drawing in the Guildhall
Library, shows segment of two circles, one within the other, red on
bright blue, and apparently part of a powdering of small double circles.
In the cloister of Lincoln Cathedral there used to be preserved, or at
least kept, a large piece of a dado having a big rhombus with
Amazon-shield forms at the ends, set within a long rectangular panel;
this was of good workmanship and possibly of the second century.
[Illustration:
FIG. 114.
]
_Foliage._—In the London Museum is a morsel of pilaster, about as big as
an open hand, having small leafage painted on a brown-red ground. The
leaves are sharp and struck in in a masterly way; it is really beautiful
(Fig. 115). The leaves spread from a central stem or line, and it is a
part of a suspended festoon, I think, rather than of a growth of
foliage. This must be the fragment found in Southwark. “The débris of
Roman villas, with pavements, ornamental bowls, and pieces of painted
plaster have been found. One of these last, in Mr. Syers Cuming’s
museum, has on it a slender stem with green leaves on a dull red field”
(Mrs. E. Boger, _Southwark_, 1895. Mr. Cuming was a well-known
antiquary).
[Illustration:
FIG. 115.
]
In the British Museum are, as said above, two fragments of a scheme of
decoration, which seems to have consisted of festoons hanging from
slender uprights (6 and 7, Fig. 104). Fig. 116, from the Guildhall, is,
I suppose, a variety of vertical stem, but it may be part of a festoon.
_Figures._—Some walls had figures in panels or set singly on the general
ground. At the Guildhall is a morsel of plaster containing parts of two
small dancing figures, which occupied a panel not more than 8 or 9 in.
high (Fig. 117). From the composition it appears that there would have
been three figures altogether, filling a square panel (Fig. 118). The
central figure is of a darker hue than the others, and apparently the
face is male; probably it is a faun with two nymphs. The painting of
this is of high competence, and in full Pompeian tradition. The little
panel, one of a series, would have been set at the centre of a wall
division. Roach Smith illustrated the head of a figure of Mercury on a
red ground; this was probably a single figure painted on a general
ground and not included in a panel. Evidences for figures of full size
have also been found.
[Illustration:
FIG. 116.
]
A good foot on a blue ground and a piece of drapery of large scale of
fine execution are in the British Museum: these are said to have come
from Leadenhall Street (The Basilica?). Wright describes some fragments
found at Great Chesterford, Essex. “A considerable variety of rather
elegant patterns, among which were some representing portions of the
human figure. The most remarkable of the latter was the foot of a
female, as large as life, with drapery flowing round it. In one of the
larger rooms of the villa at Combe End, in Gloucestershire, the lower
part of the wall remained covered with fresco painting, on which were a
row of feet, also as large as life, which had belonged to some grand
paintings.”
Parts of inscriptions have also been discovered. A morsel was found on
Tower Hill of “white wall painting with the letters [large capitals] S V
P in reddish colour.” At Woodchester, some fragments “were painted with
large capital letters which had formed part of inscriptions” (Wright, p.
195).
_Cast-Shadows._—It was the practice in figure and foliage painting to
boldly reinforce the forms with cast-shadows (see a fragment of a figure
in Roach Smith’s _Illustrations_, pl. 14). A piece of a foliage tendril
or festoon in the Rochester Museum, from the villa at Darenth, has
cast-shadows. This is of long, delicate, grey-green olive leaves on a
red ground, and the sharp shadow below forces it into prominence.
Several of the ornamental patterns found in London were reinforced by
shadows. A striking example is the large scroll foliage pattern from
Leadenhall Market, where separate shadow lines and touches are laid
almost like a secondary pattern. This, I think, from the scale of the
work, must have been part of the decorations of the Civil Basilica
described in Chapter II.
[Illustration:
FIG. 117.
]
Provincial Roman painting is not fine as compared with the great things
in either Greek or Gothic art, but we must remember, in comparing it
with anything we can obtain to-day, that it was the ordinary journeyman
decorator’s work of the time. It is certainly far beyond the standard of
common work which we reach to-day; and Roman London, on the testimony of
the arts, must have been quite a civilised place. A full study of the
fragments in country museums ought to make an interesting subject for a
student who is prepared to take up a definite piece of research on the
history of art in Britain. Further, suggestions for enlarging the scope
of work undertaken by present-day “painters and decorators” might be
gathered from these ancient paintings. Our workmen are capable of much
better work than is ordinarily demanded of them. Their skill in graining
was noticeable; it was the last field where any freedom was left the
workmen, and it was probably for that very reason (unconsciously
functioning) that architects have tried to kill it. It is our duty to
demand free and interesting work. A point to be thought of in regard to
the Roman decorations is the character of the designs. These are not
laboriously set out, transferred from a full-sized drawing, and
painfully “executed”; they are swiftly painted in masterly brush strokes
and varied at will for the fun of the thing.
[Illustration:
FIG. 118.
]
_Marble Wall-Linings._—In London, at Silchester, and elsewhere,
fragments of coloured marbles, and even of porphyries, have been found,
which suggest that they were parts of wall-linings, or rather of dadoes.
Wright says, of the Great Villa at Woodchester: “Several slices of
marble, of different sorts, but chiefly foreign, were also found. These
had, perhaps, been employed to encrust the walls. Some of these pieces
were not more than a quarter of an inch thick.” At Silchester pieces of
porphyry have been found not more than three-sixteenths of an inch
thick, and also pieces of fine white marble. At Colchester, fragments of
Purbeck and white marble and porphyry have just been dug up. At the
British Museum there are many small pieces of marble of various colours,
and some of red and green porphyry. A piece of white marble at the
British Museum has a shallow edge moulding such as I have frequently
seen on dado-slabs in Rome. Such moulding is an excellent way of joining
up continuous slab work. The pieces of green porphyry at the British
Museum are from the site of East India House (where the Bacchus pavement
was found), and they were given by Sir W. Tite in 1884, who, about that
time, wrote on the mosaic pavement. These pieces are cut into forms—a
part of a circular band and a triangle; they must have belonged to some
handsome piece of work, like an Opus Alexandrinum pavement. It looks as
if this building, close by the Forum and Basilica, was of special
importance—perhaps the governor’s palace.
There must have been skilled marble workers in London. This is proved by
the fact that fragments of polished native marbles have been found.
Roach Smith, as before said, speaks of “native green marble.” Fragments
of Purbeck are common.
At Silchester evidence has been found that mosaics were applied to the
walls of a chamber in the Baths; and at Wroxeter a considerable fragment
of wall mosaic was found in place many years ago.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER IX+
LETTERING AND INSCRIPTIONS
_LETTERS._—Fine lettering is the most perfect thing in the art of the
Romans. For one thing, it was developed on a field where they were not
obsessed with the idea of imitating Greek art; it was their very own,
and it was swiftly carried to an apex of perfection in the first century
A.D. It is a constant phenomenon on all the fields of Art that it is the
_first_ great flow of development which chiefly matters; all things of
life and growth are like this, and, as I once heard a fine old
Devonshire farmer say, “You can’t have two forenoons in one day.” The
Romans, not the Greeks, had the forenoon of the day of their manner of
lettering. This manner is clear, sharp, confident; it is like Greek art
only in being free.
[Illustration:
FIG. 119.—Inscription from the front of a Roman Tomb found at
Westminster Abbey in 1869: now by the entrance to the Chapter House.
MEMORIAE·VALER·AMAN
DINI·VALERI·SVPERVEN
TOR·ET·MARCELLVS·PATRI·FECER·
]
Early inscriptions had for the most part been cut on stone. Then from
about 300 B.C. came a time of writing with a pen. Rome took this over
from Alexandria and Pergamon, and these _written_ characters became the
foundation of a new style of monumental inscription. In pen-written
characters the thick and thin strokes make themselves without there
being any design in the matter. It seems equally natural in large clear
writing to finish off the strokes with a thin touch of the pen to
sharpen the forms. This procedure was taken over so exactly into
inscriptions cut on stone that, for the most part, it seems these must
first have been written on the stone with an implement like a wide brush
and cut in afterwards by a mason. The chisel, like the pen, is thin and
wide, and thus perfectly fitted to develop the habit of the pen. The cut
letters were themselves usually finished by painting. Whoever wishes to
design inscriptions must begin on the writing basis, and I should like
to advise every student who may read these words to take up the practice
of writing capital and small letters with single strokes of the pen, not
“touching up” or “painting” the letters, and, above all, not “designing”
them with high-waisted bars, swollen loops, little-headed S curves, and
other horrors of ignorance and vulgarity, but learning once for all a
central standard style. Half an hour a day for one week would teach much
to any one who was ready to learn and did not want to do everything by
genius.
We have in England a great number of fine Roman inscriptions, and it
would be an excellent piece of work to gather a selection into an
example-book of illustrations based on corrected rubbings. Even the
inscriptions of London carefully studied would be subject-matter for a
delightful and valuable essay.
1. The finest London inscription is that on a tomb front in the British
Museum (Fig. 120). This must be a first-century work nearly contemporary
with the famous inscription of the Trajan column. The letters are large,
deep, clearly cut, and of quite perfect form. It is something of a
puzzle that such an artist as the author of this tomb should have been
working in London only a few years after the Claudian Conquest. The
letters of this inscription are still wonderfully sharp; the thick
strokes of the big letters are about an inch wide, and the “serifs” are
light and free as the stroke of a pen. Notice especially the beautiful
curve of S, the square touch at the apex of N and A, and the sharp
little triangular division point after the second letter in the last
line (Fig. 121. See also Figs. 66 and 67).
[Illustration:
FIG. 120.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 121.
]
2. Another very fine inscription is on the tomb front of Valerius at
Westminster Abbey. The letters are smaller, the stone is rather decayed
on the surface, and it is not seen in a good light. The beauty of the
lettering and spacing has consequently hardly been remarked. Here the
lines are longer, and the letters seem to follow one another
rhythmically, trippingly; it is an extraordinarily vivid and elegant
piece of work, which, I think, should be dated in the second century
A.D. The letters A M and N have cross touches at the apex of the angles,
and the stops are little triangles as in the inscription before
described. Here it can just be seen that lines were ruled (scored) on
the stone as guides for ranging the letters (Figs. 119 and 122).
[Illustration:
FIG. 122.
]
3. In the London Museum is a small tablet of white marble, which has
similar lines, lettering and stops, and must be nearly of the same age.
I give in Fig. 123 a very rough sketch of this excellent little slab. I
have felt some doubt as to whether this was a London antiquity indeed,
but the many resemblances to other inscriptions have fully convinced me
that it is.
4. At the Guildhall there is another small slab, having only a few
letters, but these of fine early style (Fig. 124). Both these little
tablets and others probably were set on the wall of some burial chamber
of the Columbarium type.
[Illustration:
FIG. 123.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 124.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 125.
]
5. Another inscription of much the same character, but in smaller
letters, is that on the hexagonal pedestal in the Guildhall Museum, of
which a sketch was given in an earlier part. This provides an example of
a group of tied letters (Fig. 125). The writers of Roman inscriptions
allowed themselves much freedom in contracting words, in setting a small
letter within a big one, as in Fig. 119, and in combining two or three
letters together. In Fig. 126 I have noted one or two other examples not
all from London.
[Illustration:
FIG. 126.
]
6. In a fragment of inscription from Greenwich Park at the British
Museum, the letters were much compressed, and many of them were linked
together (Fig. 127).
[Illustration:
FIG. 127.
]
It is difficult to draw out any general rules of form and spacing;
generally o and c were very round in form, N of square proportion, and M
wider than a square. The round letters were usually thickened, not where
the curves would touch vertical tangents, but a little under and over,
just as is natural in writing the letters. The loops of D and R do not
become horizontal at top and bottom, but bend freely. A, N and M usually
have square terminations at the upper angles. Initial letters are not
larger than the rest.
[Illustration:
FIG. 128.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 129.
]
One or two examples of rapid cursive writing have been preserved on
bricks and tiles. Fig. 128 gives some letters of interesting form from a
tile at the Guildhall. The A, G and M are on the way to be transformed
into—a, g and m; apparently the hook of the “a” had its origin in the
overlapping termination at the apex in the monumental inscriptions. Fig.
129 is from a still more rapid scribble; L, T and E here approach our
modern handwriting forms. These examples are enough to show how the more
cursive writing styles and our own handwriting have been developed from
the Roman capitals.
Roman books and correspondence were written in such hands, and Dr.
Haverfield has pointed out, as such scribblings on tiles were obviously
in many cases by labourers in the brickfields, it follows that the
common people in British towns had come to talk Latin. Dr. Haverfield
went on to question whether town workmen even _spoke_ Celtic. “Had they
known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have
sometimes written in that language. No such scrawl has been found in
Britain. This total absence of Celtic cannot be mere accident”
(_Romanization_). This argument overlooks a probability that Latin was a
_written_ language, while Celtic was not. We hardly realise our direct
and full classical inheritance, and the fact that Londinium was a Roman
city for three and a half centuries. Here the Latin Pantheon must have
been completely absorbed into the common texture of traditional thought;
here boys would have carried texts of Virgil in their satchels, and
here, again, the story of the Gospel must have been brought in its first
westward expansion.
_Inscriptions._—In the notes which follow, I am more than ever off my
proper ground, and, moreover, they are likely to be very dreary to any
one who does not feel the romance of early London and Britain through
all the dryasdust detail in which we have to work.
An important inscription was found in 1850 under St. Nicholas Lane. It
was described in the same year (_Gent. Mag._ xi. p. 104): “A large slab
with the following Roman inscription in well-cut letters 5 in. or 6 in.
in length:
N V M C
P R O V
B R I T A
It is doubtful if the fourth letter in the first line be C or O. The
stone is in fine preservation, and others ought to have been discovered,
but the excavators were not permitted to turn either to the right or to
the left, notwithstanding a gentleman offered to pay any expense.” This
must have been Roach Smith, who, as the practical repetition of the
phrases given below shows, must have been the author of the note. An MS.
letter, which is in my possession, is as follows:
“STROOD, _Wednesday_, P.M.
“MY DEAR FAIRHOLT,—I have given Richards £10 for you.... In the
Guildhall is a fragment of a large inscription from Nicholas
Lane which we should give rather large. It lay just within the
lower door of the Library. The letters are deeply cut and should
be shown clear. Can you see if the stone be _broken_? [Sketch.]
Note if letter 4, line 1, be a C, and please measure it. It is
most important. I suppose it is half the original length.—Yours
sincerely,
“C. R. SMITH.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 130.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 131.
]
The stone had disappeared and has never been heard of since. The size
was recorded by Birch as 2 ft. 4 in. high, and 3 ft. wide on the face.
_V.C.H._ says 6 ft. long, but this is a mistake. Fortunately a careful
drawing of the stone was made by Archer, which is preserved in the
British Museum (Fig. 130). Archer’s drawing confirms Roach Smith’s
reading of C at the end of the first line next a vertical joint. My
sketch by Roach Smith seems to be the only other record (Fig. 131). In
_Illustrations of Roman London_, he says: “It was found close to a wall,
and there is reason to think other stones having the remainder of the
inscription were not far off from the one excavated. In the present year
(1859), being desirous to compare it with my sketch, I ascertained it
was not to be found. The stone was between 2 and 3 ft. in length. The
fourth letter in the first line appeared to me when I made the sketch
more like a C (which I considered it to be) than it seems to be in the
woodcut. From the magnitude of the stone and the character of the
letters it is clear that the inscription surmounted the entrance of some
public edifice, apparently a temple. It is probably the commencement of
a dedication which occupied two or four stones. The wider distance from
the top than of the third line from the bottom weighs in favour of the
belief that we have only the first quarter. There can be no doubt that
NVM should read _Numini_, and that PROV BRITA should be read _Provincia
Britannia_; the supposed equal length of the second stone and the number
of letters required, render this reading obvious. Seneca and Tacitus
concur as to a temple having been erected in Britain to the Emperor
Claudius; the latter locates it at Camuludunum. This temple was probably
erected soon after the subjugation of the Trinobantes. It may be readily
conceived that Londinium possessed some edifice dedicated to that
emperor. Although it is impossible to decide positively, we cannot avoid
associating the historical evidence with an inscription which must have
been of an early period, of a rare class, and almost unique in this
country.” This idea that there were formerly four stones is now much
strengthened by the fact that a curiously similar temple dedication is
illustrated by Espèrandieu (iv. p. 126) from D’Yzeures. This inscription
begins _Numinibus Augustorum_ and is on four equal stones with joints
meeting at the centre, thus +. Hübner (_C.I.L._ vii. No. 22) gives the
boundary to the right of the London stone as a fracture, and restored
the inscription with _Num. Caes. et Genio_ in the top line. It is at
once apparent that this would not space out properly with the single
words of second and third lines. Haverfield leaves out _Genio_ and
reads, “To the Divinity of the Emperor and to the Province of Britain.”
This, I suppose, might be possible in a contracted inscription, but I am
drawn back to Roach Smith’s view, and would venture to suggest the
possibility of some such restoration as:
NVM·C|L·AVG·
PROV|INCIA
BRITA|NNIAE
etc. etc.
I am ignorant whether it would be possible to have a dedication from the
Province of Britain to Claudius in such a form, but if so it would be a
record of great significance. The fourth letter was certainly C, because
an O would not have avoided the joint. The letters in the top line were
about 6 in. high, and the whole was of fine style. As Hübner says, it is
doubtless of the first century. It was certainly affixed to a temple
dedicated to an Emperor-divinity. The complete inscription probably
occupied four stones.
2. Several brick inscriptions are of special interest, as most of them
contain the name London. There are two varieties: (_a_) P.PR.BR. in a
label; and (_b_) P.P.BR.LON (Figs. 132 and 133). The former (_a_) has
large letters, and they are enclosed in a tablet: it seems of earlier
style than the other. Wright says of the second: “The most probable
interpretation is _Proprætor Britanniæ Londinii_; this has a peculiar
interest as showing that London was the seat of government of the
province.” When Wright wrote only a roof tile of variety (_a_) seems to
have been known, but now there are several plain tiles at the Guildhall
and one at the British Museum which have the same mark. All these are
alike in having four notches in their long edges, and one flat side of
each is scored over with lines to give better hold for plastering. It
seems that these tiles must have been used for lining walls, nails being
driven in at the notches; their size is 16 in. by 11 in.
[Illustration:
FIG. 132.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 133.
]
The explanation of Hübner adopted in the new British Museum Guide is
that P. in (_a_) and (_b_) both “represent the _publicani_ who farmed
the taxes (the ‘publicans’ of the Gospels) of the province of Britain in
London.”
Nothing is so expert a matter as Latin inscriptions, and it would be
absurd for one who is entirely ignorant to pretend to a difference of
opinion. I may, however, venture to point out that Hübner himself does
not seem very certain, and that the difference of the two forms seems to
coincide with the historical fact that earlier Britain was one province
and that later it was subdivided. Variety (_a_), I have little doubt, is
a second-century inscription (similar labels are found on pigs of lead
of the time); while form (_b_) is quite late (probably end of fourth
century). The first variety I should like to suggest represents the
governor of the undivided province, and the second the subdivided
province with its centre at London. If I am not entirely outside the
possibilities of the case there is some confirmation of Wright’s view in
the fact that other tiles bear the stamps of high authorities; thus a
tile at Silchester has the name of the Emperor Nero in a circle, and
other tiles are known stamped with the marks of army and navy commands.
3. At the British Museum is a silver ingot (found on the site of the
Tower of London), stamped with an inscription given as
EXOFFL
HONORINI
and described thus: “_Ex Of[ficina] Fl[avii ?] Honorini_: found with
gold coins of the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius.” The reading FL at the
end of the first line is probably adopted because the Emperor Honorius
had also the name Flavius; but to my eyes the letters look more like FE.
Other similar marks on silver show that we need not expect an emperor’s
name. (One in the British Museum reads EX OF PATRICI.) Roach Smith read
the London inscription, EX OFFI, and explained the whole “From the
workshop of Honorinus.” I may suggest Felix Honorinus.
4. Lying in the grass in front of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, is a
large white stone, bearing only T II in what appears to be Roman work
and style. It was found near its present site about forty years ago, and
was accepted as Roman and explained as a boundary (_terminus_) mark. It
may be noted that it lies close to the line of the presumed Roman road
along Tothill Street to the river. The nearest parallel I have seen is a
stone found near Falkirk, described in Haverfield’s addition to the
_C.I.L._ (No. 1264): T III (_turma tertia_).
5. An inscription at the Guildhall
MATR ...
VICINIA-DESVO-RES ........
is, as has been pointed out, a record of the restoration of some edifice
or sculpture dedicated to the mother goddesses. The lettering is on the
half of the crowning member of a cornice which may have been over a
narrow door, and Roach Smith was probably right in assuming the
existence of a small temple.
6. A sketch of the inscription found on a mosaic floor near Pudding Lane
is preserved at the Society of Antiquaries: it has indications not
brought out by printing it in type, and an expert could probably gather
more from it than has been made out.
7. The sarcophagus from Clapton at the Guildhall has a much-defaced
inscription on the front panel ending apparently, as the catalogue says,
with the name MARITIMIVS. Here, again, it is possible that careful
examination by experts would bring out further facts.
These inadequate, indeed incompetent, notes on a few selected
inscriptions are at least enough to show that the inscriptions of
Londinium are worth the attention of properly equipped scholars. A
carefully illustrated account of them might be made interesting to all
intelligent citizens and help them to get really into their minds an
idea of the Roman age in London.
[Illustration:
FROM A RELIEF AT BATH.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER X+
THE CRAFTS
IN his account of Roman London, the late Dr. Haverfield writes
(_J.R.S._, vol. i.): “The citizens appear to have been Roman or
definitely Romanised. Of Roman speech in London we have an isolated but
sufficient proof. A tile dug up in Warwick Lane, in 1886, bore an
inscription, meaning, apparently, ‘Austalis (Augustalis) goes off on his
own every day for a fortnight.’ It seems to follow that some of the
bricklayers [makers] of Londinium could write Latin. In the lands ruled
by Rome, education was better under the Empire than at any time since
until about 1848. The occupations of these Roman or Romanised civilians
are unknown to us. Articles manufactured on the Continent were certainly
imported. There were also exports of grain, cloth (or wool), and lead,
and so forth. We may believe that Roman London devoted its time to
financial rather than industrial activity.”
Evidence for the practice of arts in Londinium is really considerable.
It was doubtless first of all a port, and probably originated as the
seaport of the pre-Roman city of Verulamium; but it became the largest
city in Britain, the chief distributing centre and the artistic capital.
We are apt to think of Dover, or rather Richborough, as the chief port
of the country, but London itself was the largest consumer, and the line
of traffic was rather to the mouth of the Rhine than to Boulogne.
Londinium was a little Alexandria in the West, and represented Britain
as the other did Egypt. The building of such a city called together many
able craftsmen—builders, sculptors, painters and mosaic workers. There
must also have been shipbuilders and a due proportion of
craftsmen-producers, potters, bone- and metal-workers, shoemakers,
clothiers and the rest. An enormous quantity of pottery has been found,
much of fine imported wares, but the most part varieties of native
fabric, of which a large proportion was doubtless made of local clay.
The site of St. Paul’s Cathedral was covered with “pot-earth,” and the
town potteries seem to have been here.
[Illustration:
FIG. 134.
]
_Native Pottery._—In the British Museum are some valuable MS. notes made
in the years 1674-79, “by Mr. John Conyers, apothecary, at the ‘White
Lion,’ in Fleet Street” (Sloane, 958, 816, 937). In mentioning St.
Faith’s Chapel, at St. Paul’s, he says that his father and mother were
there married forty-five years since (from 1677). Incidentally, he
speaks of two brothers, and of being “at Epping Forest hunting ye hare,
but ye frost prevented the scent.” This is a late example of the
sporting customs of ancient London. His observations refer to
excavations on the site of St. Paul’s and along the Fleet. In regard to
the former it appears certain that there were a number of Roman rubbish
pits on the site, similar to those recently excavated on the Post Office
site. Here also were found pottery-kilns and glass furnaces with
pottery, bone and other objects. This seems to have been a manufacturing
quarter of the city unoccupied by dwellings. Some sketches show that the
pottery kilns were circles of small diameter, having a raised floor
supported on a central post, like a table, all of clay and broken stuff
roughly formed; the lower stage or fire chamber was thus a ring around
the central prop, and in the raised “floor” were several small holes.
There must have been an external pit with a stoke-hole, and also a flue
from the fire chamber. Four such kilns were found close together,
forming a quatrefoil group. The dome of the kiln seems to have been
roughly new formed over the pottery to be fired (Fig. 134). Conyers, in
the account of finds on the site of St. Paul’s, gives sketches of the
kilns found at St. Paul’s with several kinds of pots: “Figures of two
kinds of kilns or furnaces of various pots, jugs, etc., of different
kinds of earth and pottery. One kiln in loamy ground about 26 ft. deep,
near the place where the Mercat-house stood in Oliver’s time. The
discovery made in 1677 on digging the foundation of the north-east cross
part of St. Paul’s amongst gravel-pits and loam-pits.... Coffins lay
over this loamy kiln, the lowest coffins made of chalk, and this
supposed to be about Domitian’s time. This kiln was full of ye worst
sort of pots, lamps, urns, and not many were saved whole. Four of these
[kilns] had been made in the sandy-loam in the fashion of a cross on the
ground; the foundations of these left standing 5 ft. from top to bottom,
and better, and as many feet in breadth, and had no other matter for its
form or building but the outward loam crusted hardish by the heat
burning the loam red like brick. The flooring in the middle, supported
by and cut out of loam and helped with old-fashioned Roman tiles,
sherds, but very few, and such as I have seen used for repositories for
urns in ye fashion of little ovens, and they plastered within with a
reddish mortar; but here was no mortar, but only ye sandy loam for
cement.... A censer or lamp, whitish earth; one great earthen dish;
earthen lamp gilded with electrum,” etc. etc.
Again, Conyers says the labourers under part of the place where St.
Paul’s Cross stood, 25 ft. or 30 ft. deep, as the earth ceased to be
black and came to the yellow sand, found earthen potsherds as red and
fine as sealing-wax, and upon some inscriptions, “_De Ovimini_,” “_De
Parici_,” “_De Quintimani_,” “_Victor_,” “_Janus Ricino_.” [These were
Samian, but he goes on to describe very accurately native pottery.] “And
pots like broken urns, which were curiously laid on the outside with
like thornpricks of rose trees, in the manner of raised work. Other were
of cinnamon colour, urn fashion, and as if gilded with gold but faded.
Some of strange fashion, jugs bent in so as to be six-square, raised
work upon them pricked as curious raisers of paste may imitate; some
like black earth for pudding pans, on ye outside indented and crossed
quincunx fashion. They had some odd colours (not blue) in these times
and a way of glazing different to what now; the red earth bare away the
bell.”
“Now, besides red pots,” says Conyers, “such as have inscriptions in the
bottoms [_i.e._ Samian], there were black pots with inscriptions and
part of white earth and the glazing black, and both these might be made
in ye places, as well as a gilded sort of earthenware. There was a
brownish sort inclining to yellow, and the gilding easily coming off.
Now, whether this was a thin wash of gold colour or foliated, I know
not, yet I think foliated [really mica]. Other pots and urns of a
whitish yellow and a soft kind of earth and shells strewed at the bottom
inside. Now, other pots as thin as glass with raised work, and these as
of a silvered or bell-metal coloured glazing. The imagery, hounds,
hares, stags, thorns, trees and branching, flourishings—all raised work.
Then I have lamps of gilded British-work [local] and coarse
whitish-yellow colours, and bottles and pots for dropping, of the same
colours.” In one of his repetitions, Conyers mentions “great potsherds
and ears of six-gallon pots.” He also gives sketches of many of the
vessels. Doubtless those drawn were in most cases whole vessels and they
are of the coarser wares, other than Samian. It is probable, therefore,
that they were pottery made on the spot. Dr. Harwood, describing the
excavations in the site of St. Mary Woolnoth in 1724, says that “Roman
foundations were found made of offal of brick kilns and furnaces” (_Soc.
Antiq. Minutes_).
It would be an easy thing to identify in our collections vessels which
conform to the types sketched by Conyers and then to form a group of
actual pots which presumably were made in London. This coarse and
ordinary ware is usually classed as “Roman,” but it was in a large
degree a Celtic inheritance. The black wares of “carinated” profile
(Figs. 135 and 136) and more or less “cordonned” decorations are very
like Marne pottery of the Celtic period. It seems quite likely that the
potteries of Londinium may have existed before the Roman Conquest.
[Illustration:
FIG. 135.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 136.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 137.
]
Many of the decorated pots in our museums are so clearly described by
Conyers that they, too, can be identified. It is evident, for instance,
that Castor-ware vessels with hunting scenes in slip were as well
represented in the finds as they are in our museums to-day. Hunting
itself must have been much in the people’s minds, with chariot races and
the gladiator “matches.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 138.
]
Sporting subjects, such as are mentioned by Conyers, are plentifully
represented in our museums. In Fairholt’s sketch-book I find a drawing
of a pot found in Cateaton Street (Fig. 137). There is also a sketch of
a fragment of a similar urn found at Chesterford (Fig. 138). Compare the
sculpture, Fig. 62. The piece engraved in Wright’s book as an example of
a British hunting dog was also from a sketch by Fairholt of a London
fragment. He also drew a piece found in Bishopsgate Street, which shows
the heads of four horses, one over the other. This is explained by a
complete pot at the British Museum, from Colchester, which has reliefs
of racing chariots as mentioned before (p. 51). On another Colchester
vase are Gladiators with their names scratched above. The eagle (Fig.
139) is from a fragment at Silchester.
[Illustration:
FIG. 139.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 140.
]
After having identified the pottery actually made in London, and the
other native sources from which other wares were brought, we might go on
to determine how far this native pottery is Celtic and how far Roman.
Fig. 140, restored from a large fragment of very coarse make in the
London Museum, and said to have been found at Mortlake, must have been
made long before the Roman invasion. Figs. 135 and 136 are urns of
Upchurch ware, carefully made and of lustrous black surface. The forms
of these are not Roman. The “spirit” of all is of Bronze Age and
Mycenæan character. The black pottery with “carinated” profiles found in
London, and now in our museums, may be Upchurch ware, but from Conyers’
account and sketches it seems probable that black and grey pottery was
made locally. In the museums, there are a few examples which seem to be
clearly Celtic, as, for example, a large fragment at the British Museum
with white stripes over a grey fabric. There seems, however, to have
been a curious disinclination to recognise Celtic art, and a desire to
call all Roman.
_Samian._—The early prosperity of London is well shown by the great
quantity of Samian ware which has been found of the period about 60-85,
and by the examples of the work of the best makers, such as Vitalis,
Rubricius, Saturnus and Rufinus. Of the first-named there are some
excellent vases in the collection at South Kensington; he distributed
his pottery from Carthage to Carlisle, and from Pompeii to London.
Saturnus has half a chapter to himself in a big book on the Roman
pottery found in Trier. The Samian question is too vast for me to
attempt to deal with it here, and I can merely note one or two details.
In Fairholt’s sketch-books at the Victoria and Albert Museum there are
several drawings of Samian fragments. One of these, which I have not
seen elsewhere, is an excellent example of animals running under trees—a
scheme taken over into our Castor-ware, which Dr. Haverfield thought
might be a Celtic tradition (_Romanization_). (Fig. 141, and compare
Fig. 138.) At the Guildhall are nearly a dozen fragments of a rare kind
of Samian vase, in which the ornament of figures and foliage was applied
in separate units, the leaves, etc., being linked up by stalks skilfully
done by the “barbotine” method. Three larger and some smaller fragments
come from a vase of rather globular shape which was very similar to a
vase found at Cornhill, one of the chief treasures of the Roman Room at
the British Museum. The latter is well described in Mr. Walter’s
_Catalogue of Roman Pottery_, which is the best account available of
pottery found in London. It is not observed that the Guildhall fragments
contain a figure which is half lost in the restored vase at the British
Museum. On the other hand, comparison with the latter would make it easy
to restore the Guildhall example. The details of both were formed by the
same stamps. I give in Figs. 142 and 143 the scheme of the decoration: B
was the general shape of the pot.
[Illustration:
FIG. 141.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 142.
]
Two or three other sherds at the Guildhall belonged to a somewhat
similar but smaller urn which had Bacchic subjects—a satyr with goat
legs, and a faun before whom is a wine jar into which he seems to be
dropping grape juice. These figures were evidently also set between
scrolls of vegetation, and this also can be restored. Again there is a
sherd of a vine pattern similar to Fig. 142, but, I think, from a third
pot. There is also a figure from a dark-grey pot, which must have been
yet another of the same kind. (For the last word on Samian pottery, see
Oswald and Price’s _Terra Sigillata_.)
A volume on the pottery found in London by a specialist, like that on
Silchester, would be certain to bring out valuable historical results on
the existence and persistence of Celtic wares, on importations before
the Claudian Conquest, and on the large quantity of imports in early
Roman days.
[Illustration:
FIG. 143.
]
_Glass._—Much broken glass is usually found on Roman sites, vessels,
window-panes, etc., and it was probably wrought, in many centres, from
imported material. Evidence of this has been found at Silchester and
elsewhere (see Mr. T. May’s _Warrington_). Some window glass was
described by Price as “plate polished on one side and ground on the
other”; this probably means that it was cast and that the rough side
came next the mould.
Conyers, describing the finds on the side of St. Paul’s in 1675, says:
“The labourers told me of some remains that were found up and down near
the place of the other pot-kilns, and these had a funnel to convey the
smoke, which might serve for glass furnaces. For though not any pots
with glass in them whole in the furnaces were there found, yet broken
crucibles, or tests for molting of glasses, together with boltered
glasses such as are to be seen remaining at glass-houses amongst the
broken glass, which were glasses spoilt in the making, were there found,
but not plenty, and especially coloured and prepared for jewel-like
ornament, but mostly such as for cruets or glasses with a lip to drop
withal of a greenish light blue colour. Of any sort of glass there was
but little; so that the glasswork might be scarce, for I think a hundred
times more of pots was found to one of glass....
“Now doth appear the Romans had excellent mechanics, pot makers,
stampers of coins, and excellent workers in glass, for amongst those
Roman pots were found glass beads as big as could be put on your little
finger, and these hollow within and of blue glass wrought or enamelled
with yellow glass, and blue beads of the colour of a Turkoise stone.
Divided were these beads with threads as big as pack thread. Amongst the
rest, great pins made of bone or ivory, etc., heads of many like the
great brass-pins, and others vermicular or screw-head, others like the
Pope’s triple crown; of these fell to my share as many as a pint-pot
would hold.... Taken up a _speculum_ of metal to show the face, of fine
bell-metal. There were also found brass embossments with glass set
instead of better jewels, which I keep, and glass drops that were loose,
and the bottom of an old-fashioned crucible which had glass melted in
it, and there were also pieces of necks of glass cruets to pour out by.”
Much of the large number of plainer glass vessels in our museums was
doubtless made in the London glass works from imported metal, and
probably some ornamental pieces were also manufactured. Thomas Wright
thought that glass itself was made in Roman days on the coast near
Brighton where “pebbles of glass” have been found; but from
comparatively late records of glass making about Rye, etc., the Roman
origin of the “pebbles” seems unlikely.
In the British Museum are some fragments of glass vessels having moulded
reliefs of chariot races and combats, with the names of the competitors
above them. T. Wright illustrates “a fragment of a very remarkable cup
in green glass found in the Roman Villa at Hartlip in Kent.... Roach
Smith possessed two similar fragments found in London, one of which is
identical with the Hartlip fragment in its design and appears to be from
the same mould; the other is from a vessel of a different shape and has
a quadriga in bas-relief. We have before had occasion to observe how
popular gladiatorial contests and the games of the circus were among the
Roman inhabitants of this island, and how often we find them represented
on the pottery as on the glass.” If a glass vessel found in Kent is
exactly like another found in London, it is probable that the former was
itself obtained in London, where both may have been made. One of the
fragments in the British Museum is from Colchester. We have seen before
how that some of the Castor-ware pots were decorated with similar racing
chariots, and one of these was found in London and the other in
Colchester. Racing chariots also decorate a leaden box found in London
and described below.
Glass vessels having reliefs of racing chariots have been found on the
Continent, and in the British Museum _Guide_ it is said that our
examples “probably came from a Belgian workshop, as a glass of the same
kind has been found at Couvin, in the province of Namur, bearing two of
the same competitors’ names in a four-horse chariot race. Race cups of
this kind date about A.D. 100, and have been found in France, Belgium
and Germany. The six cups or fragments found in Britain were no doubt
imported across the Channel.” There is, I think, room for some doubt. In
any case there seems to be ample evidence that glassware was made in
Britain and in Londinium.
[Illustration:
FIG. 144.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 145.
]
Much glass of finer quality was imported. There is in the Guildhall
Museum a fragment signed by a maker of Sidon, and fragments of several
small plaques in the British Museum having patterns wrought in the
substance are of a kind found in Egypt. At the Egyptian exhibition of
the Burlington Club, 1921, similar plaques were shown, some having
sprigs of flowers, and one a _single_ rose petal pattern in yellow,
white and red on the dark ground (cf. Fig. 145). The three pieces at the
British Museum are all different and all can be restored. Fig. 144 is
from Roach Smith. Fig. 145 is a rough indication of the pattern of
another, and the third is a variant of Fig. 144. These interesting and
beautiful little fragments are obscure from age; they might with great
advantage be partially repolished, laid out on restored drawings, and be
made much of. The recent rearrangement of the contents of the Roman Room
at the British Museum, and the admirable new _Guide_, have so greatly
increased the interest of the objects that I want still more. I also
wish that the London things in the collection could be shown together.
Roach Smith never intended his objects to be separated.
_Enamels_.—Conyers’ phrases about coloured glass “prepared for
jewel-like ornament,” and “the brass embossments with glass set instead
of jewels,” apparently refer to enamels and seem to imply that enamelled
objects were made at the London glass works.
[Illustration:
FIG. 146.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 147.
]
A large number of small enamelled objects, from little bowls to
brooches, have been found in Britain. The art of enamelling was known
here before the Roman age, but objects having several colours seem to be
“Roman,” although there are Celtic characteristics in the patterns, and
it is agreed that there was a native manufacture (_British Museum
Guide_, p. 95) of such enamels. The finest piece is a “casket” in the
form of a little vase with a handle. This handle has turned-up ends of a
kind frequently found in Alexandrian silverwork. One of the bands of
enamel is a meandering stem and vine leaves. This beautiful object was
found in Essex, and there is in the British Museum another little
enamelled bowl also found not far from London, at Braughing,
Hertfordshire. The details in these two pieces are very similar, so are
those of a little enamelled cock found near the Royal Exchange. Notice
the use of long triangular forms and narrow saw-edged fillets. It seems
probable that all were made in London, and further evidence is found in
a remarkable enamelled plate taken out of the Thames (Fig. 146). This
“being an unfinished piece, was probably made in this country”—and city,
I would add. In colouring and technique this plate (probably part of a
memorial) is very like the objects already mentioned. A leaf form on it
which ends in a tendril is found also on the Braughing bowl; both these
pieces might have come from one shop. The type of ornament is remarkably
Celtic. In the _Guide_ it is said that “debased Amazon shields can be
recognised, and Riegel has pointed out that the panel is not a unit, but
belongs to a larger all-over pattern which could be repeated
indefinitely, and reveals an artistic tendency of the later Roman
Empire.” I do not agree with either of these statements. The pattern
seems to me to have been designed as a reversed scroll pattern,
subdivided by setting down oval forms in the spaces to counterchange the
colour in a typically Celtic manner. In the diagram (Fig. 147), A is the
pattern type; B is the application to the space; C is the subdivision of
the spaces completing the design. In D and E, I have made an original
design on the same principle. Other details in the filling of the space
at the top are Celtic. Notice again a heart-shaped form at X. This form
is frequent in small seal-boxes, several of which have been found in
London, of which F is from one lately added to the Guildhall collection.
It is probable, I think, that such enamels were made in London by Celtic
artists. An enamelled harness plate found in London and illustrated by
Roach Smith is like others found in Somersetshire (see G). A small
brooch in the form of a fish at the London Museum may be early
Christian.
_Leadwork._—Britain was the chief source for lead in the later Roman
era. Of about a hundred and twenty Roman pigs of lead in the museums of
Europe, about half were of British origin, as appears from the
inscriptions. Cast sheet lead was used for coverings. Some actually in
position was found lining the bottom of the hot bath at Bath in 1864. It
was afterwards sold for £70! Mr. Irvine, in an article on the Corinthian
temple at Bath, assumes that the roof was covered with lead. He says
that the sheet lead found in Bath was about three-eighths of an inch
thick and showed that it was cast on a sand-bed. Melted lead was found
at St. Albans under conditions which suggested that it had come from the
roof of the Basilica. We may be satisfied that lead was used for
important roofs. Lead pipes are also found.
Many lead coffins have been found in and about London—about a dozen in
all—and they were doubtless made in the city. The fashion of using lead
coffins seems to have originated in the Romanised East about the time of
the recognition of Christianity, and those found in London follow the
general type very closely. I give in Fig. 148 a rough sketch made in
Constantinople twenty-five years ago of a lead coffin found at Sidon.
Another coffin from Sidon has recently been acquired by the British
Museum. Figs. 149, 150 and 151 are from coffins found in London.
[Illustration:
FIG. 148.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 149.
]
One discovered many years ago in South London, illustrated in
_Archæologia_, vol. xvii., had on it two little figures like
Minerva—probably Britannia. Another found at Sittingbourne, recently set
out for exhibition at the British Museum, has little Medusa heads and
pairs of lions watching a vase (Fig. 152).
[Illustration:
FIG. 150.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 151
]
A round lead box, for the reception of burnt bones, found in London and
now in the British Museum, has repeated on it a relief of a four-horse
chariot. This is described in the _Guide_ as the chariot of the Sun; but
comparison with other chariot-racing groups on the pottery and glass
vessels shows that these reliefs must also represent a chariot race
(Fig. 153). This fact adds to the probability that the glass vessels
with reliefs of racing chariots were also made in Londinium. Fig. 154 is
from a simpler lead box found in London; compare the rings with the
painted pattern described at the bottom of p. 169.
[Illustration:
FIG. 152.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 153. FIG. 154.
]
_Pewter._—A large quantity of pewter ware, vessels and dishes, has been
discovered in Britain. Many ingots of the metal were found in the last
century at Battersea in the river. Lysons figured a fragment of “lead”
found at Lydney stamped with a name, and this may have been pewter. The
ingots of pewter were doubtless of British origin, and it is very
probable that the finished objects of this metal were manufactured here.
Many of the dishes have engraved centres of a type of design which can
hardly be earlier than the fourth century. This engraving was filled
with black composition imitating _niello_. The ingots bear marks which
show that they belong to a time when Christianity was recognised.
In the London Museum is a dish with an engraved centre, and at the
British Museum are some plain dishes signed with the name of the owner
or maker, Martinus, which were found in Southwark. Most of the finds of
pewter ware have been made in south-east England, and London is the most
likely place of origin. Lysons illustrates a dish found at Manchester
(it is now in the British Museum) with an engraved centre so like those
found in the south of England that it is probable it also was made in
the south. These dishes were finished in a lathe; at the back they have
traces of three projections by which they were held in turning but
afterwards cut away.
_Bone, Leatherwork, etc._—We have seen above that Conyers speaks of the
large quantity of bone objects found in excavations. Of the St. Paul’s
site he says: “And amongst ye heap or mixture of rubbish, hartshorn
sawed into pieces, old heifers’ horns, and abundance of boars’
tusks—some in their jaw bones which shows that they did often hunt ye
wild boar.... It is very remarkable that ivory-work and great pins made
of bone and bodkins of great numbers was found buried together with
store of boars’ teeth, of oysters and other shells, Roman coins and
ornamental beads, of blue like enamel and the fibulæ they used to fasten
their garments, earthenware with inscriptions and glass was found in
gravel pits near St. Paul’s School.” Several carved pieces of similar
style in the London Museum—notably little reliefs of gladiators—suggest
that there were expert bone carvers in London. A bone pin with a figure
of Fortuna found in London, and a carving of a sphinx from
Colchester—both in the British Museum—are really beautiful work. The
admirable fragments of an ivory scabbard found in Greenwich Park in 1906
can hardly be London work.
A considerable number of beautifully-made leather shoes having
elaborately pierced patterns are doubtless of local work. One found at
South-fleet, now at the British Museum, was coloured purple and
decorated with gilding, as is recorded on a drawing at the Society of
Antiquaries, made when it was newly found.
The site of London is still unexhausted; even while I am writing this I
see in the morning’s paper, “Recent excavations in Lothbury have brought
to light relics of Roman occupation—bone bodkins, oyster shells and
broken pottery. The bodkins are large, and it is thought that they were
probably used in mat-making.” London must have been an art-producing
centre for two thousand years.
[Illustration:
LOCALLY MADE POTTERY.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER XI+
EARLY CHRISTIAN LONDON
“It was no longer thought to be Britain but a Roman island; and all
their money was stamped with Cæsar’s image. Meanwhile these islands,
stiff with frost, received the beams of light, the holy precepts of
Christ, the true Sun, at the later part of the reign of Tiberius
Cæsar.”
—GILDAS.
_CHRISTIAN BRITAIN._—The whole subject of Christian antiquities in
Britain was for a long time clouded by mere doubt of testimony, until
the comparatively recent discovery of the foundations of an early
Christian basilican church at Silchester, in 1892, gradually changed the
temperature and atmosphere in which facts are seen. Thomas Wright had
swept the thing aside, Gildas and all. This difference of attitude is
well brought out in the earlier and more recent writings of Dr.
Haverfield. Compare, for instance, his over-cautious article in the
_English Historical Review_ about twenty years ago with another in
_Archæologia Æliana_, 1917, which is written in quite a different
temper. It is now clear that Britain marched with Gaul in the acceptance
of Christianity, although one step behind.
In Cabrol’s great _French Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_ we may
obtain a valuable unbiased account of British Christian antiquities. The
best general introduction known to me is a chapter in Sir C. Oman’s
excellent _England before the Norman Conquest_, from which I will
condense a paragraph.
“There is no doubt that individual Christians, perhaps even small
communities, were to be found in Britain as early as the second century.
There is no reason to doubt Tertullian writing in about A.D. 208, or
Origen writing about A.D. 230, that the Christian religion had converts
in the province of the extreme north-west.... In the long peace which
followed the persecution of Severus the new religion pushed northward
and westward with greater power. There seems no reason to doubt the
small number of British martyrs whose names appear in the earliest
martyrologies. The very early martyrology gives three names drawn from
Britain—the latest St. Patrick (_obiit c._ 461), the other two are
Augulus, bishop of Augusta (London), and Alban. We know nothing of
Augulus, but the fact that his See is called Augusta shows that the name
was taken down between 340 and 410, for London was only known as Augusta
in the second half of the fourth century. Of Alban’s existence our
knowledge is more certain, since Germanus visited his grave in 429; his
cult, therefore, was well established in the early fifth century.... As
early as 314, three bishops from Britain appeared at the Council of
Arles—Eborius of York, Restitutus of London and Adelphius of Lincoln.
There seems reason to think that the bulk of the population remained
pagan till a later date than was the case elsewhere. If the Christians
of Calleva found the diminutive church lately discovered sufficient for
their needs they must have been but a few hundreds. In that same town a
temple to Mars was found, which must have been used down to the end. If
Calleva had become completely Christian before its evacuation the image
of Mars would not have been left. The small number of Christian
sepulchral inscriptions is notable, though such have been found at
Carlisle, Lincoln and elsewhere. It is very strange that a religion
which was first publicly tolerated, and later encouraged for nearly a
hundred years before A.D. 410, should have left so few records. The
existence of a vigorous British Christendom in the fourth century is
sufficiently proved by literary evidence. Without that evidence we
should have gathered little from archæological research. Secular
inscriptions and buildings of the fourth century are rare, no less than
ecclesiastical ones. The British Church produced, in the last days of
the Romans, a heresiarch, the celebrated Pelagius, a monk. Born about
370-80, he taught in Rome itself. The earliest recorded works written by
Britons are those of the heresiarch and of a British bishop named
Fastidius.”
In an excellent short account of British Christian antiquities in the
new _Guide to the Christian Collection at the British Museum_ (1921),
Mr. Dalton remarks that “the statement of the sixth-century British
historian, Gildas, that in Roman times Britain had many churches was
always credible, but positive proof was not forthcoming until the
excavations on the site of Calleva (Silchester) brought to light the
foundations of a church, the Roman origin of which is beyond dispute.”
Gildas, again, is confirmed by Bede’s account of ruined Christian
churches existing in the sixth century. According to Cabrol’s
_Dictionary_ even some of the greater country villas, like Chedworth,
were occupied by Christian proprietors. On a mosaic pavement at Frampton
the monogram of Christ appears in the central space of a border. It has
been argued that the monogram might be later than the pavement, but the
design of the border itself shows that it had a central feature from the
first. It seems probable to me, as before said, that several other
mosaic pavements were Christian.
[Illustration:
FIG. 155.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 156.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 157.
]
_A British Church._—The little church at Silchester is extraordinarily
interesting in many ways. It was probably built not later than the
middle of the fourth century and is thus one of the earliest churches
known. It occupied an important position in the city close to the Forum,
and it is probable from this and from the importance of the city that it
was a bishop’s church. Moreover, it is evident that if there was such a
church at Silchester there must have been others in Canterbury, Verulam,
London and other cities. This church was only about 30 ft. square,
exclusive of the narthex (Fig. 155). Some day, when we reverence our
antiquities more, it might be excavated once again and, having a decent
roof erected over it, be made a place of pilgrimage. I should like to
see a copy of it put up somewhere for use—it might cost half as much as
a poor stained-glass window. As I have just said, the plan, exclusive of
the narthex, was square, so also is the plan of an early church in Asia
Minor which I give for comparison (Fig. 156). This _squareness_ was, I
believe, intended as a symbol of the Ark. I also give the altar end of
an early church in Greece, Fig. 157 (Nichopoleos: see Athenian
_Ephemeris_, 1916).
The plan of the Silchester church seems to be of an Eastern rather than
Roman type; and small as it is, it has slight transeptal projections
which, when compared with the other plans, show that the form of the
cross was intended to be suggested. The altar was not regarded as being
in the apse, but rather in front of it (compare Fig. 157). The apse was
to the _west_ and the entrance at the _east_, following the early
custom. In front was a court with a water basin in the centre. In regard
to the non-Roman character of the plan, it may be noted that the late
Mr. Edmund Bishop, a great liturgical authority, showed that early Irish
Christianity was of an Iberian type.
_London Saints._—Bishop Augulus and Restitutus of London ought to be
commemorated in some way in the City. We are singularly wasteful of the
power there is in the antiquities of a nation when sympathetically
understood. If, for instance, Patrick had been recognised for the great
British personage he was—the son and grandson of Christian parents
captured to be a slave in Ireland—the magnanimous missionary might have
been a mediator between the Irish and ourselves, a mixed race, part
English, part British and part Roman. St. Augulus is included in the
Roman Catholic Menology of the British Church. “Feb. 7.—In London the
Passion of St. Augulus, Bishop and Martyr (A.D. 300 _c._). Named on this
day in the Roman Martyrology and in all the ancient calendars as a
bishop who suffered martyrdom in London. The conjecture of historians is
that he suffered in the persecution of Diocletian about the same time as
St. Alban.” He is given a place in the paintings of the English College,
Rome. It is curious that of two contemporary martyrs, St. Alban should
have been taken up by fame and the other left. Confirmation of the point
made by Sir C. Oman in regard to the name Augusta applied to London has
appeared in the recent identification by Sir A. Evans of a late
fourth-century coin with the Mint mark AVG.
[Illustration:
FIG. 158.
]
_Early Christian Objects._—The earliest existing “monument” of Christian
Londinium is dated only a little later than the year in which Restitutus
attended the Council of Arles. This is the reverse of a coin of
Constantine, recently discovered (1909) at Poltross Burn, on the great
Roman Wall, and thus described: “Mint mark PLN; of the London Mint and
bearing the Christian emblem; A.D. 317-324; variety of Cohen 638. Two
Victories placing on an altar a shield inscribed VOT. PR.; on the face
of the altar a cross within a wreath. This is a London-minted coin
bearing upon its reverse the Christian emblem of such rarity that the
use of Christian emblems in the London Mint has been called in question.
The only recorded specimens are a coin of Constantine II. in the British
Museum, one of Crispus, found in 1909 at Corstopitum, and the present
example. All have the same reverse” (Fig. 158). This is in every way a
very remarkable coin; the Victories placing the shield on a Christian
altar is obviously a record of the official recognition of Christianity.
From this moment when the Cross appeared on what Sir C. Oman calls “the
public gazette of the Roman Empire,” every one in Londinium must have
known what the Cross stood for. “In an issue of money between 317 and
324, Constantine used Christian signs in such a way as to solemnly
affirm his Christian faith, and thus by universal custom made known the
imperial will. The coins of London hardly make the same affirmation of
Christianity by the Emperor as that of Siscia, but they testify to the
intentions of certain officers of the Mint” (Maurice, _Numis.
Constant._). On the coin of Crispus mentioned above, the _Classical Year
Book_, 1911, remarked: “This is a novelty, as hitherto it has been
supposed that Christian symbols did not occur on London coins of the
Constantinian epoch.” “It is curious that the London Mint put Christian
emblems on its coins before those of Trier, Lyons or Arles” (Oman).
[Illustration:
FIG. 159.
]
With the coins may be associated a small silver disc mounted as the head
of a pin, now in the Roach Smith collection at the British Museum. My
figure is from a drawing by Fairholt, according to whom it was found in
Lothbury with several other small Roman objects. It seems quite
certainly to represent, as Roach Smith supposed, Constantine’s vision of
the Cross in the heavens (Fig. 159).
A small equal-armed cross forms the clasp of a Roman bronze
chain-bracelet found in London, now in the British Museum, which can
hardly be other than Christian (Fig. 160). There has been some
reluctance in accepting crosses of Roman date as Christian, but the
evidence of the coins should modify this.
[Illustration:
FIG. 160.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 161.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 162.
]
In 1862 several ingots of pewter were dredged up from the Thames near
Battersea Bridge, and in 1890 more were discovered. Two are in the York
Museum and the rest are in the British Museum (_Archæol. Journal_, 48).
They are stamped with the monogram of Christ in two forms, with one of
which is associated the words, “_Spes in Deo_” (Fig. 161), and the name
“_Syagrius_” also appears. Silver and copper ingots discovered in this
country have official stamps (non-Christian), and it may not be doubted
that the pewter marks were also official. A lead seal in the Reading
Museum, found in the Civil Basilica at Silchester, has an XP monogram,
which is very similar (Fig. 162), and this, too, was probably official.
The most interesting parallel known to me of the stamps on the pewter
ingots is a seal from a wine jar found at Naucratis, in Egypt (_Nau._
ii. pl. 22), where we find “_Spes in Deo_” in a circle around a cross
(Fig. 163). The circular form had long been used for official stamps
(cf. a brick stamp with the name of Nero in Reading Museum). Pewter ware
was popular at the end of the fourth century, and this is probably the
date of our ingots. The name which appears on them was in use at a late
time. One Syagrius, “last of the Romans,” was driven from his kingdom of
Soissons by the Franks in A.D. 480.
[Illustration:
FIG. 163.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 164.
]
At the Guildhall Museum are two small terra-cotta lamps (Nos. 17 and
18), each having the Christian monogram in the centre (Fig. 164). These
are not of British make, but they may have been imported in the Roman
age. (A lamp which Sir L. Gomme made much of, with a little view of a
city on it, was also of foreign origin, and there is no reason to think
that the view had any connection with London.) Two other lamps in the
Guildhall collection (Nos. 54 and 117) are described as having “limbs of
cross on body, perhaps early Christian,” but I have not found these and
some other objects which it is said may possibly be Christian.
In the description of Wren’s finds on the site of St. Paul’s, given in
_Parentalia_, is mentioned “a sepulchral earthen lamp figured with two
branches of palms, supposed Christian.” Comparing the description with
Figs. 165 and 166 there cannot be any doubt that Wren’s lamp was
Christian. In the British Museum is a little rough lamp found at
Tidworth, Wilts, which has a pair of palm branches, and I think that
there is another in Canterbury Museum; the former is so like others from
Syria in the Early Christian Room at the British Museum that there
cannot be a doubt that it is not a native work; possibly it was brought
back by a pilgrim from the Holy Land. Fig. 165 illustrates the seal of a
ring found at Fifehead Neville, Dorset, now in the British Museum; on it
we find the sign of Christ in the later form (in which the X has become
a cross) surmounted by a dove, and between two palms. It means something
like “the Believer resting on the victorious Cross of Christ.” The
earlier form of the monogram was made of the first two letters of the
name Christ, XP; the later form was formed by a cross and XP or P, and
this seems to have meant the Crucifixion.
[Illustration:
FIG. 165.
]
These comparisons will help to interpret a fascinating fragment of a
symbolical design engraved on a glass cup found at Silchester. Here,
instead of the sign for Christ, we find the upper part of a letter,
which can hardly have been anything else than T, for nothing else would
be central in the design, and in place of the dove we have a fish. T was
the early form of the sign of the cross, and is found several times in
the Catacombs; the fish is a rebus for the words Jesus Christ, God’s Son
Saviour (ΙΧΘΎΣ); the palms are again signs of victory. It seems to be an
early symbolical representation of Christ on the cross, and one of the
most interesting which exists (compare Figs. 46 and 47 in the British
Museum _Guide to Christian Antiquities_). Another tiny fragment of the
same glass has the letter O on it, and there must have been some short
inscription as well as the fish symbol and palms (Fig. 166).
[Illustration:
FIG. 166.
]
[Illustration:
FIGS. 167, 168, 169.
]
In the London Museum is an enamelled brooch in the form of a fish (Fig.
167). As the fish was a well-known Christian symbol, we may hardly doubt
that this brooch must be counted among our Christian antiquities. It is
exactly similar to a brooch illustrated by Mr. Ward (_Roman Era_, Fig.
75) as having been found in Rotherley. They are duplicates, and must
have come from the same “shop.” In _V.C.H._ it is recorded that a
fish-shaped enamelled fibula was found in excavations at London Wall in
1901-5 (compare _Builder_, December 13, 1902). This may be the same
piece. At Silchester a plain bronze brooch in fish form was found (Fig.
168). The fish symbol in an almost identical form is found engraved on a
pewter dish, one of a set found at Appleshaw (Hants) and now in the
British Museum (Fig. 169); the dish itself on which it appears is
sometimes described as fish-shaped, but it was rather a long oval with
projections at the ends. Another of the same set of pewter pieces has
the XP monogram engraved on it (Fig. 170). As a third of the pieces is
of the form of a chalice, there seems to be every reason to regard the
whole set as church plate, and I find this definitely asserted in an
article in the _Athenæum_ (August 11, 1906): “In 1890 a body was found
at Reading lying east and west, together with Roman British relics, and
a lead plate bearing three crosses; near by was another skeleton with a
small pewter chalice. This may be accepted as the grave of a Christian
priest. This chalice should be compared with that of a Roman altar set
of pewter recently found at Appleshaw.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 170.
]
As said before, when tombs and coffins were discussed, it is probable
that some of these represent Christian burials. A coin of the Emperor
Gratian bearing the monogram of Christ was found at Smithfield, together
with some wooden coffins, and it was probably buried as a sign of faith
(_V.C.H._). Two or three rough stone coffins found in Kent seem to have
been Christian. The first bishops of the Saxon church at Canterbury were
interred in stone coffins of a Roman type.
_St. Peters, Cornhill._—Ancient tradition, which may be traced back to
the twelfth century, claimed that the Church of St. Peter on Cornhill
was older than St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a church of Roman foundation.
The site is important, being close to (as I suppose) or within the
boundary of the Forum and Civil Basilica of Londinium. The main walls of
the present church are neither parallel with Cornhill nor square with
Gracechurch Street, and Roman foundations have recently been found in
the neighbourhood of the church. Until all the lines of the walls which
have been discovered have been carefully laid down on a large-scale
plan, it would be rash to offer any opinion as to a possible Roman
foundation of the church; but if the church should prove to have been
near, but outside the Forum, the position of the church at Silchester
would be significant evidence. If, on the other hand, the church site
proves to have been within the boundary of the Forum, its Roman
foundation would be improbable.
Recent records of finds near the church mention “an old piece of Roman
wall passing through the present wall of the church at a slight angle
under demolished buildings [along the north front].... This may possibly
belong to the original church” (March 2, 1922). From an article in _The
Times_ of September 29, 1922, I condense the following account of
discoveries made at the end of the year 1921 on the north side of St.
Peter’s Church: “A magnificent wall went down about 20 ft., but at 15
ft. were the footings. The wall was here 5 ft. wide; above the footings
were three courses of tiles four abreast, each 13 in. wide, making 52
in. wide. This wall had been plastered on the south side, and at some
subsequent date [?] rooms had been made by other walls, on the
plastering of which was still to be seen a pattern of imitation marble
or alabaster. There were two layers of plaster and then a layer of white
cement almost as thin as paper, on which designs had been painted by a
skilful artist. This wall had been broken down, and at a level 5½ ft.
higher, a tessellated pavement had been laid. Later, at 56 and 57
Cornhill, a similar wall was uncovered. The mortar joints between the
tiles were wide. The wall was found on the south [afterwards corrected
to _north_] side of the church wall, so that the ancient Church of St.
Peter was probably built inside what was a Roman fortress.” For fortress
I would read the Forum. The church can hardly have been founded in such
a position until the Forum had gone out of use and the Roman age in
Londinium had passed, but it might then very well have been constructed
within old Roman walls or on their foundations. We saw before that wall
tiles of exceptional size had been used in the Civil Basilica of the
Forum, and the tiles, 13 in. wide, mentioned above would seem to be of
the same size. Twenty-five years ago a Roman wall was found, described
as “very close to St. Peter’s upon Cornhill, of immense thickness,
proceeding in a westerly direction from Leadenhall Market, under the
Woolpack Tavern in Gracechurch Street, along St. Peter’s Alley, a few
feet on the south side of St. Peter’s, continuing under the
banking-house of Messrs. Prescott, Dimsdale & Co. (50 Cornhill),
_supposed_ to continue under the roadway of Cornhill, and appearing
again in the foundations of the new building now being erected on the
_north_ side of Cornhill (No. 70) for the Union Bank of Australia.”
(Middlesex and Herts _Notes and Queries_, 1897.) This wall, if one may
guess, appears to have been parallel to the 5 ft. wall on the north of
the church, and between them seem to have been important chambers of the
Forum buildings.
Dr. Bury has lately given reasons for thinking that the Romans did not
finally evacuate Britain until 442 (_J.R.S._, vol. x.).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER XII+
THE ORIGIN OF LONDON[3]
“There Thames runs by beneath the wall,
Where pass the merchant vessels all,
From every land, both high and low,
Where Christian merchants come and go.”
TRISTRAM, _c._ 1175.
Footnote 3:
The substance of this chapter was read at the Society of Antiquaries
about 1917, but it has not been printed before.
_FIRST BRITISH CITIES._—Ancient cities were not planted down by an act
of will, they sprang up on lines of communication as centres of control
and commerce. On a geological map it appears that a chalk belt passes
from Kent to Hampshire towards the south bank of the Thames. From the
north bank another wide belt diverges to the north-east. The backbones
of these chalk regions are the North Downs of Kent and the Chiltern
Hills; they contain between them a long triangle of gravel drift and
marsh flats through which the Thames flows to the sea. These downs, as
we know to-day, when we find ourselves on them, are pre-eminently
walking grounds, and they must have been the prehistoric ways of
communication. “Primitive man traversed the ranges lengthways: in the
valleys were forests almost impenetrable, whereas the backbone of each
ridge would stand bald above the ocean of trees.” The oldest roads were
“Ridge-ways.” On the high Wiltshire downs at, or near, a point where the
southern system of downs converge, stands Stonehenge, and I cannot doubt
that it was in some way conceived as being a centre and “capital” of the
country. The Gauls recognised such a centre, or “omphalos,” near
Chartres. Since writing this, I find that Sir C. Oman has said, “Britain
must have had some focus corresponding to that for Gaul; possibly among
the prehistoric monuments of Salisbury Plain.” Stonehenge, I may say in
passing, is a monument of wrought stone set out with precision, and I
cannot see how it can be earlier than about 500-700 B.C.
The ancient trackway along the Chilterns, known as the Ickneld Way,
reached the Thames near Wallingford. Travellers going south and east
from this point struck across the narrow space of low broken ground
between the two chalk ranges by a short linking road. Silchester, the
capital of an important Brito-Belgic tribe, lies on or near the course
of such a road in a corn-bearing region. Silchester was the key of the
old road system over the Thames fords. It is known to have been one of
three most important pre-Roman British centres, and we may, I think,
look on it as the first British city.
The British city of Verulamium lay to the south of the Ickneld Way, in
the same great triangle between the two chalk regions which is here much
wider. The rise of this centre suggests that a road linking the two
chalk ranges had been found across the river valley much lower than
Silchester. The later Roman Watling Street, directed straight on
Verulam, formed such a link, and there are many reasons which suggests
that some underlying British trackway must have been the cause why
Verulam became important. Later, again, Colchester came to be the chief
city. Possibly it was favoured as being more remote when the Romans
should make an attack. It seems to have been named after the Celtic
war-god, and this may be significant. (In Roman days as in mediæval,
there was probably a ferry from Gravesend to Tilbury for direct access
to Colchester from Kent. This seems to be suggested by the Peutinger
roadmap.)
_Origin of London._—By origin I mean the beginning of a development
which led to the establishment of a port and commercial town. Doubtless
the site may have been occupied by some dwellers in the Stone Age. For
many centuries before the Roman conquest Britain had been in commercial
relations with the Continent. Just before the conquest Verulam was the
capital of the leading Celtic kingdom. This Brito-Belgic kingdom had its
southern boundary along the Thames and its eastern at the Lea, and these
are still boundaries of Middlesex. If this kingdom, with its capital
some twenty miles inland, had any sea-borne trade, its port must have
been on or near the site of London. It is even probable that this port
was the cause of the pre-eminence of the little kingdom to which it
belonged. The port was to Verulam what the Piræus was to Athens, Ostia
to Rome, Dover to Canterbury, and Southampton to Winchester. London was
doubtless the source of the wealth of King Cymbeline, and we might very
well look on him as the founder.
Dr. Guest argued that London was founded as a Roman camp at the time of
the Claudian conquest; but it is now agreed that the name is Celtic; and
it must not be forgotten that London is and always was a port. When we
first hear of London only seventeen years after the Claudian conquest,
it was already, as Tacitus says, famous for the number of its merchants,
and this must imply that it was a principal port. Dr. Haverfield, while
admitting that the name is Celtic, went on to say: “The name Londinium,
the place of Londinos, witnesses at most to nothing more than one wigwam
or one barn.” This “at most” can only mean that every town presumably
begins with one building; in London, however, the building is not likely
to have been a barn amid the bare gravels, but rather a boatman’s house.
Further evidence for the existence of a pre-Roman town is brought out by
the large number of Celtic objects found on the site and in the
neighbourhood, but they have never been properly catalogued as a group.
Dr. Haverfield allowed that three pieces of imported Samian ware in the
British Museum might belong to the period A.D. 10-40. “We might then
conclude that through the influx of Roman traders London had been noted
as a suitable trading centre a few years previous to the Roman conquest;
but the minute dating of these potsherds is not easy, and we must leave
the question of pre-Roman London unsettled. Either there was no
pre-Roman London, or it was an undeveloped settlement, which may have
been on the south bank of the Thames” (_Journ. Rom. Studies_, vol. i. p.
146). The evidence of such early imports is greatly strengthened by
other discoveries at Silchester. Mr. May, speaking of the early “Samian”
ware, says: “The Silchester examples are of much significance. Together
with the contemporary Belgic imitations they prove that the inhabitants
of the capital of the Atrebati were importing costly luxuries in
considerable quantities from Italy and Northern Gaul at the beginning of
the Christian era.” Early Belgic pottery has been found in London as
well as “Samian,” and there is in the British Museum a wine jar of an
early type found in Southwark. Some British pottery was doubtless made
in Londinium itself before the Roman conquest. Mr. Lambert has described
specimens of coarse wares in _Archæologia_. Of one of these he writes:
“Bead-rimmed pot, coarse grey ware, irregularly burnt. A pre-Roman type,
surviving into the Roman period.” He dates it A.D. 50-80, I suppose
thinking that it cannot have really been pre-Roman.
London above bridge is an inland city, the English capital; below bridge
it is a great seaport. In a description of England, published in 1753, I
find this: “That part of the Thames, which is properly the harbour, is
called the Pool, and begins at the turning out of Limehouse Reach and
extends to the Custom House quays. In this compass I had the curiosity
to count the ships, and I have found about 2000 sail of all sorts of
vessels that really go to sea.” In a twelfth-century rhyme on English
towns are the words, “London for ships most.” Bede describes London as a
great ship port. The city is placed just where the Thames widened into
an estuary. At Battersea the river was little wider two thousand years
ago than at present; it overflowed wide spaces of marsh about
Westminster and again contracted by London. Her high ground came close
to the water on the north, and on the Southwark side there was only a
narrow margin of low ground. Directly to the east of London was the low
land called in the Middle Ages “Wapping Marsh” (_Middlesex Feet of
Fines_). In the Pepys collection at Cambridge I have seen an engraved
plan of “Lands by Wall or Wapping Marsh, 1683: seven acres of land in
which the millponds and ditches did all over dispersedly lie.” Stow
tells of Limehouse marshes being “drowned.” Before the lower Thames was
embanked the river must have been two or three miles wide, at every
tide, a little below London, where the considerable little river, the
Lea, runs into it. The higher ground of the site of London is in the
angle formed by the Thames and Lea, and is the extremity of the northern
hills, Highgate and Islington. From the hills several streams flowed
through deeply excavated beds into the Thames. The most considerable of
these was the Fleet; the smaller Walbrook intersected the site of the
city. Conyers in his MS. at the British Museum noted how the Fleet was
embanked in 1675 with material taken from old St. Paul’s, “to narrow-in
the spreading breadth of Fleet River.... The waters overflowed these
parts in the old times.” The general topographical conditions were well
observed by Drayton in _Polyolbion_—The city was built on a rising bank
of gravel and sand, surrounded by lower ground: the tide flowing up the
Lea and Fleet prevented the town from growing too long: to the north and
south of the Thames were ranges of hills: “And such a road for ships
scarce all the world commands.”
_Way to the Port._—The men who first came to the site of London must
have come from the higher ground of Islington and Highgate; they did not
cross the Lea or the Fleet. Before some engineering was done the natural
way was from the direction of Verulam. Now, an ancient road lies along
this course from St. Albans to Aldersgate. As it approaches London it
passes between the Walbrook and the Fleet, pointing towards what the old
tablet near St. Paul’s says is the highest land in the city. The
Walbrook where it fell into the Thames must have had steep clean gravel
banks containing a tidal inlet—a perfect landing-place where small
ancient ships could be brought alongside. This creek, afterwards known
as Dowgate, must have been the original port of London. Along the old
road wine, pottery and bronzes were carried into the interior, and corn
was brought for export. Dowgate is known as a port for foreign ships
from Saxon days (Round’s _Commune of London_). It is especially
interesting to find from Stow that in the fifteenth century the Abbot of
St. Albans had a quay by Dowgate. (Old writers supposed that “Dow”
represented the British word for water; recent scholars equate it with
_Dove_; but even so there is the curious analogy with Dover and such
like place-names.) The Roman gates of London, of course, opened on
important routes, and “the street from Aldersgate to Islington” is
mentioned in the twelfth century (_Middlesex Feet of Fines_). Stow says:
“From the further end of Aldersgate Street straight north to the Bar is
called Goswell Street. Beyond leaving the Charterhouse on the left hand
the way stretcheth up towards Iseldon.” Again on the old woodcut,
usually called Aggas’s map, the street out of Aldersgate is inscribed
“the way to St. Albans.” That excellent old book, John Nelson’s _History
of Islington_, carries the account of this road forward, and he thought
that it was Roman. He quotes a passage from Norden, to the effect that
it passed east of Highgate through Tollington Lane to Crouch End,
Hornsey Park, Muswell Hill, etc. “Tolentone,” he points out, is
mentioned in _Domesday_. This road is laid down on old maps. Recent
modifications at Islington may be made out by comparing maps given by
Nelson and by Lewis in 1842.
I now quote the passage relating to this old ridgeway road to Verulam
from Norden’s MS. (British Museum, 570). He begins at Clerkenwell
instead of from the City: “It is not to be omitted to declare the old
and ancient highways heretofore used by our fathers though the new be of
greater regard and account for that they yield more ease unto the
travellers. There was an old way that passed from Clerkenwell as also
from Portpoole [Gray’s Inn] towards Barnet and so to St. Albans. From
Clerkenwell it extended as the way now is unto a bridge or brooke
between Gray’s Inn Lane and Pancras Church, near which brooke it entered
into an old lane leaving Pancras Church on the west. It is called
Longwich Lane, through which lane it passed along leaving also Highgate
on the west and passed through Tollington Lane, whence it extended to
Crouch End and thence through the Park to Muswell Hill near by Colney
Hatch and so to Friern Barnet, from thence to Whetstone and there
meeteth the new way. The cause why travellers left this old and ancient
way was the deep and dirty passage in the winter.”
The road is well described in Pennant’s Tour (1782): “On quitting St.
Albans I passed the wall of Sopwell Nunnery mixed with quantities of
Roman tiles. After London Colney on the Colne I reached Ridgehill (!), a
most extensive view. At South Mimms enter Middlesex and about a mile
farther made Barnet; in Saxon times a vast wood filled this tract. From
this town is a quick descent. Just beyond Whetstone the road passes over
Finchley Common, infamous for robberies, and often planted with gibbets.
About a mile beyond stands Highgate, a large village seated on a lofty
eminence overlooking the smoky extent beneath. Here, in my memory, stood
a gateway at which in old time a toll was paid to the Bishop of London
for liberty, granted between four and five hundred years ago, for
passing from Whetstone along the present road instead of the old miry
way by Friern Barnet, Colnie Hatch, Muswell Hill, Crouch End, and
leaving Highgate to the west by the Church of St. Pancras. After resting
for a small space over the busy prospect, I descended into the plain,
reached the metropolis, and disappeared in the crowd.”
The old miry way by Crouch End is, I cannot doubt, the original British
road from Verulam to Londinium. (St. Pancras, it may be mentioned here,
must be a very old settlement; near by was a bridge over the Fleet
River, at a later time called “Battle Bridge,” on which name theories
have been founded, but I think the bridge may have taken the place of
“Bradford in the Parish of St. Pancras,” mentioned in the _Feet of
Fines_, 23 H. viii.)
A summer’s day journey to London, such as Matthew Paris would have known
it, must have been of beauty unimaginable when the miry lane was not too
wet. Mention is made in the time of Henry VIII. of “a capital messuage
called Muswell Farm in the parish of Clerkenwell and Hornsey, and the
site of a certain chapel in the said parish, now dissolved, lately
called Muswell Chapel” (_Middlesex Feet of Fines_, 35 H. viii.). A
memory of the view of St. Paul’s rising from the midst of the walled
city is given in a little sketch by Matthew Paris himself. I find this
of Highgate in 1753: “On the summit of the hill a view over the whole
vale to the city, and that so eminently that they see the ships passing
up and down the river for twelve or fifteen miles below London.” Of
Hampstead: “The Heath affords a most beautiful prospect, for we see
within eight miles of Northampton, and the prospect to London and beyond
it to Banstead Downs, Shooter’s Hill, Red Hill, and Windsor Castle is
uninterrupted.”
A note of Camden speaks of another old road striking across to Edgware.
“Hampstead Heath, from which you have a most pleasant prospect of the
most beautiful city of London and the lovely country about it, over
which the ancient Roman military way led to Verulam by Edgworth and not
by Highgate as now, which new way was opened by the Bishop of London
about 300 years since.”
Drayton showed remarkable perception when, describing the hills about
London, he wrote of Highgate:
“Appointed for a gate of London to have been
When first the mighty Brute that city did begin;
Its holts to the east stand to look
Upon the winding course of Lea’s delightful Brook.”
When Walbrook Creek was a landing-place having a road connecting it with
the interior, we may be sure that boating passages across the Thames
would be common, and very soon a link with the road to Dover would be
formed on this line. Thus, the road through Southwark must have followed
the foundation of London immediately. As is well known, Ptolemy put
Londinium in Kent, but he—as Dr. Bradley pointed out—was frequently very
wrong in regard to inland places.
[Illustration:
FIG. 171.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 172.
]
An ancient bronze mace-head was discovered in the gravel taken from
under old London Bridge, which, I believe, has never been illustrated
(Fig. 171). It was one of the mace-heads which are classed in the
British Museum as of the Bronze Age, but they are, I think, early
British. I have found a drawing of the mace-head in question in some
interesting volumes of sketches by Fairholt at the South Kensington
Museum. Fairholt’s note reads: “Bronze mace found at Barnes, November
10, 1841, amongst the gravel taken from old London Bridge.” Fig. 172 is
an early bronze mace-head from Italy, in the British Museum, given for
comparison.
The conditions were favourable for establishing a way in the line of
London Bridge, for hard ground here approaches near to the south bank of
the river. That the Roman city spread from Walbrook Creek as a centre is
now generally agreed. Mr. Lambert’s plan of the finding-places of
Claudian and pre-Claudian coins shows them distributed near the
primitive port. Again, the city Watling Street is probably the beginning
of the old road from the port. Wren found traces of an old street
running aslant under the end of old St. Paul’s, and this probably formed
part of the way towards Aldersgate. The acceptance of such a route as
the main street of the oldest London would solve the difficulty of the
“fault” in the lines of Newgate Street and Cheapside. I suppose that the
Roman street through Newgate (which all would agree was formed at a late
time when the walls and gates were built) branched westward from the old
Verulam road I have been describing. In a similar way, the Roman road on
the course of Old Street probably branched to the east out of the same
ancient Verulam road. Mr. Codrington and others have supposed that the
road to the east was continued also westward, but no evidence of this
has been found. Stow, in his account of Aldersgate Street, says: “On the
east side at a Red Cross turneth the Ealde Street, so called for that it
was the old highway from Aldersgate Street for the north-east parts of
England before Bishopsgate was builded.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 173.
]
_The Westminster Crossing._—It was remarked above that the emergence of
Verulam into importance probably followed on the use of a river crossing
at Westminster and a trackway in the course of Edgware Road, which is
known to have been part of a later Roman highway—the Great Watling
Street. It is generally allowed, as by Dr. Rice Holmes, that a British
trackway underlies the general course of this great Roman highway from
Dover to St. Albans and beyond. The monk Higden, writing about 1360,
said that Watling Street passed to the west of Westminster, but it has
been objected that what the monk thought was not evidence. However, in
his time and until about two centuries ago, an important river crossing
was maintained at the Horse-Ferry. The Horse-Ferry Road appears to have
been made to divert a direct passage at Westminster when the great hall
of the new Palace was built, about 1100. Sighting the line of Tothill
Street, we see that it would have passed by the old Palace, but that the
Hall blocks the way. The Abbey lies at the side of this line, which
seems to mark the boundary of St. Margaret’s churchyard. Here, too, were
found the Roman tomb and what appears to be a terminus mark (T II). The
Horse-ferry is mentioned in an order of 1246: “The Bailiff of Kennington
is to cause a barge to be made to carry people and horses over the
Thames” (Hudson Turner’s _Domestic Architecture_, vol. i.). Canterbury
documents show that the ferry was later in the charge of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and doubtless Lambeth Palace exists here as being on the
great road. In the more direct line there still exists a short street
called Stangate, which is an old name for a paved way. When Elizabeth,
daughter of Henry VII., died at Eltham, “her body was conveyed to
Stangate over against Westminster” (Sandford). A way to the river also
was long maintained through New Palace Yard to a landing-place (see Fig.
173), from Norden’s map, _c._ 1600). Matthew Paris, in his route map of
the way to Jerusalem, shows London Bridge and also the Westminster and
Lambeth route, because these were alternative crossings. Tothill Street
is mentioned in mediæval documents. It is possible that in early days
there was a ford at Westminster, for Mr. Lambert has given reasons for
thinking that formerly the tide did not rise so high as at present by 6
ft. Testimony on the course of the way from Westminster to Edgware Road
is given in Ogilvie’s _Road Book_, 1675: “Piccadilly ... on the left
falls in the way from Westminster by Tuttle Street; four poles from this
corner, you have a way on the right by the side of Hyde Park into the
other road at Tyburn.” The ancient road from Westminster would have
crossed what is now Green Park in the direction of Tyburn Lane, now Park
Lane. Here, in Tyburn Lane, was “Osulstone,” which gave its name to the
Hundred in which London city is situated (see map recently reproduced by
London Topographical Society). Tyburn, close by, was the place of
execution, and doubtless the place of meeting of the old folk-mote of
the Hundred, because it was at the cross roads. I have more detail
establishing the continuity of this route (on which Dr. Haverfield
expressed doubt), but I will pass to a few general final considerations.
The primitive road in Kent as far as Greenwich was on high ground, but
beyond was the wide river valley. By bending to the left on the edge of
higher ground, through Camberwell where Roman objects have been found,
the river might be more nearly approached opposite Westminster, and
there was solid land on the opposite bank also. Beyond, at Park Lane,
the higher firm ground pushed down towards Westminster, between two
little streams—the road here, indeed, was a low ridgeway. All evidence
suggests that a British road to Verulam passed the Thames at
Westminster. In Allen’s _Lambeth_, it is said that three “Celts” were
found in digging the foundations of Westminster Bridge. Now, in
Fairholt’s _Albums of Sketches_, at South Kensington, are drawings of
three bronze weapons thus described: “Swords and spear found August
1847, under Westminster Bridge by a ballast heaver.” The swords (Fig.
174) were 28½ in. and 23½ in. long, the spear-head or dagger was 16½ in.
long. Other pieces of British bronze work have been found in the river
in the neighbourhood of the Westminster crossing. Westminster Bridge
itself still carries on the tradition by crossing the river at this
point, and it is interesting to find recorded that the building of the
bridge in the line of the Horse-ferry was the first intention. The
importance of the Horse-ferry about 1700 is shown by the list of charges
given in Hatton’s _New View_ (1708).
[Illustration:
FIG. 174.
]
My general results in regard to the British and Roman road systems may
be summarised thus:
1. A primitive trackway along the North Downs near the south bank of the
river.
2. An ancient river-crossing by a ford at Westminster and thence
north-west through Britain.
3. The growth of Verulam on this road, and the rise of London as a port
in connection with it.
4. A direct London-Verulam road made over Islington—a ridgeway.
5. Hardly two or three persons possessing a boat could have been settled
on the site of London before a direct path across Southwark would be
taken to reach the Kentish road; thus the route marked by London Bridge
must be of pre-Roman origin.
6. Other ways were thrown out; along the Strand to the Westminster
crossing; along the comparatively high ground of Piccadilly to the west,
and by Old Street and Old Ford to the east.
7. The British road system was rectified by Roman engineers. The chief
route was now over London Bridge; the Roman road along Oxford Street was
made in connection with the enlarged Londinium issuing from it at
Newgate; it was continued to Brentford, where it met the older road by
Piccadilly; the old track from Westminster to Verulam was improved only
from this new road, and the link across the river became of secondary
importance; Mile End Road superseded the route by Old Ford. There were
thus older and newer roads—British ways following the higher and harder
ground; and Roman roads laid down in straight lines.
In saying that London had its origin as the port of Verulam, I would not
necessarily imply more than this: each may so have reacted on the other
that it would be impossible to say which was the first cause. It is
possible, indeed, that the Belgic kingdoms of south-east England were
founded by invasions striking up the river, and that a landing at the
site of London was earlier than settling down about St. Albans. It is
remarkable that the Cattivellauni and Atrabates occupied much the same
relative places in Britain as they did in their continental homes about
Chalons and Arras. In this case, however, London would be none the less
the port of Verulam.
Camden clearly saw that London began as a port. Discussing its name, he
suggested as one possibility that “It might have had its name from the
same original that it had its growth and glory; I mean ships, called by
the British Lhong; so that London is a Harbour or City of Ships. For
several cities have had their name from shipping, none of which can lay
better claim to the name of harbour than our London. For ’tis admirably
accommodated with both elements, and the river Thames brings it in the
riches of the world. Moreover, it is such a sure and complete station
for ships that one may liken it to a groved wood, so shaded it is with
masts and sails.”
Conyers, the old antiquary apothecary, two centuries and a half ago,
said: “Verulam was a kingly seat of the Britons, and the principal trade
they had was between Verulam and London. So that on Watling or Verulam
road there was a communication backward and forward.”
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+INDEX+
Alexandria, 8.
Alignment, 46, 53, 145, 152.
Altar, 128.
Ante-fix, 29.
Apotropaic sculpture, 140.
Apse, 33, 35, 42, 44, 47.
Arches, 12, 17, 18.
Atys, 139.
Augusta (Londinium), 219.
Bacchus, 144.
Barbican, 80.
Basilica, 16, 33.
Bastions, 62.
Baths, 49.
Bone objects, 203, 212.
Bricks, 10, 15, 37.
Bridge, 41, 44, 54, 80.
Britannia, 129.
Bronzes, 121, 139.
Buildings, 32, 33.
Capitals, 11.
Carpentry, 21, 30, 43.
Cemeteries, 84.
Chariot races, 51, 199, 204, 210.
Chimney, 24.
Christianity, 94, 96, 158, 160, 208, 212, 214, 217, 225.
City (the), 55, 83, 119, 129, 184.
Coffins, 92, 208.
Coins, 220.
Colour, 85, 112.
Columns, 11, 16, 28, 34, 35, 39, 135.
Commerce, 193, 202, 215, 230, 234.
Concrete, 10, 12, 27, 37.
Constantine, 220.
Copings, 11, 116.
Crosses, 156, 219.
Cymbeline, 230.
Dadoes, 167.
Decoration, 161.
Diana, 128.
Ditches, 79.
Education, 191.
Enamels, 206, 224.
Figure painting, 171.
Floors, 27, 158.
Flues, 15, 23, 43.
Foot-rule, 8.
Ford, 241.
Forum, 33.
Friezes, 136.
Gates, 76.
Gladiators, 199, 204.
Glass, 31, 148, 159, 194, 202.
Gods, 103, 127, 132.
Greek workmen, 160.
Hadrian, 121.
Hercules, 127.
Hinges, locks, etc., 30.
Houses, 23, 42, 44.
Hunting, 198.
Hypocausts, 23.
Imperial statues, 121.
Impersonations, 126.
Inscriptions, 42, 110, 115, 149, 161, 176.
Jove and giant columns, 101, 139.
Lamps, 222.
Latin, 20, 184, 193.
Leadwork, 32, 140, 208.
Leather work, 212.
Lettering, 176.
Lions, 140.
Londinium (origin of), 228.
Mace (bronze), 238.
Marbles, 42, 99, 174, 194.
Masonry, 9.
Mausolea, 109.
Mirror, 203.
Mithras, 133.
Monograms, 221, 225.
Mortar, 12.
Mosaics, 42, 142, 175.
Mouldings, 11.
_Opus signinum_, 17, 27.
Ornament, 135.
Orpheus, 149, 160.
Osulstone, 242.
Painting, 29, 33, 35, 42, 162.
Peacocks, 139, 151.
Pewter, 211, 225.
Piling, 14, 21, 43.
Pine-cones, 139.
Plastering, 23, 28, 35, 226.
Porphyry, 174.
Port, 28, 80, 193, 230.
Portraits, 124.
Pottery, 194, 200, 232.
Roads, 243.
Romanesque art, 30, 137, 143, 159.
Roofs, 10, 16, 25, 29, 39.
Saints of London, 218.
Sarcophagi, 94.
Sculpture, 85, 100, 114, 119.
Sewers and drains, 21, 37.
Site and soil, 84.
Skirtings, 29.
Statues, 42.
Streets, 33, 40, 43, 52.
Style, 7, 11.
Sun-dial, 161.
Symbolism, 138.
Tablets, 99.
Temples, 49, 150, 187, 191.
Thames impersonation, 132.
Thatch, 23.
Theatre, 51.
Tomb-houses, 116.
Tombs, 84, 100, 112.
Tools, 8, 30.
Turning, 30.
Vaults, 17, 35.
Walbrook, 61.
Wall (the City), 16, 57.
Wall tiles, 25.
Walling, 9, 13, 22, 33, 37.
Water-pipes, 21, 32.
Wattle and daub, 10, 22.
Wells, 44.
Westminster, 19, 240.
Windows, 29, 31.
Winds, 133.
Zodiac, 133.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ This book uses the mid dot “·” to separate the integer part of a
number from the decimal fraction.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);
had extra character spacing by “plus” signs (+stretched+).
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