Ground-plan, Hypocaust, Cilurnum.

Some buildings situated near to the spot where the eastern gateway must be, and which have recently been freed from the earth and rubbish that have long enveloped them, are objects of still greater interest. Their general appearance, as seen from a slight elevation, is shewn in the adjoining wood-cut, while, for a more minute knowledge of their size and arrangements, reference may be made to the plan on the opposite page. Eight apartments have already been exposed, and a little more research would doubtless display others.

THE HYPOCAUSTS.

Descending a few steps (at L in the Plan), a street three feet wide at one extremity, and four at the other, is entered. Another, leading from it at right-angles, and which is paved with flag-stones, conducts to the grand entrance (D) of what appears to be the principal section of the building. The steps are very much worn down by the tread of feet, and even some of the stones, which have evidently been put in the place of others that have been too much abraded to be serviceable, exhibit partial wear. This saloon must have been a place of general concourse—can it have been the hall of justice, or the place where the commander of the station transacted the business of the district under his charge? The floor (E) is probably supported on pillars, and has been warmed by flues beneath; but this cannot be ascertained without injuring it. The upper covering is of flags, the fractured state of which induces the belief, that the walls of the surrounding building have been forcibly thrown down upon them. The northern enemies of Rome, knowing the importance of these stations, would not be slow in involving them in entire ruin, when permitted, by the withdrawal of the troops, to do so without molestation. Passages diverge from this saloon, to the right and left, into other apartments. In the room on the left was found, in good preservation, a cistern or bath (C), lined with red cement. A breach had been made in the street wall of this chamber (at B), and in the rubbish which

encumbered the gap, was found the statue of a river-god, of which a correct sketch is here given. It is probably intended to represent the genius of the neighbouring river—the North Tyne. Although executed in coarse sand-stone, it is not without considerable gracefulness of attitude and proportion. It is preserved in the mansion at Chesters. Of the present state of the apartments beyond, the wood-cut in the previous page, and the lithograph here introduced, will give an accurate conception. The floors have been supported upon pillars, some of them being of stone, others of square flat bricks. The stone pillars are, for the most part, fragments of columns and balusters which have been used in a prior structure.[[86]] The student of mediæval architecture will probably recognise in some of them types of the Saxon style. The dilapidated state of the floor of this apartment allows of an easy examination of its mode of construction. Flags, about two inches thick, rest upon the pillars; a layer of compost, five inches thick, and formed of lime, sand, gravel, and burned clay or pounded tile, succeeds, and above that, another covering of thin flag-stones.[[87]] This apartment has been provided with a semicircular recess at its eastern extremity (G), and, at the angle next the street (A), has been supported by a buttress. A similar alcoved recess existed on the western side of one of the principal rooms of the ‘baths’ at Hunnum, and the same arrangement may yet be observed in the corresponding building at Lanchester. All of these buildings have been strengthened with buttresses, but it is only in these and analogous cases, that the use of the buttress is admitted among the erections of the Barrier; it never occurs in the great Wall or the curtain-walls of the stations. In the circular recess|THE HYPOCAUSTS.| of this apartment is an aperture (G), which probably has served to regulate the current of air circulating in the hypocausts. The furnace which warmed the suite of apartments was situated near the south-east extremity of the building (at F); the pillars near the fire having been much acted upon by the heat, the whole of this part of the floor was reduced, on exposure to the frosts of winter, to the confused heap represented in the drawing. The soot in the flues was found as fresh as if it had been produced by fires lighted the day before.[[88]] The walls of this apartment were coated with plaster, and coloured dark red; exposure to the weather soon stripped them of this covering. An arched passage curiously turned with Roman tile took the heated air from the furnace through the party-wall (at X) into the chamber to the west of it. The rooms to the westward of the intersecting street (HD), seem to form an independent building, and have less of the aspect of a place of public concourse than the other portions. They may have been the private residence of the commander of the station. They, too, are heated by hypocausts.

H. Burdon Richardson, Delt.John Storey, Lith.
HYPOCAUST AT CHESTERS, (CILURNUM)
Printed by W. Monkhouse, York

CILURNUM.