Fig. 135.
Fig. 136.
Fig. 137.
Roman Pottery.
One of the most curious and interesting urns of this ware (Fig. [129]) was dug up in Leicester in 1869, and is preserved in the museum of that town. It is of a fine rich deep colour, with the pattern in white slip, and has borne an inscription, also in slip, the only letters of which now remaining are M E i I VI. In the same museum, among other varieties of Romano-British ware, are the beautiful vessels shown on Figs. [132], [133], [134]. There are also fragments of ware which seem to point at pottery which I believe, at one period of Roman occupation, existed in the neighbourhood of Leicester.
Fig. 138.—Potter’s Kiln, St. Paul’s Churchyard.
Potters’ kilns of the Romano-British period have been found in other places, but those at Castor are the most perfect, and in every way the best. Indeed, the others may be said, more appropriately perhaps, to be indications of kilns rather than the kilns themselves. A curious record of the discovery of a kiln in London, at the north-west of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in 1677, by John Conyers, a collector of antiquities, is preserved in the British Museum,[12] and has been published by Mr. Roach Smith,[13] the eminent archæologist, to whom the antiquarian world is indebted for so much valuable information concerning Roman antiquities. This very curious and valuable record is as follows, in the handwriting of Conyers, and the accompanying engraving is carefully reduced (see Fig. [138]) from Conyers’ own drawing:—