“This kill was full of the coarser[14] sorts of potts or cullings,[15] so that few were saved whole, viz., lamps, bottles, urnes, dishes.
“The forme of a kill in which the olde Romans’ lamps, urnes, and other earthen pottes and vessels was burnt, and some left in the kill; and that within a unstired, loamy ground about 26 foot deep near about the place where the Market House stood in Oliver’s tyme, the discovery made anno 1677 at the digging the foundacion of the north east part of St. Paull’s, London, among gravel pitts and loam pitts, where the ground had been at tymes raised over it 3 or 4 tymes, and so many 8 foote storyes or depths of coffins lay over the loamy kill, the lowest coffins made of chalk; and this supposed to be before or about Domitian the emperor’s tyme.
“Of these (kilns) 4 severall had been made in the sandy loam on the ground in the fashion of a cross foundacion and only this height standing, viz. 5 foot from topp to bottom and better; and as many feet in breadth; and had no other matter for its form and building but the outward loame as it naturally lays, crusted hardish by the heat burning the loame redd like brick. The floor in the middle supported by and cut out of loame, and helped with old-fashioned Roman tyles shards, but very few, and such as I have seen used for repositorys for urns in the fashion of like ovens, and they plastered within with a reddish mortar or tarris; but here was no mortar, but only the sandy loam for cement:
“observed and thus described
“by Jon Conyers, Apothecary.”
In accordance with the above description, the sketch by Conyers shows also the four kilns placed crosswise, leaving ample space in the centre for the workmen. The vessels found in the kiln are thus described by Conyers, who also made sketches of them, which are preserved along with his MS., and have been engraved in the “Collectanea Antiqua:”—
“1. 1 quart earthen dish.—2. 2 gallons, whitish.—3. 4 quart bason, whitish.—4. 8 ounce censer or lamp, whitish earth.—5. 2 quart colinder, whitish.—6. 2 pint lipp waterpott.—7. Lamp, or censer, reddish.—8. 3 pint urne.—9. 3 quarts urne, whitish.—10. 2 ounce lamp, gilded with electrum.—11. 2 quart, white.—12. 1 pint bottle.—13. 2 pint black urne.—14. 1 pint urne, black.—15. 6 ounce urne.—16. 3 quart urne, blewish.—17. Half pint urne, electrum Britan.—18. 1 pint dish, blewish.—19. 1 ounce urne, whitish.—20. 3 ounce urne, cinamon collour.—All these a sort of earth almost like crucibles, except the black, will endure the fire like brass, as in this day in use about Poland.”
From the drawings which accompany these descriptions, the Romano-British origin of the examples found actually in the kiln is placed beyond doubt. Most of them are precisely the same types as hundreds of fragments which have been found all over London, and are the common table and culinary ware of the period. Some bear a very striking resemblance to the vessels from the Upchurch pottery. Amongst them is a mortarium. Most of the vessels are plain, but some are ornamented with rows of dots, &c., and others with a reticulated pattern. The forms are elegant and simple.
In another part of his MS. Conyers describes other kinds of pottery found during the excavations. “Now these pottsherds,” he writes, “are some glass and some potts like broken urns, which were curiously laid on the outside with like thorne pricks of rose trees and in the manner of raised work: this upon potts of murry collour, and here and there grey houndes and stags and hares all in raised work: other of these cinamon collour urne fashion and were as gilded with gold but vaded: some of strange fashioned juggs the sides bent in so as to be six squares, and these raised work upon them and curiously pinched as curious raisers of paist may imitate: some like black earth for pudding panns; one the outside indented and crossed quincunx fashion. Now many of these potts of the finer kind are lite and thinn and these workes raised or indented were instead of collours; yet I find they had some odd collours, not blew, in those tymes, and a way of glazing different to what now; and here takes notice that the redd earth before mencioned bore away the belle.”
The manuscript contains also the following note:—