But not only at Silchester and at other places, once the great centres of the Roman population, do we find Roman remains. In addition to the stations, camps, and towns, there were the villas of the rich Roman citizens or Gaulish merchants on the sunny slopes of many a hillside. Although hundreds of the remains of these noble houses have been discovered, there are still many to be explored.
The villa consisted of the house of the proprietor, which occupied the centre of the little colony, together with the smaller houses of the servants and slaves, stables, cowsheds, mills, and granaries, and all the other usual outbuildings connected with a large estate. The main house was built around a central court, like an Oxford college; and resembled in architectural style the buildings which the excavations at Pompeii have disclosed. A corridor ran round the court supported by pillars, from which the rooms opened. In a well-defended town like Silchester the houses were usually built on three sides of the court; but the country villas, which had occasionally to be fortified against the attacks of wandering bands of outlaws and wild Britons, and the inroads of savage beasts, were usually built on all the four sides of the square court. They were usually of one story, although the existence of a force-pump in Silchester shows that water was laid on upstairs in one house at least. As the wells were less than thirty feet deep, a force-pump would not be needed to lift the water to the earth-level. Hence in some houses there must have been some upper chambers, a conclusion that is supported by the thickness of the foundations, which are far more substantial than would be required for houses of one story. The rooms were very numerous, often as many as sixty or seventy, and very bright they must have looked decorated with beautiful marbles and stuccoes of gorgeous hues, and magnificent pavements, statues and shrines, baths and fountains, and the many other objects of Roman luxury and comfort. The floors were made of opus signinum, such as the Italians use at the present day, a material composed of cement in which are embedded fragments of stone or brick, the whole being rubbed down to a smooth surface, or paved with mosaic composed of tesserae. In whatever land the Roman dwelt, there he made his beautiful tesselated pavement, rich with graceful designs and ever-enduring colours, representing the stories of the gods, the poetry of nature, and the legends of the heroes of his beloved native land. Here we see Perseus freeing Andromeda, Medusa’s locks, Bacchus and his band of revellers, Orpheus with his lyre, by which he is attracting a monkey, a fox, a peacock, and other animals, Apollo singing to his lyre, Venus being loved by Mars, Neptune with his trident, attended by hosts of seamen. The seasons form an accustomed group, “Winter” being represented, as at Brading, by a female figure, closely wrapped, holding a lifeless bough and a dead bird. Satyrs and fauns, flowers, Graces and wood-nymphs, horns of plenty, gladiators fighting, one with a trident, the other with a net—all these and countless other fanciful representations look at us from these old Roman pavements. The Roman villa at Brading is an excellent type of such a dwelling, with its magnificent suites of rooms, colonnades, halls, and splendid mosaic pavements. As at Silchester, we see there fine examples of hypocausts. The floor of the room, called a suspensura, is supported by fifty-four small pillars made of tiles. Another good example of a similar floor exists at Cirencester, and many more at Silchester.
Here is a description of a Roman gentleman’s house, as drawn by the writer of The History of Oxfordshire:—
“His villa lay sheltered from wild winds partly by the rising brow of the hill, and partly by belts of trees; it was turned towards the south, and caught the full sun. In the spring the breath of his violet beds would be as soft and sweet as in Oxfordshire woods to-day; in the summer his quadrangle would be gay with calthae, and his colonnade festooned with roses and helichryse. If we are to believe in the triclinium aestivum of Hakewill, it says much for the warmth of those far-away summers that he was driven to build a summer dining-room with a north aspect, and without heating flues. And when the long nights fell, and winter cold set in, the slaves heaped higher the charcoal fires in the praefurnium; the master sat in rooms far better warmed than Oxford country houses now, or sunned himself at midday in the sheltered quadrangle, taking his exercise in the warm side of the colonnade among his gay stuccoes and fluted columns. Could we for a moment raise the veil, we should probably find that the country life of 400 A.D. in Oxfordshire was not so very dissimilar to that of to-day, ... and that the well-to-do Roman of rustic Middle England was ... a useful, peaceful, and a happy person.”
CHAPTER VII
ANGLO-SAXON VILLAGES
Departure of Romans—Coming of Saxons—Bede—Saxon names of places— Saxon village—Common-field system—Eorl and ceorl—Thanes, geburs, and cottiers—Description of village life—Thane’s house—Socmen—Ploughman’s lament—Village tradesmen—Parish council—Hundreds—Shires.