The Ruins of the Roman City of Uriconium, at Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury

by Thomas Wright

The requirements of agriculture have rendered it necessary to cover up again all the excavations to the north of the Old Wall, and the walls of the great public building at the corner of the two streets can no longer be seen by the visitor. A piece of ground, however, immediately to the south of the Old Wall has been taken by the Excavation Committee at Shrewsbury upon a rent, and in this piece of ground the excavations are now carried on. It forms a parallelogram, 319 feet long, by 279 feet wide, containing an area of exactly two acres, including the Old Wall at its northern edge. This piece of ground has been strongly fenced round with hurdles, and it is entered by a gate from the Watling Street Road. By the liberality of the Excavation Committee the public are admitted to this inclosure freely, and it is to be hoped that the visitors will acknowledge this liberality by carefully abstaining from committing any injury on the Roman remains, or by walking upon or entering into the parts in the course of excavation.

The plan annexed (pl. 5) of the excavations now in progress will enable me to explain them to the visitor. The darkly-shaded mass a a represents the Old Wall, or portion of Roman masonry standing above ground; to the north of which lay the extensive building formed by the walls b b, c c, d d, running parallel to the Old Wall. The wall d d, bordered upon a wide street. To the east of these walls lay an inclosure, e, perhaps a court-yard, and a large space, f, which has been conjectured to have been a garden, but which has been very imperfectly explored. All these remains have been explained above; they have been buried again, and the ground is now covered with crops. The Old Wall, which stands just within the north-eastern corner of the space separated from the rest of the field by a fence of hurdles, now forms the northern boundary of the excavations.

The visitor is introduced into this space by a gateway from the road, nearly at its north-western corner. Opposite this gateway he will see an apartment, which the excavators are now in the course of exploring. It is nearly a square, and is about thirty-four feet in its longest dimension. The side towards the street seems to have been open, or at least the masonry of the wall presents the appearance of having had wide folding doors, or a framework of wood of some kind in two compartments 6, 6. In the centre of the room is a large pier of masonry (1), perhaps a table for workmen. More towards the north-western corner, a sort of furnace or forge (2) was found, built of red clay, with a hole or cavity in the upper part sufficiently large for a man to thrust his head in. As the surface of the cavity, internally, is completely vitrified, and as there was much charcoal strewed about, there can be no doubt that the cavity had been occupied by a very fierce fire. A low wall has been traced, running across the room east and west in a line with this furnace; and two transverse low walls of similar character. Upon the low wall a little behind the forge (at 3), the excavators came upon what was supposed to be the lower part of a column with its base; but it is formed roughly, and I think it more probable that it was a stone table for the use of the workman at the furnace. It was at first supposed that this might belong to a colonnade running along the wall; but no trace of such a colonnade has been found, although a large piece of a shaft of a column lies in the middle of the room. This column, however, is of larger dimensions than the supposed base (3). Had such a colonnade existed, it seems so little in accordance with the existence of a forge, that we might be led to suspect that the room had, at some late period, been diverted from its original purpose, and occupied by a worker in metals, or even in glass, as fine specimens of glass were found scattered about, and also many fragments of metal. But objects of all kinds seem to have been thrown about in such a manner, when the town was plundered, that it would be unsafe to argue upon the purpose of any particular building, merely from moveable articles found in it. Among other things found in this room were nearly a dozen hair-pins, two of which were much more ornamental than any we had found before; a much greater quantity of fragments of Samian ware, and of higher artistic merit, than had previously been met with in one spot; a portion of a large bronze fibula; a number of coins, and other things. One of the vessels of Samian ware is a fine bowl, with figures in high relief, representing a stag-hunt. Upon the low wall of the sill (6) a number of copper Roman coins (about sixty) were found together; and near them the fragment of a small earthen vessel, in which probably they had been carried by some one who dropped them here as he was hurrying out of the place. Turning from the gate of the field to the right, or south, along the inside of the hedge, the visitor will come to a portion of uncovered wall, h h, running north and south, upwards of eighty feet, in which there are two entrance gateways, i, p. The first of these is about twelve feet wide, and was approached by a sort of inclined plane, formed of three large squared masses of stone, each about four feet square by eleven inches in thickness. The other entrance which was only five feet wide, was approached by two steps, each similarly formed of one mass of stone; of which the lower step is worn very much at its south-west corner, in a manner to lead us to believe that the great majority of the people who passed through this entrance came up the street from the south. The upper step, or stone, is so much worn by the feet of those who passed over it, that it broke into three pieces under the workmen’s picks. On one side of it there is a deep hollow, representing nearly the form of a small human foot, which seems to have been scooped into the stone for some purpose with which we are not acquainted. These two entrances lead into one square court, the floor of which, proved by the steps and inclined plane to have been on a higher level than the street without, was paved with small bricks laid in herring-bone work, like the great inclosure to the north of the Old Wall. It is found to have been much damaged and mended in ancient times, which seems to countenance the supposition that the wide entrance and the inclined plane by which it was approached were intended for horses and perhaps for carts or for heavy barrows. Among the objects found in excavating here was a portion of a horse-shoe. On each side of this court a row of chambers is found, m m m, four on the north side and four on the south, from ten to twelve feet square. The westernmost of these chambers, on the north side of the court, has been cleared out, and was found to be ten feet deep, with a low transverse wall at the bottom, the object of which is at present quite inexplicable. A quantity of charcoal was found in this room, as though it had been a store-room for that article. One of the other rooms, on each side of the court, seemed to have been a receptacle for bones, horns, &c.; and as some of these had evidently been sawn and cut, and others partly turned on a lathe, they suggested the idea of having belonged to manufacturers of the various objects made of this material which are found so commonly in the course of the excavations. They may, therefore, have been the magazines of manufacturers and tradesmen, a notion which is somewhat confirmed by the circumstance of several weights of different sizes having been found in this part of the excavations; or they may have been mere depots for the stores and refuse of a large mansion or other establishment. These rooms are, perhaps, all deep like the one already cleared out, but it is remarkable that, as high as the walls remain, that is, about two feet above the floor of the court, there is no trace of entrances to them, which must, therefore, have been rather high in the wall, and they were entered perhaps by a ladder.

The back part of this court consists of a long narrow inclosure, which is divided into compartments by four transverse walls proceeding from the western wall about halfway across the inclosure, thus leaving a passage along the eastern side. These compartments have much the appearance of small shops or stalls for selling, and seem to confirm the notion that this building may have been a market-place. The workmen, finding a doorway in the wall of the back of this inclosure, at n in the plan, a trench was carried through the ground to the eastward. At about twelve feet from the opening at n, they came upon a wall at h, running parallel to the wall o o of the court, and beyond this they found first a narrow passage, and then a rise with a pavement of cement which extended some four or five feet, and then suddenly sank to a floor of large flag-stones, at a depth of upwards of four feet from the floor of cement. This flagged floor, the position of which is marked by the letter q in the plan, was perhaps a reservoir of water; the bottom was found covered with black earth filled with broken pottery and other things, such as may easily have been supposed to have been thrown into a pond. The water appears to have been only between two and three feet deep, as the floor on the opposite side runs about level with the ledge or step just mentioned, and is continued eastward until, at r, we come upon the rather massive walls of a building, the nature of which cannot be determined without further investigation. At a short distance within this wall, at a depth of about three feet below the cement floor, we find a floor at s, about ten feet wide by thirty long, formed of flat Roman tiles, twelve inches by eighteen inches square. This floor has been uncovered, and as there was an indentation in the middle which seemed to indicate that it was hollow underneath, a hole was made there, but it led to no discovery. This seems also to have been a tank of water, perhaps a cold water bath. The cement floor was continued easterly until it was terminated by a wall, t, which ran at right angles to the eastern end of the Old Wall, and appears to be the eastern termination of the buildings now in course of exploration. The earth and rubbish from the excavations have been here thrown into a great mound, from the top of which the visitor can enjoy a bird’s eye view of the excavations. A few yards to the north, he will come to the important line of excavations nearer to the Old Wall. A small chamber, about eight feet square, with a herring-bone pavement in very good preservation, projects beyond the line of this eastern wall at u in our plan. To the west of this is a small hypocaust v, the floor of which has been a little lower than that of the room u. In this hypocaust were found the remains of two skeletons, one of which was that of a young person. The northern wall of the room v is particularly interesting, because in its whole height of full nine feet, it presents the remains of the lines of flue-tiles which ran up it, hardly an inch apart, and which show that this room must have been intended to be very much heated. It was, perhaps, a sudatorium or sweating room. The opening from u to v occupies nearly the whole width of the former room, and was perhaps closed by a wooden door. On the western side of the hypocaust, at w, the wall has a sort of basement, formed of large stones scooped out in a singular manner, the object of which is by no means evident. We here come upon a series of passages, x, to the north of which were four rooms, z z z z, extending to the Old Wall. On the face of the Old Wall, we can distinctly trace the springing not only of the walls of division, the lower parts of which are found underground, but of the vaulting, from which it appears that these rooms had what are technically called barrel-roofs of masonry. They were slightly explored at the beginning of the excavations, and in one of them was found a quantity of burnt wheat, as though it had been a store-room.

In the passages alluded to, there is at y, a square pit, somewhat like what might be a cess-pool, of very good and substantial masonry, at the bottom of which runs north and south a very well formed drain, the bed of which is formed of large roof-tiles. To the south of this is a hypocaust, A, which differs from the other hypocausts yet opened in being partly formed of low parallel walls instead of rows of pillars. On the wall of the passage leading to this hypocaust from the east was found the inscription mentioned at page [45]. Westward from the hypocaust A, but without any apparent communication between them, was another hypocaust, B, which had been constructed in the usual manner, the floor supported by rows of low columns formed of square thin bricks. It was in this hypocaust that the three skeletons mentioned before (p. 41,) were found, the man who possessed the money crouching in the north-west corner, and the two persons supposed to be women, extended along the side of the northern wall. The opening into this hypocaust was through its southern wall, from the interior court, so that the fugitives must have crept along the whole length of the hypocaust to reach their place of concealment. The part of this interior court, immediately adjacent to this hypocaust, which has been excavated to some extent, presents several interesting features. A breach in the eastern boundary wall had been newly repaired with much inferior masonry at the time when the city of Uriconium was taken and destroyed; and it is a curious circumstance that some large pieces of stone lie here on the floor of the court, unfinished by the masons, as though repairs and alterations in the buildings were going on at the very moment of the final catastrophe. Adjoining to this hypocaust, at its north-west corner, is a square room, c, with the herring-bone pavement, exactly like that at u in character and dimensions, which had opened into the room above the hypocaust B, much in the same manner as u opened in the room v. Separated from this room by a wall, but apparently without any communication with it, is an interesting staircase D, leading down, to the entrance to a larger and apparently more important series of hypocausts. This staircase descended from a square room, about the same size as the room C, which had a smooth pavement of cement. It is composed of three steps each formed of a large squared stone. A part of the space at the bottom, the north-eastern corner, appears to have been used by the later Roman inhabitants of this building as a receptacle for the sweeping of the floors, and when it was first opened the earth, to the height of about sixteen or eighteen inches from the floor, was filled with all kinds of objects, such as coins, hair-pins, fibulæ, needles in bone, nails, various articles in iron, bronze, and lead, glass, broken pottery, bones of edible animals and birds, stags’ horns, tusks and hoofs of wild boars, oyster shells, in one of which lay the shell of a large nut, &c. A large shaft of a column lay across the steps. The Roman masonry here is very good. To the right hand, towards the south, a rather large arch, turned in Roman bricks, led into the hypocaust E, a doorway in the southern wall of which formed the communication between this hypocaust and the still larger hypocaust F. The latter had supported what must have been a handsome room, which was about fifty feet long, including the semicircular northern end, by thirty-five feet in breadth. When first opened, this hypocaust was in a state of preservation in which such buildings are seldom found in this country. A hundred and twenty columns of bricks were counted, most of them at their original height of rather more than three feet. At the north-eastern corner, the columns supported a small portion of the floor in its original position. It is a mass of cement, eight inches thick, with the upper surface, which no doubt had formed the floor, perfectly smooth. During the time that the Excavation Committee were excluded from the field, all the pillars of this interesting hypocaust were thrown to the ground, and a great part of the bricks which formed the supporting columns were broken to pieces—even the piece of the floor and its supports at the north-east corner were overthrown. A very exact drawing of the latter, however, had been preserved, which served as a pattern for restoring it; and it is to the ingenuity and labour of Dr. Henry Johnson that the public owes the restoration of this hypocaust as far as it was possible to restore it.

Returning to the steps by which these hypocausts were entered, at D, the floor from which we descended appears to have an opening of some kind to the west, which looked down upon a court outside the semicircular end of the hypocaust F, which from this point presents to the view an imposing mass of masonry. In the corner just under this opening the remains of a very young child were found, which we might almost imagine to have been slaughtered in the room above, and thrown out into the court. This court, or open space, seems to have been continued to the wall a a, and to have been entered by a doorway in that wall at g, which was approached from the passage to the north by a step formed by a large squared stone. On the outside of the semicircular end of the hypocaust F, lay, as if it had fallen or been thrown down, an immense stone, carefully worked into the shape of the arc of a circle, and no doubt forming one of a course at some unknown elevation in the wall. On the outward side of it, a large iron pin was soldered into it with lead, evidently for the purpose of attaching some weighty object on the outer side of the building.

Another step and doorway in the wall a a was found at h, which must have been much more frequented than the other, for the stone which formed the step was worn in an extraordinary degree by the rubbing of footsteps. It led to an inclosure P, which presents the appearance of having formed public latrinæ; and which is separated by a long narrow inclosure from the room already described as apparently the shop of a worker in metals.

Such is a brief and general description of the ruins of Uriconium, at present open to the visitor. The real character of the buildings we have been describing appeared for a while very doubtful. The first discoveries led to the belief that it was a great mansion, perhaps the principal mansion in the Roman city, the residence of the chief municipal officer; but in this case we might have expected to find some very fine Mosaic or tessellated pavement, specimens of which had been met with in other parts of the area of the town. On the contrary, all the floors yet discovered to the south of the Old Wall, with the exception of those of herring-bone brickwork, and that of a supposed bath, seemed to have been of mere smoothed cement. This led us to suppose that we were still exploring buildings erected for some public purpose. A comparison of the character of these various buildings leaves no room for doubting that they belonged to the public baths of Uriconium; and further excavations to the south and west shewed that they formed an extensive square (k, k, k, k), the northern side of which was formed by the Old Wall and its continuation westward; and the southern side of which bordered upon the other street running east and west, the pavement of which, similar to that of the street at l, has been uncovered in its whole extent along the line, L L. The western and southern sides of the square were formed by a wide gallery or cloister (k, k, k), no doubt the ambulatory, which was considered as an important part of the public baths of the Romans. The ground to the eastward, in which no buildings could be traced, may have been gardens, which were also usually attached to the baths of the Romans.

Having once decided that the building we have thus explored, is the public baths, another equally interesting question arises out of it. The public baths of the Roman towns in Britain are not unfrequently mentioned in inscriptions commemorating the repairing or rebuilding of them; but it is a circumstance of some importance that this building is combined with the basilica, or town hall. Both seem to have participated in the same accidents, and to have undergone decay together. Thus an inscription found at Lanchester in Cumberland (supposed to be the Roman town of Epiacum) speaks of the baths and basilica (BALNEVM CVM BASILICA); and at Ribchester, in Lancashire, the baths and basilica (BALINEVM ET BASILICAM) were rebuilt after having fallen into ruin through age. We are therefore, I think, justified in concluding that the two great public buildings, the baths and the basilica, usually joined each other; and I think we may venture further to assume that the large building to the north of the Old Wall, the remains of which are now covered up, was the basilica of Uriconium. The proportions of this building are rather extraordinary, and cannot be easily explained; but it is probable that in a provincial town the basilica served a variety of purposes. An inscription found at Netherby in Cumberland, speaks of a basilica for practice in riding (BASILICAM EQVESTREM EXERCITATORIAM.)

We may now proceed a little further in identifying the topography of the ancient town. The line of the buildings we have traced parallel to the Watling Street Road is at some distance within the hedge of the field; and I believe that, when the farm buildings were erected on the opposite side of the road, what appeared to be the front of buildings facing the opposite direction, were found likewise at some distance within the field. This, with the road, would make a very wide space; very much wider than either of the two transverse streets. Moreover, a glance at the plan will shew that, beyond the transverse street to the south, this wide space became considerably narrowed; and in fact it seems to have been reduced to the width of an ordinary street. It is my belief that this wide space was the forum of Uriconium; and in that case it is rather remarkable that the basilica held here exactly the same place, in regard to the forum, as at Pompeii.