Our peace we’ll ratify; seal it with feasts,
Set on there!”
Cymbeline.
BASILICA.—In 1880 the extensive foundations of an important building with massive walls were found on the site of Leadenhall Market, and a survey of the ruins made by Henry Hodge was published in Archæologia (vol. lxvi.). This great building was exceptional, not only in its scale but in its manner of workmanship. I know no other case where the walls of a building had wrought and coursed facings like the City Wall (Fig. [20]).
Fig. 20.
In 1881 Mr. E. P. L. Brock exhibited at a meeting of the British Archæological Association “plans of excavations recently carried out in Leadenhall Market, showing the foundations of an apse 33 ft. wide and indications of four different conflagrations. He also exhibited fragments of fresco painting with ornamental patterns.... The building appears to have had the form of a Basilica in some respects, with eastern apse, western nave, and two chambers like transepts on the south side” (Archæol. lxvi.). From the wording of this it appears that Brock meant that the building had a general resemblance to an early Christian church. Mr. Lambert in publishing Hodge’s drawings in Archæologia seems to have understood Brock to mean that it was the Civil Basilica of Londinium. This, indeed, I have no doubt it was, but at the time Brock wrote such buildings in Britain were hardly known.
Fig. 21.
The Civil Basilica or Public Hall was generally the “complement of the Forum; it was, in fact, a covered Forum used for commerce, exchange, and administration, or simply as a promenade” (Daremberg and Saglio). At Silchester the Forum and Basilica filled an “island” site, about 315 ft. by 280 ft., at the centre of the city. The Forum was a quadrangle included within a single row of buildings on three sides, having a colonnaded walk on the inside, while the Basilica occupied the fourth side facing the central avenue of the town. It was 233 ft. long by 58 ft. wide, and was divided into a “nave” and “aisles,” the former being terminated at each end by a large apse. In the interior were two ranges of Corinthian columns about 3 ft. in diameter, some capitals from which are now in Reading Museum. Cirencester Basilica was still larger, being about 77 ft. wide, divided into nave and aisles by fine Corinthian columns; at one end a great Hemicycle embraced both nave and aisles. It must have been a noble building (Fig. 21 is a restored plan of one end). At Wroxeter the Basilica was 67 ft. wide, divided into nave and aisles by ranges of Corinthian columns.