CONTENTS
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I. | Building Materials and Methods | [7] |
| II. | Buildings and Streets | [33] |
| III. | Walls, Gates and Bridge | [57] |
| IV. | Cemeteries and Tombs | [84] |
| V. | Some Larger Monuments | [101] |
| VI. | Sculpture | [120] |
| VII. | The Mosaics | [142] |
| VIII. | Wall Paintings and Marble Linings | [162] |
| IX. | Lettering and Inscriptions | [176] |
| X. | The Crafts | [193] |
| XI. | Early Christian London | [214] |
| XII. | The Origin of London | [228] |
| Index | [247] |
These chapters were first printed in “The Builder” during the year 1921. For that reason, and because the earlier records of Roman discoveries in London given in this Journal seemed to have been less worked over than other sources, a large number of references are given to its pages. The account of Roman London in the “Victoria County History,” C. Roach Smith’s “Illustrations of Roman London,” and Mr. T. Ward’s “Roman Era in Britain,” and “Roman British Buildings,” may be specially mentioned among the works consulted. The first named is cited as V.C.H. Mr. A. H. Lyell’s “Bibliographical List of Romano-British Remains” (1912) is indispensable to the student.
LONDINIUM
CHAPTER I
BUILDING MATERIALS AND METHODS
IT is curious that Roman buildings and crafts in Britain have hardly been studied as part of the story of our national art. The subject has been neglected by architects and left aside for antiquaries. Yet when this story is fully written, it will appear how important it is as history, and how suggestive in the fields of practice. This provincial Roman art was, in fact, very different from the “classical style” of ordinary architectural treatises. M. Louis Gillet in the latest history of French art considers this phenomenon. “It is very difficult to measure exactly the part of the Gauls in the works of the Roman epoch which cover the land, such, for instance, as the Maison Carrée and the Mausoleum at St. Remy. There is in these chefs d’œuvre something not of Rome. The elements are used with liberty and delicacy more like the work of the Renaissance than of Vitruvius. In three centuries Gaul had become educated: these Gallo-Roman works, like certain verses of Ausonius, show little of Rome, they are already French.” We should hesitate to say just this in Britain, although the Brito-Roman arts were intimately allied to those of Gaul. In fuller truth and wider fact, they were closely related to the provincial Roman art as practised in Spain, North Africa, Syria, and Asia Minor. Alexandria was probably the chief centre from which the new experimenting spirit radiated. We may agree, however, that in the centuries of the Roman occupation, Britain like Gaul became educated and absorbed the foreign culture with some national difference. In attempting to give some account of Roman building and minor arts in London, I wish to bring out and deepen our sense of the antiquity and dignity of the City, so as to suggest an historical background against which we may see our modern ways and works in proper perspective and proportion.
Tools, etc.—Roman building methods were remarkably like our own of a century ago. The large number of tools which have been found and brought together in our museums are one proof of this. We have adzes and axes, hammers, chisels and gouges, saws, drills and files; also foot-rules, plumb-bobs and a plane. The plane found at Silchester was an instrument of precision; the plumb-bob of bronze, from Wroxeter, in the British Museum, is quite a beautiful thing, and exactly like one figured by Daremberg and Saglio under the word Perpendicularum. At the Guildhall are masons’ chisels and trowels; the latter with long leaf-shaped blades. At the British Museum is the model of a frame saw. Only last year (1922) many tools were found at Colchester. (For the history of tools in antiquity, see Prof. Flinders Petrie’s volume.)
A foot-rule found at Warrington gave a length of 11·54 in. The normal Roman foot is said to be 11·6496 in. (also 0·2957 m.). This agrees closely with the Greek foot and the Chaldean. (What is the history of the English foot?) The length of the Roman foot, a little over 11½ of our inches, is worth remembering, for measurements would have been set out by this standard. For example, we may examine the ordinary building “tile” used in Londinium. In the Lombard Street excavations of 1785 many Roman bricks were found which are said to have measured about 18 in. by 12 in. I have found this measurement many times repeated, and also three more precise estimates. Dr. Woodward said that bricks from London Wall were 17-4/10 in. by 11-6/10 in., and he observed that this would be 1½ by 1 Roman foot. Mr. Loftus Brock gave the size of one found in London Wall as 17 in. by 11⅝ in. Dr. P. Norman gave the size of another tile as about 17½ in. by nearly 12 in. At the Guildhall are several flue and roof tiles about 17½ in. long, and a large tile 23¼ in. long. We shall see when we come to examine buildings that the dimensions in many cases are likely to have been round numbers of Roman feet.