Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts

by W. R. Lethaby

A fragment of mosaic at the London Museum comes from another all-over star-pattern similar to that at the Guildhall, but this piece was next to the outer border of the pavement. This fragment is of particularly beautiful colouring—quite a purple floor. I give a sketch of the fragment in Fig. [a]96]; it must have come next the border of a pattern like Fig. [a]95].

Threadneedle Street.—Several pieces of London mosaic are shown in the Roman corridor at the British Museum, but not very effectively. Two are exhibited as given by Mr. E. Moxhay, but it is not added that they were found in Threadneedle Street in 1841. One is part of a passage and the other is a square from the centre of a room. (See illustrations in Roach Smith’s Roman London, from which Fig. [a]97] is taken.) Another piece found at East India House, Leadenhall Street, is not set up rightly. The pattern is of two interlacing squares; the margin should not be parallel to either of these, but it should touch two of the points of the star form. (Fig. [98]. See Sir W. Tite’s illustration in Archæologia; compare also the Bucklersbury pavement at the Guildhall.) This floor came from the same level as the Bacchus mosaic and not far away from its position; probably the small chamber to which it belonged was part of the building which contained the large square hall of the Bacchus mosaic.

FRAGMENT OF ROMAN TESSELLATED PAVEMENT DISCOVERED AT THE DEPTH OF 14 FEET UNDER THE FRENCH PROTESTANT CHURCH IN THREADNEEDLE STREET. APRIL 1841.
Fig. 97.

The Bank.—A fourth piece in the Museum is a square panel from Lothbury. Allen describes it as “An ornamental centre, measuring 4 ft. each way, of an apartment 11 ft. square; beyond this were tiles of an inch square extending to the sides of the room.” It is another example of the plan of having a comparatively small central panel liberally framed in much plain red work. The device in the centre is a cruciform pattern. I can hardly think that from, say, 250 A.D. it would not have been recognised as a cross indeed. Compare the small cruciform centres of two squares of mosaic exhibited close by.

Fig. 98.

The floor mosaics at the British Museum are dispersed in two galleries and a staircase, and even so each one is badly presented. Fragments of the Bacchus floor are shown without any key-plan of the whole. Of five on the north wall of the Roman gallery, the place where only one was found is told. The interesting little Orpheus mosaic discovered at Withington is shown by three single fragments, although an excellent restored engraving was published in Archæologia when it was found. I wish space could be found for setting them in their due relation and completing the composition in outline. The surface requires careful cleaning and some repolishing. The floor from Thruxton on the north staircase has lost its centre since it was engraved. The engraving itself is shown in the gallery a hundred yards away, without any reference from one to the other. In this case, I think, the centre should be painted in on the plaster filling of the original.

These mosaics must have been drawn out on the levelled beds prepared to receive them by the master artist and filled in by him and his assistants. The preparation for such a floor is made clear in the description of a London mosaic found in 1785: “This pavement, as well as most of the rest, was laid in three distinct beds; the lowest very coarse, about 3 in. thick, and mixed with large pebbles; the second of fine mortar, very hard and reddish in colour, from having been mixed with powdered brick; this was about 1 in. in thickness, and upon it the bricks [tesseræ] were embedded in fine white cement” (Archæol., vol. viii.). The Bacchus pavement described before “was bedded on a layer of brickdust and lime of about an inch.” Powdered brick (tile) and lime made a strong cement which would finish perfectly smoothly and provide an inviting surface to draw and work upon.

Several mosaics while not quite plain were simpler in design and perhaps coarser in execution than those already described. A star-shaped fragment found in Bishopsgate Street, illustrated by Roach Smith, was of black and white tesseræ. It was probably the central panel of a floor, as Roach Smith said. A mosaic found at Lincoln had a similar star-shaped panel at the centre. About 1840 a tessellated pavement was found in Bishopsgate-Within “of black and white tesseræ in squares and diamonds” (V.C.H.). In Bush Lane “a pavement of white tesseræ” is recorded. On the site of the Guildhall “irregular cubes of dark-grey slate and white marble” were found (Journal B.A.A. xix.).