CHAPTER X
THE CRAFTS
IN his account of Roman London, the late Dr. Haverfield writes (J.R.S., vol. i.): “The citizens appear to have been Roman or definitely Romanised. Of Roman speech in London we have an isolated but sufficient proof. A tile dug up in Warwick Lane, in 1886, bore an inscription, meaning, apparently, ‘Austalis (Augustalis) goes off on his own every day for a fortnight.’ It seems to follow that some of the bricklayers [makers] of Londinium could write Latin. In the lands ruled by Rome, education was better under the Empire than at any time since until about 1848. The occupations of these Roman or Romanised civilians are unknown to us. Articles manufactured on the Continent were certainly imported. There were also exports of grain, cloth (or wool), and lead, and so forth. We may believe that Roman London devoted its time to financial rather than industrial activity.”
Evidence for the practice of arts in Londinium is really considerable. It was doubtless first of all a port, and probably originated as the seaport of the pre-Roman city of Verulamium; but it became the largest city in Britain, the chief distributing centre and the artistic capital. We are apt to think of Dover, or rather Richborough, as the chief port of the country, but London itself was the largest consumer, and the line of traffic was rather to the mouth of the Rhine than to Boulogne. Londinium was a little Alexandria in the West, and represented Britain as the other did Egypt. The building of such a city called together many able craftsmen—builders, sculptors, painters and mosaic workers. There must also have been shipbuilders and a due proportion of craftsmen-producers, potters, bone- and metal-workers, shoemakers, clothiers and the rest. An enormous quantity of pottery has been found, much of fine imported wares, but the most part varieties of native fabric, of which a large proportion was doubtless made of local clay. The site of St. Paul’s Cathedral was covered with “pot-earth,” and the town potteries seem to have been here.
Fig. 134.
Native Pottery.—In the British Museum are some valuable MS. notes made in the years 1674-79, “by Mr. John Conyers, apothecary, at the ‘White Lion,’ in Fleet Street” (Sloane, 958, 816, 937). In mentioning St. Faith’s Chapel, at St. Paul’s, he says that his father and mother were there married forty-five years since (from 1677). Incidentally, he speaks of two brothers, and of being “at Epping Forest hunting ye hare, but ye frost prevented the scent.” This is a late example of the sporting customs of ancient London. His observations refer to excavations on the site of St. Paul’s and along the Fleet. In regard to the former it appears certain that there were a number of Roman rubbish pits on the site, similar to those recently excavated on the Post Office site. Here also were found pottery-kilns and glass furnaces with pottery, bone and other objects. This seems to have been a manufacturing quarter of the city unoccupied by dwellings. Some sketches show that the pottery kilns were circles of small diameter, having a raised floor supported on a central post, like a table, all of clay and broken stuff roughly formed; the lower stage or fire chamber was thus a ring around the central prop, and in the raised “floor” were several small holes. There must have been an external pit with a stoke-hole, and also a flue from the fire chamber. Four such kilns were found close together, forming a quatrefoil group. The dome of the kiln seems to have been roughly new formed over the pottery to be fired (Fig. [134]). Conyers, in the account of finds on the site of St. Paul’s, gives sketches of the kilns found at St. Paul’s with several kinds of pots: “Figures of two kinds of kilns or furnaces of various pots, jugs, etc., of different kinds of earth and pottery. One kiln in loamy ground about 26 ft. deep, near the place where the Mercat-house stood in Oliver’s time. The discovery made in 1677 on digging the foundation of the north-east cross part of St. Paul’s amongst gravel-pits and loam-pits.... Coffins lay over this loamy kiln, the lowest coffins made of chalk, and this supposed to be about Domitian’s time. This kiln was full of ye worst sort of pots, lamps, urns, and not many were saved whole. Four of these [kilns] had been made in the sandy-loam in the fashion of a cross on the ground; the foundations of these left standing 5 ft. from top to bottom, and better, and as many feet in breadth, and had no other matter for its form or building but the outward loam crusted hardish by the heat burning the loam red like brick. The flooring in the middle, supported by and cut out of loam and helped with old-fashioned Roman tiles, sherds, but very few, and such as I have seen used for repositories for urns in ye fashion of little ovens, and they plastered within with a reddish mortar; but here was no mortar, but only ye sandy loam for cement.... A censer or lamp, whitish earth; one great earthen dish; earthen lamp gilded with electrum,” etc. etc.
Again, Conyers says the labourers under part of the place where St. Paul’s Cross stood, 25 ft. or 30 ft. deep, as the earth ceased to be black and came to the yellow sand, found earthen potsherds as red and fine as sealing-wax, and upon some inscriptions, “De Ovimini,” “De Parici,” “De Quintimani,” “Victor,” “Janus Ricino.” [These were Samian, but he goes on to describe very accurately native pottery.] “And pots like broken urns, which were curiously laid on the outside with like thornpricks of rose trees, in the manner of raised work. Other were of cinnamon colour, urn fashion, and as if gilded with gold but faded. Some of strange fashion, jugs bent in so as to be six-square, raised work upon them pricked as curious raisers of paste may imitate; some like black earth for pudding pans, on ye outside indented and crossed quincunx fashion. They had some odd colours (not blue) in these times and a way of glazing different to what now; the red earth bare away the bell.”
“Now, besides red pots,” says Conyers, “such as have inscriptions in the bottoms [i.e. Samian], there were black pots with inscriptions and part of white earth and the glazing black, and both these might be made in ye places, as well as a gilded sort of earthenware. There was a brownish sort inclining to yellow, and the gilding easily coming off. Now, whether this was a thin wash of gold colour or foliated, I know not, yet I think foliated [really mica]. Other pots and urns of a whitish yellow and a soft kind of earth and shells strewed at the bottom inside. Now, other pots as thin as glass with raised work, and these as of a silvered or bell-metal coloured glazing. The imagery, hounds, hares, stags, thorns, trees and branching, flourishings—all raised work. Then I have lamps of gilded British-work [local] and coarse whitish-yellow colours, and bottles and pots for dropping, of the same colours.” In one of his repetitions, Conyers mentions “great potsherds and ears of six-gallon pots.” He also gives sketches of many of the vessels. Doubtless those drawn were in most cases whole vessels and they are of the coarser wares, other than Samian. It is probable, therefore, that they were pottery made on the spot. Dr. Harwood, describing the excavations in the site of St. Mary Woolnoth in 1724, says that “Roman foundations were found made of offal of brick kilns and furnaces” (Soc. Antiq. Minutes).
It would be an easy thing to identify in our collections vessels which conform to the types sketched by Conyers and then to form a group of actual pots which presumably were made in London. This coarse and ordinary ware is usually classed as “Roman,” but it was in a large degree a Celtic inheritance. The black wares of “carinated” profile (Figs. [a]135] and [a]136]) and more or less “cordonned” decorations are very like Marne pottery of the Celtic period. It seems quite likely that the potteries of Londinium may have existed before the Roman Conquest.