Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts

by W. R. Lethaby

Two or three other sherds at the Guildhall belonged to a somewhat similar but smaller urn which had Bacchic subjects—a satyr with goat legs, and a faun before whom is a wine jar into which he seems to be dropping grape juice. These figures were evidently also set between scrolls of vegetation, and this also can be restored. Again there is a sherd of a vine pattern similar to Fig. [a]142], but, I think, from a third pot. There is also a figure from a dark-grey pot, which must have been yet another of the same kind. (For the last word on Samian pottery, see Oswald and Price’s Terra Sigillata.)

A volume on the pottery found in London by a specialist, like that on Silchester, would be certain to bring out valuable historical results on the existence and persistence of Celtic wares, on importations before the Claudian Conquest, and on the large quantity of imports in early Roman days.

Fig. 143.

Glass.—Much broken glass is usually found on Roman sites, vessels, window-panes, etc., and it was probably wrought, in many centres, from imported material. Evidence of this has been found at Silchester and elsewhere (see Mr. T. May’s Warrington). Some window glass was described by Price as “plate polished on one side and ground on the other”; this probably means that it was cast and that the rough side came next the mould.

Conyers, describing the finds on the side of St. Paul’s in 1675, says: “The labourers told me of some remains that were found up and down near the place of the other pot-kilns, and these had a funnel to convey the smoke, which might serve for glass furnaces. For though not any pots with glass in them whole in the furnaces were there found, yet broken crucibles, or tests for molting of glasses, together with boltered glasses such as are to be seen remaining at glass-houses amongst the broken glass, which were glasses spoilt in the making, were there found, but not plenty, and especially coloured and prepared for jewel-like ornament, but mostly such as for cruets or glasses with a lip to drop withal of a greenish light blue colour. Of any sort of glass there was but little; so that the glasswork might be scarce, for I think a hundred times more of pots was found to one of glass....

“Now doth appear the Romans had excellent mechanics, pot makers, stampers of coins, and excellent workers in glass, for amongst those Roman pots were found glass beads as big as could be put on your little finger, and these hollow within and of blue glass wrought or enamelled with yellow glass, and blue beads of the colour of a Turkoise stone. Divided were these beads with threads as big as pack thread. Amongst the rest, great pins made of bone or ivory, etc., heads of many like the great brass-pins, and others vermicular or screw-head, others like the Pope’s triple crown; of these fell to my share as many as a pint-pot would hold.... Taken up a speculum of metal to show the face, of fine bell-metal. There were also found brass embossments with glass set instead of better jewels, which I keep, and glass drops that were loose, and the bottom of an old-fashioned crucible which had glass melted in it, and there were also pieces of necks of glass cruets to pour out by.”

Much of the large number of plainer glass vessels in our museums was doubtless made in the London glass works from imported metal, and probably some ornamental pieces were also manufactured. Thomas Wright thought that glass itself was made in Roman days on the coast near Brighton where “pebbles of glass” have been found; but from comparatively late records of glass making about Rye, etc., the Roman origin of the “pebbles” seems unlikely.

In the British Museum are some fragments of glass vessels having moulded reliefs of chariot races and combats, with the names of the competitors above them. T. Wright illustrates “a fragment of a very remarkable cup in green glass found in the Roman Villa at Hartlip in Kent.... Roach Smith possessed two similar fragments found in London, one of which is identical with the Hartlip fragment in its design and appears to be from the same mould; the other is from a vessel of a different shape and has a quadriga in bas-relief. We have before had occasion to observe how popular gladiatorial contests and the games of the circus were among the Roman inhabitants of this island, and how often we find them represented on the pottery as on the glass.” If a glass vessel found in Kent is exactly like another found in London, it is probable that the former was itself obtained in London, where both may have been made. One of the fragments in the British Museum is from Colchester. We have seen before how that some of the Castor-ware pots were decorated with similar racing chariots, and one of these was found in London and the other in Colchester. Racing chariots also decorate a leaden box found in London and described below.

Glass vessels having reliefs of racing chariots have been found on the Continent, and in the British Museum Guide it is said that our examples “probably came from a Belgian workshop, as a glass of the same kind has been found at Couvin, in the province of Namur, bearing two of the same competitors’ names in a four-horse chariot race. Race cups of this kind date about A.D. 100, and have been found in France, Belgium and Germany. The six cups or fragments found in Britain were no doubt imported across the Channel.” There is, I think, room for some doubt. In any case there seems to be ample evidence that glassware was made in Britain and in Londinium.