Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts

by W. R. Lethaby

Fig. 12.

Well-constructed arched sewers have been found in the City (see Victoria County History).

Many socketed water-pipes are in our museums. Such pipes were occasionally used in Rome as down-pipes, and we might do worse than revert to the custom and get rid of the iron rust nuisance. In the British Museum there are some larger socketed pipes with small holes cut in them along a line. These must, I think, have been for draining surface water, for which purpose flue tiles were also used. Larger sewers were of brick or stone.

Carpentry.—In mediæval days the carpenter was the chief house builder, and much timber would have been used in Roman London. In 1901-2 remains of piling was found in the bed of the Walbrook at London Wall. These piles had served as supports for dwellings. “The large quantities of loose nails indicated that the superimposed dwellings were of timber” (Builder, December 13, 1902). Timber piling has also been found at St. Martin’s le Grand and other sites. There was clearly much soft wet ground in the City. The better-class dwelling in Bucklersbury, to which belonged the fine mosaic floor now at the Guildhall, seems to have been largely of timber. In December last (1921) Mr. Lambert described at the Society of Antiquaries a remarkable piece of wharfing on the river bank at Miles Lane. This was a solid wall of squared balks of timber about 2 ft. square, laid one over the other and having ties into the ground behind. The construction showed an interesting set of tenons, halvings and housings. A bored wood pipe was also found. In Thames Street a house found in 1848 had a well-made drain made with 2 in. planks forming bottom and sides, which is said to have been covered in with tiles.

Wattle and Daub.—It was ever a problem in London how to build without stone. Wood, gravel and mud were plentiful, and these were the common walling materials during the Middle Ages. As lately as the eighteenth century some of the suburban churches were described by Hatton as being of “boulder work,” that is, a concrete of coarse gravel; and the walls of the Temple Church, before the falsifying restorations, were of some sort of concreted rubble skinned over with plaster on the face. Hearne reports that Wren said that there were few masons in London when he was young. Mud walls are mentioned in mediæval records, and “daubers” were, I suppose, primarily those who did the filling in of post and pan work. The smaller houses of Londinium were largely of wattle and daub, and doubtless others were of crude brick. For the use of wattle and daub we have plentiful direct evidence. In the account of the excavations in and about Lombard Street in 1785 (Archæol. viii.) curious fragments were found which are thus described: “About this spot and in many other places large pieces of porous brick were met with of a very loose texture, seeming as if mixed with straw before they were burnt. They are commonly channelled on the surface; their size is quite uncertain, being mere fragments, their thickness about 1½ in. or 2 in.” Again, chalk-stone foundations and “channelled brick” are mentioned together. The “brick” fragments were of daubing, and the channels were the marks of laths, as has been shown by other finds. Similar remnants have recently been discovered on the Post Office site and in King William Street. “Débris of a wood and daub house which had been destroyed by fire.... In several cases the plaster was still adhering to the daub” (Archæol. lxvi.). Other fragments are preserved in the Silchester collection at Reading. The London fragments were found under conditions which showed that they had belonged to first-century dwellings. This method of building had been practised by the Celts, and we may imagine that the “populace” of Londinium was housed in small huts of wattle and clay roofed with reed thatch. In the country, old garden walls are occasionally found, I believe, built of mud daubing on both sides of wattle work, and sheep shelters of wattle-hurdles and dry fern are, I suppose, direct descendants of the old British manner of building.

Mr. Bushe-Fox has remarked that one of the earliest houses at Silchester and the earliest houses at Wroxeter were of wattle and daub construction. See also Mr. Lambert’s paper in Archæologia, December 1921.

Hypocausts and Flue Tiles and Wall Linings.—Several examples have been found in London of the Roman system of heating buildings by hypocausts. These were low under-floor spaces a foot or two high connected with an external stoke-hole in one direction and having a flue or flues in the other. When the hypocaust, as was frequently the case, occupied the whole space below a chamber the floor was supported on a large number of roughly-built little piers with a row or two of flat tiles above spanning the intervals, and over them a layer of concrete and a mosaic or other floor. The flues were usually box-tiles, and in the case of the hot chambers of a bath one side of a wall or even more might be lined with them. A hypocaust with its stoke-hole and flue or flues was really a kiln of low power, in which people were warmed on a similar principle to the baking of pottery. The box-tiles were much the shape of a modern brick, and about twice as big; they were hollow and usually had scorings or impressed patterns on the surface to make mortar or plaster adhere (Figs. [6] and [7]). Frequently they had a hole or two holes in their narrow sides, so that the mortar might better hold them in place. In the British Museum there is a long and large pipe with ornamental scratchings on the surface which may possibly be a chimney.

The system of central heating by the hypocaust seems to have been an admirable contrivance. Lysons illustrated an example at Littlecote where flue tiles ran up in the angles of a room like Tobin tubes, being cased round only by the plaster. The two best known London hypocausts were found in Lower Thames Street and in Bucklersbury. The former extended under the floors of two adjoining apartments. The Bucklersbury example had channels under the floor spreading to several wall flues, each being of two box-tiles placed side by side. (See Price’s account and V.C.H.) Occasionally flue tiles had two smaller channels; there is a broken example of such a tile in the British Museum. Flue tiles were sometimes of a rounded form ∩, and in this case the wall itself must have served to enclose the flue. In the excavations in Lombard Street in 1785 (Archæol. viii.) a brick wall is described which had two flues, one being “semicircular.” A long and well-made ∩-shaped flue in the British Museum, with an impressed lozenge pattern on the surface, is described as a ridge-tile. There is also a fragment of still larger diameter at the Guildhall. Similar flues found at Woodchester were used as horizontal heating channels under the floor.

Here also one of the walls was found to be lined with flanged tiles, set thus, │__││__│, with the flanges against the walls. This may have been a provision against a damp wall. I have seen a similar wall in Rome—I believe subterranean—also another very similar where large flat tiles, having four projections at the back like short legs to a low stool, were used as linings. Each of the four studs was pierced for a nail. Fragments of tiles found at Newgate in 1877 were about 1½ ft. square and 1¼ in. thick, “with rough clay stubs for attachment”; they were scored over the surface with wavy lines, and were probably used internally. (In V.C.H. it is said that these may have been mediæval, but the examples just given show that they were Roman.) In the British Museum and at the Guildhall are some flat tiles, scored on one side to receive plastering, and with four notches in the sides to allow of nails being driven between two adjoining tiles. These, too, must have been for wall linings.

The impressed patterns on the surfaces of some of these flue tiles are quite neat and pretty, and they are interesting in the history of design as being “all-over patterns.” In some cases at least, they seem to have been produced by a roller having a unit of the design cut on it in the style of a butter print. A tile found in Kent, illustrated by Haverfield (Romanization, p. 33), has the inscription: “Cabriabanus made this wall-tile” (parietalam)—“The man who made the tiles apparently incised the legend on a wooden cylinder and rolled it over the tiles, producing a recurrent inscription.” The patterns superseded the scorings and seem to have been for the same purpose—to afford a better hold for the plaster than a plain face. Fig. [a]13] is of tiles found in Thames Street. Fig. [a]14] is a fragment illustrated in Roach Smith’s Catalogue.