These things were done at Bordeaux; it is therefore pretty certain that they were also done in London, whose civilisation was equally Gallo-Roman. London was a place of importance equal with Bordeaux; a place with a greater trade; the seat of a Vicarius Spectabilis, a Right Honourable Lieutenant-Governor; one of the thirteen capitals of the thirteen Dioceses of the Roman Empire.
TESSELLATED PAVEMENT
From Lysons’ Account of the Roman Villa at Woodchester.
Any account of Roman London must include a description and plan of a Roman villa. The one I have chosen is the palatial villa which was recovered by Samuel Lysons exactly a hundred years ago at Woodchester. The plan is given in his book, An Account of Roman Antiquities discovered at Woodchester; it shows the arrangement of the rooms and the courts.
“The visitor approaching this villa when it was standing observed before him a long low wall with an entrance arch. The wall was probably intended as some kind of fortification; the people in the house numbered enough to defend it against any wandering company of marauders. Within the entrance, where he was received by a porter or guard, the visitor found himself in a large square court, the sides of which were 150 feet. On either side, to east and west, were buildings entered from the great court: in one there were twelve rooms; in the other a curious arrangement of rooms communicating with each other which were thought to be the baths. The rooms on the west side were perhaps the chambers and workshops of the slaves and servants.
On the north side a smaller gateway gave access to a court not so large as the first, but still a good-sized court, 90 feet square; it was surrounded on three sides by a gallery, which was closed in winter, as the hypocaust under it indicates. From this court access was obtained to a lovely hall, decorated with a mosaic pavement of great artistic value, with sculptures, paintings, vases, and glass. On either side of this hall were chambers, also decorated in the same way. Under the floors of the chambers was the hypocaust, where were kindled the fires whose hot air passed through pipes warming all the chambers. Fragments of statues, of which one was of Magnentius the usurper, also glass, pottery, marble, horns, coins. The building covered an area of 550 feet by 300 feet, and it is by no means certain that the whole of it has been uncovered.
It is interesting to note that on one of the mosaics found at this place is the injunction ‘... B][N][C ...’[18]—that is, Bonum Eventum Bene Colite—Do not forget to worship Good Luck. To this god, who should surely be worshipped by all the world, there was a temple in Rome.
The Roman Briton, if he lived in such state as this, was fortunate above his fellows. But in the smaller villas the same plan of an open court, square, and built upon one, two, or more sides, prevailed. The walls were made of stone up to a certain height, when wood took the place of stone; the uprights were placed near together, and the interstices made air-tight and water-tight with clay and straw; the roof was of shingles or stone tiles. Wall paintings have been found everywhere, as we have already seen; the pavements were in many cases most elaborate mosaics.”
The construction of a villa for a wealthy Roman Briton is easy to be understood. As to the question of the smaller houses, it is not so easy to answer. A small house, detached, has been found at Lympne. It was about 50 feet long and 30 feet broad. The plan shows that it was divided into four chambers, one of which had a circular apse. The rooms were all about the same size, namely, above 22 feet by 14 feet. A row of still smaller houses has been found at Aldborough. Almost all the streets in London stand upon masses of buried Roman houses. If we wish to reconstruct the city, we must consider not only the villas in the more open spaces as the official residences in the citadel, but also the streets and alleys of the poorer sort. Now at Pompeii the streets are narrow; they are arranged irregularly; there are only one or two in which any kind of carriage could pass. The same thing has been observed at Cilirnum (Chesters), in Northumberland, and at Maryport in Cumberland. Very likely the narrow streets leading north of Thames Street are on the same sites as the ancient Roman streets of London in its poorer and more crowded parts. It stands to reason that the houses of the working people and the slaves could not be built of stone.
The nature of the trade of London is arrived at by considering—(1) What people wanted; (2) what they made, produced, and grew for their own use; and (3) what they exported.