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Title: The Ruins of the Roman City of Uriconium, at Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury


Author: Thomas Wright



Release Date: June 19, 2020  [eBook #62425]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUINS OF THE ROMAN CITY OF
URICONIUM, AT WROXETER, NEAR SHREWSBURY***

Transcribed from the fourth, 1863, edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

THE
RUINS OF THE ROMAN CITY
OF
Uriconium,
AT
WROXETER, NEAR SHREWSBURY.

BY
THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ., M.A., F.S.A.

Fourth Edition,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

SHREWSBURY: J. O. SANDFORD, HIGH-STREET.
LONDON: KENT & CO., PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1863.

p. iiiPREFACE.

It is the aim of the following pages to give the degree and kind of popular information believed to be wanted by the numerous visitors to the excavations at Wroxeter, who have no Guide to explain what they see, and are not possessed of that amount of minute antiquarian knowledge which would enable them to understand everything without such explanation.  It is the first instance in which there has been, in this country, the chance of penetrating into a city of more than fourteen centuries ago, on so large a scale, and with such extensive remains of its former condition; and when the visitor has walked over the floors which had been trodden last, before they were thus uncovered, by the Roman inhabitants of this island, he will appreciate more justly, and with greater interest, the objects which have been discovered, and are deposited in the Museum, at Shrewsbury; and he will learn to look forward with hope to the light which a continuance of these excavations must throw upon the condition and history of this country at so remote a period.  Whatever this light may be, it must not be p. ivforgotten that we shall be indebted for it, in the first place, to his Grace the Duke of Cleveland, who has shown a generous public feeling in giving permission and encouragement to the excavations on his land, and to the late B. Botfield, Esq., M.P., through whose zeal and liberality in the undertaking the excavators were set at work, when as yet it was uncertain if their labours would be attended with any success.  I have endeavoured to fulfil literally the title of this little book, and to give the visitor such information as he would seek from a professional Guide, whilst I have gladly left the description of the Museum, and especially of those rather numerous human remains which form so remarkable a part of our discoveries, to one best qualified for that task, Dr. Henry Johnson, who has so ably and zealously directed the excavations on the spot, and who has thus, unremunerated, given to the service of the public so much of his valuable time.

T. W.

p. vTO VISITORS.

Parties from a distance wishing to visit the ruins of the ancient Uriconium, at Wroxeter, will find every comfort and accommodation at the Lion, the Raven, the George, and the Crown Hotels, Shrewsbury.

Wroxeter is a little more than five miles from Shrewsbury.  Conveyances may be obtained at the Railway Station, Shrewsbury; at any of the above-named Hotels; and at Howells’s Livery Stables, Cross Hill.  Parties of any reasonable number may be conveyed by either of the latter, on giving them two days’ notice by letter.

Upton Magna, on the Shrewsbury and Wellington Joint Line of Railway, is the nearest Station to Wroxeter, from whence it is distant about two miles and a half, a pleasant walk for an active person.

The Museum of the Shropshire and North Wales Natural History and Antiquarian Society, College Hill, where all the moveable articles from Wroxeter are deposited, is open DAILY to visitors, from 10 till 4, on payment of sixpence each, and by an order from a Subscriber GRATUITOUSLY.

Donations to the Wroxeter Fund will be gladly received by the Honorary Secretary, Dr. H. Johnson, Dogpole, Shrewsbury.

p. viiList of Plates.

FROM DRAWINGS BY MR. HILLARY DAVIES, OF SHREWSBURY.

p. 9The Ruins of Uriconium.

If we leave Shrewsbury by its long eastern suburb, known, from the important monastic house which formerly stood at its commencement, as the Abbey Foregate, passing the more modern monument erected at its extremity, Lord Hill’s Column, our way lies for about two miles along the London road, bounded on each side by rich and fertile fields.  At the distance just mentioned, this road approaches close to the river Severn, and continues to run along its banks, to the great improvement of the scenery, until we arrive at the prettily-situated village of Atcham, with Atcham Church in face of us, and the river winding under its stone bridge in the foreground.  Atcham is three miles from Shrewsbury.  Crossing the bridge, we leave the river, which here takes a long sweep to the southward, and follow the road, which skirts for more p. 10than half a mile the extensive park of Attingham.  We here approach another river, the Tern, which at this point spreads into a fair expanse of water, and forms, with the mansion of Attingham to the left, and the copses which skirt it, a scene of striking beauty, while to the right it divides into two branches which empty themselves into the Severn, a little lower down.  Crossing Tern Bridge, and proceeding a short distance, still skirting the park, we reach a point where, opposite the entrance to Attingham Park, a branch road turns off to the right from the old London road.  We must take this branch road, which will lead us to the village of Wroxeter.  We soon cross a small stream, which is known by the name of the Bell Brook, and after we have passed this brook, the visitor will hardly fail to remark, wherever his eye rests upon ploughed ground, the extraordinary blackness of the soil in comparison with that of the land over which he has previously passed.

In fact he has now entered upon the site of an ancient Roman city, which is known, from the circumstance of its being mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy, to have been standing here as early as the beginning of the second century, when it was called Viroconium,—a name which appears to have been changed in the later Romano-British period to Uriconium; at least this is the form under which the p. 11name occurs in the later geographers, and which has been generally adopted by modern antiquaries.  From the point at which we have now arrived, the line of the ancient town-wall may be traced by a continuous low mound, which runs southward towards the Severn, the banks of which it follows for some distance, and, after passing between the river and the modern village of Wroxeter, turns eastwardly behind the vicarage-house, and makes a long sweep till it reaches the hamlet of Norton to the north, whence it turns to the westward again, and reaches the point from which we started, forming an irregular oval, rather more than three miles in circumference.  A portion of the Bell Brook runs through the Roman city.  After crossing this brook, we approach ground which rises gently, and nearly at the highest point we see to the left a smith’s shop.  At this spot, which is rather more than five miles from Shrewsbury, the road which has brought us from that town crosses another road, which turns down to the right, to the village of Wroxeter, not quite half a mile distant.  Wroxeter is an Anglo-Saxon name, the first part of which is probably corrupted from that of the ancient Roman city of the site of which it occupies the southern extremity.  The road which has led us to it is called the Watling Street road, and there is every reason for believing that it occupies in a part of its course the line of one of the p. 12principal streets of Uriconium.  It crosses the river Severn immediately below the village, where there was doubtless a bridge in Roman times, for it is in the highest degree improbable that in approaching a town of such importance, the Romans would cross a river like the Severn only by a ford.

On arriving at the smith’s shop just alluded to, the attention of the visitor will be attracted by a solid mass of masonry, which forms a very imposing object, and presents those unmistakable characteristics of Roman work,—the long string-courses of large flat red bricks.  This mass of masonry, the only portion of the buildings of Uriconium which remains standing above ground, is upwards of twenty feet high, and seventy-two feet long, with a uniform thickness of three feet, and has been long known by the name of “The Old Wall.”  It stands nearly in the centre of the ancient city, which occupied the highest ground within the walls,—a commanding position, with the bold isolated form of the Wrekin in the rear, and in front a panorama of mountains formed by the Wenlock and Stretton Hills, Caer Caradoc, the Longmynd, the Breidden, and the still more distant mountains of Wales.  With the exception of this wall, all that remained of the Roman city, if as some people might perhaps have doubted, anything did remain,—has been long buried beneath the soil.  At the close of the year 1858, however, p. 13it was resolved to ascertain what these remains were, and an Excavation Committee was formed at Shrewsbury, for the purpose of carrying this design into effect by means of a public subscription.  Excavations were, accordingly, commenced on the 3rd of February, 1859, and they have already led to results of the most satisfactory description.  But, perhaps, before we proceed to describe the ruins which have thus been uncovered, it would be well to tell our readers something of the general character of the Roman towns in this island, and to explain how some of them were destroyed, and from what cases and by what circumstances their remains present themselves in the conditions in which we now find them.

Fifteen hundred years ago, this island, with the exception of the highlands of Scotland, was covered with flourishing towns, many of them known to have been of considerable magnitude, situated on numerous public roads,—these latter of such excellent construction, that they have remained to the present day the foundation of most of our great English high roads.  These towns, like those in other parts of the empire, enjoyed free municipal p. 14institutions (from which our own mediæval municipal institutions are derived), and in all but certain duties towards the imperial government, formed in themselves so many little republics, possessing all the ambitions and rivalries which seem inseparable from republican institutions.  Among the slight notices of this island in ancient writers we learn that the towns of Britain were remarkable for their turbulence, which was encouraged, no doubt, by the distance of this province from Rome, and by the peculiar character of the population of the towns, which consisted of blood that was foreign to the soil, and which was not uniform in character in the different towns.  We know further that, during the fourth century, these towns often confederated together, threw off the imperial yoke, and raised emperors of their own; and we have every reason for supposing that, when the restraint imposed by the central power became slackened, the towns confederated against one another, and that domestic dissensions and contests troubled the peace of the island.  Such dissensions left the island exposed to the invasions of its foreign enemies, which had become very frequent and very formidable during the fourth century.  The eastern coasts were often visited by the Teutonic rovers, Saxons, and Franks; the barbarous Caledonians, then called Picts, from the north rushed across the borders, and carried devastation p. 15through the land, in which they were assisted by the Irish, or, as they were then called, Scots, and probably by the Armorican Celts, or Britons from Gaul.  The towns of Britain united would, no doubt, have presented a force sufficient to meet any of these invasions, but their very constitution rendered such a union difficult, except for a short period.  Besides their independence of each other, the towns had only been expected to defend themselves, while the defence of the province was more especially the duty of the legions, and on their withdrawal, the towns seem to have followed their old practice in case of invasion, and shut themselves within their walls, or, at most, opposed the invaders without any union, thus leaving the open country to easy destruction.

The history of the conquest of the Roman provinces by the barbarians is, in general, simply the successive reduction of one town after another.  Such was eminently the case in Britain, and the traditionary annals of the early Saxon period present little more than a list of conquered towns.  Sometimes a town was taken by stratagem or force, and then it was plundered or destroyed, but in the far greater number of cases the town was too strong for the assailants and only submitted by composition, by which it paid a tribute to the conqueror and retained its old independent municipal institutions.  We all p. 16know how many of our old cities and early municipal towns are thus the representatives of the cities of the Romans.  In some parts of the island the destruction was greater than in others, and on the Welsh border, through the whole space between Chester (called by the Romans Deva), and Gloucester (which the Romans called Glevum), the towns seem to have been all ruined.  One of the largest of these towns was no doubt that of Uriconium.  We can only judge by implication, and by a comparison of what occurred in other places, of the manner in which a town like Uriconium was treated, when it was overcome by the barbarians.  We know that these invaders were influenced by a love of plunder, but a love of destruction—we may perhaps call it an impulse of destruction—was still greater; and it is probable that the plundering of a town like Uriconium was a hasty and imperfect operation, and that the plunderers carried off chiefly objects made of the precious metals, or articles of dress and arms, or other objects on which they set considerable value, as they moved about rapidly, and could not be provided very extensively with the means of conveyance.  (We are here speaking of the earlier plundering invasions of the barbarians, such as the Picts and Scots, in which perhaps Uriconium perished, towards the middle of the fifth century, for it is hardly probable that the Angles or Saxons could have reached this p. 17part of the island at so early a period.)  The first impulse of the plunderers was to apply fire to the buildings, and the progress of the conflagration would hasten their departure.  Where the inhabitants of the conquered town had not made their escape and abandoned it before it was taken—which was perhaps the case in some of the smaller towns—there would no doubt be a dreadful massacre, and the survivors would be dragged away into captivity, for the various peoples who preyed upon the carcass of the mighty empire of Rome, whether German or Celt, or Tartar or Arab, ambitioned, almost above other plunder, the possession of numerous slaves.  Thus the plundered town was left without inhabitants, and in flames, of which the latter, as may be judged on the spot from the massive character of the walls of the houses, were probably partial in their effect, destroying chiefly the timber and roofs.

Thus the town was left an extensive mass of blackened walls; and such was the condition in which the ruined Roman towns remained during several centuries.  Roman walls, we all know, were too strongly built to fall down, and various circumstances combined for their preservation.  In the first place, the population of the country must have been greatly reduced, and this part of the island especially was probably very thinly inhabited after it had been ravaged by the invaders.  The ruins themselves p. 18would in time be overgrown with plants and trees and would become the haunt of wild beasts, which were then abundant, thus offering very little encouragement to anybody to enter them.  But they were protected in a still greater degree by the strong superstitious feelings with which such ruins were regarded by the people who now occupied the land.  The Teutonic invaders had not only a prejudice against towns in general, but they believed that all the deserted buildings of the previous lords of the soil were taken possession of by powerful evil spirits, on whose limits it was in the highest degree dangerous to trespass.  They imagined, moreover, that the Romans had the power of casting spells over buildings, which were no less dangerous than the evil spirits themselves.  It will be remembered how, when Augustine and his brother missionaries came to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, the Kentish king and his court gave them their first audience in the open air; because, as we are told, the Anglo-Saxons were afraid that, should they be received in a covered chamber in the palace, the strangers from Rome would be able to cast a spell upon them.  It is a remarkable proof of the strength of this superstitious feeling, that all the Benedictionals of the Anglo-Saxon period contain forms for blessing the vessels of metal or earthenware found in ancient sites, and relieving them from the spells which had p. 19been cast upon them by the “pagans,” in order that the finders might be enabled to make use of these vessels without any personal danger.  When the people of the middle ages, whether Christians or not, found the beautiful bronze figures on which we set so much store, they were in the greatest apprehension of personal danger until they had mutilated them so as to break the charm or spell which they believed to be laid upon them, for they looked upon these images as the more general instruments of the ancient magicians.  When thus mutilated they usually threw them into the nearest river.  The numerous bronzes dredged up from the bed of the Thames at London are almost all mutilated in this manner.  This was the case also with the inscriptions, for the successors of the Romans had no other notion of an ancient inscription than that it was a magical charm.  This superstition has continued to exist until very recent times, for it appears that, within the memory of man, the peasantry of Northumberland, on the line of the great wall of Hadrian, were accustomed, when they found an inscribed stone—and inscribed stones are there very abundant—to hew out at least a part of the letters of the inscription with a pick or axe, in order to destroy the charm.

We thus understand how a ruined city—like that at Wroxeter—was allowed to remain untouched for centuries.  Many of these ruined towns became p. 20the subject of romantic legends.  One of these legends relating to an ancient ruined city in this neighbourhood, is told in the curious history of the Fitz-Warines, composed in the thirteenth century, in Anglo-Norman, no doubt by a border writer.  This writer is describing a visit supposed to have been made by William the Conqueror to the Welsh border in order to distribute the land to his followers.

“When King William approached the hills and valleys of Wales he saw a very large town, formerly enclosed with high walls, which was all burnt and ruined, and in a plain below the town he caused his tents to be raised, and there he said he would remain that night.  Then the king inquired of a Briton what was the name of the town, and how it came to be so ruined.  ‘Sire,’ said the Briton, ‘I will tell you.  The Castle was formerly called Castle Bran, but now it is called the Old March.  Formerly there came into this country Brutus, a very valiant knight, and Corineus, from whom Cornwall still retains its name, and many others derived from the lineage of Troy, and none inhabited these parts except very foul people, great giants, whose king was called Geomagog.  These heard of the arrival of Brutus, and sent out to encounter him, and at last all the giants were killed except Geomagog, who was marvellously great.  Corineus, the valiant, said that he would willingly wrestle with Geomagog, to p. 21try Geomagog’s strength.  The giant, on the first onset, embraced Corineus so tightly, that he broke three of his ribs.  Corineus became angry, and struck Geomagog with his foot that he fell from a great rock into the sea, and Geomagog was drowned.  And a spirit of the devil now entered into the body of Geomagog, and came into these parts, and held possession of the country long, that never Briton dared to inhabit it.  And long afterwards, King Bran the son of Donwal, caused the city to be rebuilt, repaired the walls, and strengthened the great fosses, and he made Burgh and Great March.  And the devil came by night and took away every thing that was therein, since which time nobody has ever inhabited there.’  The king marvelled much at this story, and Payn Peverel, the proud and courageous knight, the king’s cousin, heard it all, and declared that that night he would essay the marvel.  Payn Peverel armed himself very richly, and took his shield, shining with gold, with a cross of azure indented, and fifteen knights and other attendants, and went into the highest palace, and took up his lodging there.  And when it was night the weather became so foul, black, dark, and such a tempest of lightning and thunder, that all those who were there became so terrified that they could not for fear move hand or foot, but lay on the ground like dead men.  The proud Payn was very much frightened p. 22but he put his trust in God, whose sign of the cross he carried with him, and saw that he could have no help but from God.  He lay upon the ground, and with good devotion prayed God and his mother Mary that they would defend him that night from the power of the devil.  Hardly had he finished his prayer, when the fiend came in the semblance of Geomagog, and he carried a great club in his hand, and from his mouth cast fire and smoke, with which the whole town was illuminated.  Payn had a good hope in God, and signed himself with a cross, and boldly attacked the fiend.  The fiend raised his club and would have struck Payn, but he avoided the blow.  The devil, by virtue of the cross, was all struck with fear, and lost his strength, for he could not approach the cross.  Payn pursued him till he struck him with his sword; then he began to cry out, and fell flat on the ground, and yielded himself vanquished.  ‘Knight,’ said he, ‘you have conquered me, not by your own strength, but by virtue of the cross which you carry.’  ‘Tell me,’ said Payn, ‘you foul creature, who you are and what you do in this town, I conjure you, in the name of God and of the Holy Cross.’  The fiend began to relate from word to word as the Briton had said before; and told how, when Geomagog was dead, he immediately rendered his soul to Beelzebub, their prince, and he entered the body of Geomagog, and p. 23came in his semblance into these parts, and kept the great treasure which Geomagog had collected and put into a house he had made underground in that town.  Payn demanded of him, ‘What kind of creature he was?’ and he said, ‘He was formerly an angel, but now is, by his forfeit, a diabolical spirit.’  ‘What treasure,’ said Payn, ‘had Geomagog?’  ‘Oxen, cows, swans, peacocks, horses, and all other animals, made of fine gold; and there was a golden bull, which, through me, was his prophet, and in him was all his belief; and he told him the events that were to come; and twice a year the giants used to honour their god, the golden bull, whereby so much gold is collected that all this country was called ‘The White Land.’  And I and my companion inclosed the land with a high wall and deep fosse, so that there was no entrance except through this town, which was full of evil spirits.’  ‘Now, you shall tell me,’ said Payn, ‘where is the treasure of which you have spoken?’  ‘Vassal,’ said he, ‘speak no more of that, for it is destined for others; but you shall be lord of all this honour.’”

And so the vanquished fiend goes on to tell him the future fortunes of his house; and after King William had been duly informed of this adventure, and they had thrown the body of Geomagog into a great pit, they proceeded on their way to Oswestry.

In my edition of this history of the Fitz-Warines p. 24I have offered some conjectures on the spot to which this legend refers; but on comparing all the circumstances connected with it, I have since been led to the conclusion that the “burnt and ruined” city which had thus been taken possession of by the evil spirits was no other than the ruins of the ancient Uriconium.  This story implies that the walls of the town and houses of Uriconium were still standing above ground as late as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and very likely a great portion of them remained thus standing at the time when the author of the History of the Fitz-Warines wrote.  But during the centuries which had passed since the city of the Romans became a ruin, it had been undergoing a gradual but continual change from the accumulation of earth.  This rising of the level of the ground is always found to have taken place under such circumstances, and may be explained by several causes.  In the first place, the floors must have been covered by a mass of rubbish formed by the falling in of the roofs and more perishable parts of the buildings.  Vegetation, too, would in the course of years arise, and the walls would stop and cause to be deposited the dust and earthy particles carried about in the atmosphere.  This deposit we know by experience to be considerable.  It is now little more than three centuries since the dissolution of the monasteries, and we have all had opportunities p. 25of observing the depth of earth under which the floors of the monastic ruins now lie, sometimes amounting to as much as three or four feet.  What, then, must it have been on an extensive ruin like that of Uriconium, which had stood in that ruined and deserted condition from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the twelfth?

It was at this latter period that the Roman buildings began to be systematically destroyed.  It appears that still in the twelfth century, England was covered with the remains of Roman ruined towns and villas standing above ground, as they are still seen, though on a larger scale, in the countries which formed the Roman province in Northern Africa.  We have seen the superstitious feelings which prevented people approaching these ruins in our island, and it required nothing less than the hand of the Church to interfere and break the charm which kept the rest of society aloof.  We learn from the history of the abbots of St Alban’s, written in the thirteenth century by Matthew Paris, that already in the eleventh century the abbots of that great religious house had begun to break the ruins of the Roman city of Verulamium, in order to use them as building materials.  This practice became very general in the twelfth century, and from that time the Roman ruins were pillaged on an extensive scale whenever a monastery or a p. 26church was to be built.  The ancient city at Wroxeter was probably one of the great quarries from which the builders of Haughmond Abbey were supplied, and no doubt it contributed materials to other monastic houses in this part of the country.  The church of Atcham, the adjoining parish, and that of Wroxeter itself, bear evidence to this appropriation of building materials taken from ancient Uriconium.  At the time when this inroad was made upon the ruins, the ground, as explained before, was already raised several feet above the Roman floors; and the mediæval builders, finding plenty of material above ground, cleared away the walls down to the surface of the ground as it then existed, and sought them no further.  This accounts for the condition in which we now find these walls, that is, remaining tolerably perfect just up to the height of what was the level of the ground, at the time the rest was destroyed.  The difference between the tops of the walls as they now exist under ground, and the present surface of the ground, is the accumulation of earth which has taken place since this destruction.  It was the destruction of the buildings which first caused this accumulation, by scattering about the fragments of the plaster of the walls and the broken tiles and stones which were not worth carrying away.  After the walls above ground disappeared, and the ground was levelled p. 27and cleared, such accumulation went on much more slowly.

The sites of the ancient towns, thus cleared, and the spell which held their invaders at bay having been broken by the ecclesiastics, became exposed to a new class of depredators.  Coins and objects of some value were no doubt discovered from time to time by accident, and were greatly exaggerated by common report, during ages when the existence of hidden treasure formed a prominent article in the popular belief.  Many a Salopian, doubtless, longed for the hidden treasures of the city of Geomagog, and many an attempt no doubt was made to discover and obtain them.  Treasure-hunting of this description was a great pursuit with our mediæval forefathers, and the same superstitious feelings were connected with it that were attached to all the remains of more ancient peoples.  The treasure-hunter rarely ventured on his search without having first secured the aid of a magician for his protection as well as for his guidance, for the same evil spirits were believed still to haunt the ruins underground, and it was hoped that by the power of the conjuror they might not only be rendered harmless, but be made to give information as to the exact spot where the treasure lay.  Numerous examples might be quoted of such mediæval treasure-hunting on the Welsh border, but it will be sufficient p. 28to give one which appears to belong to the very site on which we are now seeking treasures of another description.  An old manuscript chronicle of the monks of Worcester, which is printed in Warton’s Anglia Sacra, and has preserved numerous notices of events which occurred on this border, informs us that in the year 1287, at a place by Wroxeter, (that is near the village), called “Bilebury,” the fiend was compelled by a certain enchanter to appear to a certain lad and show him where lay buried “urns, and a ship, and a house, with an immense quantity of gold.”  We easily recognize in the objects described by the false Geomagog, though not the material, the numerous figures in bronze which are from time to time found on Roman sites; and the arms and ship may perhaps admit of as easy an explanation.  The treasure-digger had to encounter sometimes a worse opponent even than the fiend himself!  Treasure-trove belonged to the feudal lord, and it was a right which he was inclined to enforce with the utmost severity; and the unfortunate individual who was caught in the act of trespassing against it found his way immediately into a feudal dungeon, from which escape was not always easy or quick.  The learned historian of this county, Mr. Eyton, has met with a record from which we learn that some individuals towards the close of the thirteenth century were thus caught p. 29“digging” for a treasure at Wroxeter, and that they were thrown into prison.  On their examination or trial, however, it appeared that, though they had dug for a treasure, they had not found one, and on this plea they had the good fortune to be set at liberty.  This process of treasure-hunting had an effect injurious to the object of our researches.  The mediæval excavator cared very little about antiquities as monuments of the past, and when, in digging a hole into the ground, he came upon a pavement, he broke it up without any scruple.  It is to this cause, perhaps, that we must ascribe in many cases the damaged state in which we find the floors of the Roman houses, even when they lie at a considerable depth.

I have thus endeavoured to explain the manner in which a Roman town like Uriconium was ruined; how its ruin remained several centuries untouched, while a depth of earth was accumulating on the floors; how at a later period the ruins themselves began to be cleared away, and a new accumulation of earth was formed over the lower part of the walls which had been left, until these could no longer be traced on the surface, except by the appearance of the crops in long periods of dry weather.  This double accumulation of the debris of buildings has often led people to form erroneous conclusions, and in the account of a former partial p. 30excavation at Wroxeter, published by the Society of Antiquaries, the writer has fallen upon the rather odd notion that the Roman town had been burnt twice,—that he saw the layers of burnt materials from two successive burnings.

The effects of all these causes may be seen in the excavations at Wroxeter,—the floor sometimes perfect and sometimes broken up; the walls of the houses remaining to the height of two or three feet or more, as they were left by the mediæval builders, when they carried away the upper part of these walls for material; the original level of the Roman town on which its inhabitants trod, strewed with roof-tiles and slates and other material which had fallen in during the conflagration under which the town sank into ruin, and the upper part of the soil mixed up with fragments of plaster and cement, bricks and mortar, which had been scattered about when the walls were broken up.

The site of Uriconium presents one great advantage to the antiquarian explorer, that only a small and not very important portion of the area has been exposed to the most destructive of all encroachments on its sanctity, modern buildings; while the situation and nature of the ground has not required the deep draining which would have cut through the ancient floors, and these lie too far beneath the surface to be touched by the plough.  It will be easily p. 31understood that the preservation of such remains depends much on the depth of soil which covers them.  The Rev. T. F. More has discovered and made considerable excavations in a very extensive and most interesting Roman villa, which occupies part of his beautiful park at Linley Hall, near Bishop’s Castle, but there the position of the site, and perhaps other circumstances, have caused the earth to accumulate much less rapidly, and the floors lay so near to the surface that they have all been destroyed.  Where a fragment of the concrete of the floor remained, it was hardly six inches under the ground.

Our means of observation have hitherto been so imperfect, that we can only form vague conjectures as to the internal aspect and distribution of the buildings of a Roman town in Britain.  At the close of the Roman period the towns were usually, if not always, surrounded with defensive walls; but there are several reasons for believing that the Roman towns in this island were not walled until a comparatively late date, perhaps not till the domestic dissensions and foreign invasions of the fourth century.  These town walls, when closely examined into, are often found to contain materials taken from older buildings of another kind, which older materials themselves present the debased style of architecture which belonged to the declining age of the Roman power.  The long straggling line of wall p. 32which surrounded Uriconium as we may conclude from its very irregularity, can only have been built at a late date, after the city had gone on for ages increasing in its extent.  We are naturally led to suppose that the public buildings would occupy the central, or at least the more elevated part of the town, and this has in several instances proved to be the case.  The discoveries made by Sir Christopher Wren, seem to leave no doubt that a Roman temple occupied the site of the modern cathedral of St. Paul’s, in London.  But buildings of all sorts would seem to have been mixed very confusedly together; for we believe that in London, more recent excavations have brought to light remains of potter’s kilns in close proximity to this temple.  In one or two instances, as at Aldborough, in Yorkshire, (the Roman Isurium), and in some of the small towns on the line of Hadrian’s Wall, in Northumberland, masses of the small houses have been uncovered, and their appearance leads us to believe that the houses of a Roman town in Britain were grouped thickly together, that they were mostly separated by narrow alleys, and that there were in general few streets of any magnitude.

p. 33We will now return to the spot where the visitor has halted in view of the imposing mass of Roman masonry, called the Old Wall, situated, as has been stated, in a large triangular field formed by the divergence of the two roads.  The Old Wall stands not quite east and west, but sufficiently near it to allow us for sake of convenience to call it east and west.  Its northern side is evidently the outside of a building, while there could be no doubt that the southern side, on which the springings of transverse walls and vaulted ceilings are visible, was the interior.  The excavations were begun on the 3rd of February, 1859, on the northern side, or outside, of this wall, partly with the object of ascertaining the depth at which the floors and the foundations of the buildings lay under the present surface of the ground, which, as we have said before, was an important fact to ascertain.  The bottom of the Old Wall was found at a depth of fourteen feet, the last ten feet of which were sunk in the natural substratum of sand, so that the walls of the buildings in this spot must have had originally very deep foundations.  It was found that this wall was continued underground to the west, and excavations directed towards the north brought to light successively three walls running parallel, or nearly parallel, to this first wall, the first of these parallel walls being at a uniform distance of fourteen feet from the Old Wall, p. 34the next at a distance, also uniform, of thirty feet from this wall, and the third at a distance from the second of fourteen feet at the western and sixteen at the eastern end, so that, as the transverse wall at the eastern end of these walls was not quite at right angles to them, this large building was a little out of square.  This building, therefore, consisted of three divisions, of which the central enclosure was 226 feet long by 30 feet wide, and appears to have been paved in its whole extent with small bricks, three inches long by one inch broad, set in zig-zags, or, as it is more technically called, herring-bone fashion.  This description of pavement appears generally to have been used in passages and in open courts, and it seems probable, even from the magnitude of this enclosure, that it was not roofed.  Nothing was discovered in it to throw any light on the object of so extensive a paved enclosure, but there could be little doubt that it must have been a public building of some importance.  Portions of the capitals, bases, and shafts of columns were found scattered about in different parts of the area, which show that it was not wanting in architectural decoration, and on one of the pieces of wall-stucco, picked up in this part of the excavations, where three letters of what had been an inscription in large characters.  Among other objects found here were a fragment of a very strong iron chain, the head of an axe, and an iron implement p. 35which appears to have been a trident, and to have been originally placed on a staff, perhaps an ensign of office.  The appearance of the face of the Old Wall, which formed part of one side of the long narrow enclosure on the south of this central apartment, would lead us to suppose that this was an open alley, and this is confirmed by the other circumstances connected with it.  In the continuation of the Old Wall to the westward, the lower parts of two doorways were found, which were approached from this alley each by a step formed of a single squared stone, which, therefore, may have been supposed to have led from an exterior into an interior.  The corresponding long passage to the north of the central apartment presented characteristics of another kind.  At the eastern end were found pavements of rather fine mosaic, of which specimens and admirable drawings, by Mr. George Maw, of Broseley, are preserved in the Museum.  Mosaic of this description was not made to be exposed to the air, and the building here must not only have been roofed, but we have reason to suppose that there must have been a room or rooms of a character on which elegant ornamentation would be bestowed.

The walls of this building, as we find them under ground, present from time to time discontinuations, or breaches, caused no doubt by the breaking up of the walls for materials by the mediæval builders, who p. 36sometimes went deeper for them than usual; and it is very likely that this may have been caused, in some instances at least, by the circumstance that on the site of these breaches were doors or passages, the jambs and ornamental parts of which were formed of large stones which were more tempting to the old excavators.  With the exception of these breaches, there are no traces of doorways from one apartment of this building to the other.  About the middle of the northernmost wall there is a very wide breach of this kind, which perhaps represents a grand entrance from the north.  Moreover, in carrying the excavations further towards the north, it was found that this northernmost wall of the building formed the side of a street, which was paved in the middle with round stones, not much unlike the pavements of some of the streets in Shrewsbury and other old towns as they remain at the present day.  The northern wall just alluded to was traced eastwardly until the edge of the field in which the excavations are carried on prevented the workmen from going any further.  Immediately to the east of the building we have been describing was a not quite rectangular inclosure, which, from the appearance of the walls, was probably a court-yard.  A doorway, approached by a stone step within the great inclosure to the west, led into it.  Beyond this, to the eastward, was a much larger inclosure, which as far as it was explored, had p. 37no tracings of walls or pavement within, and may possibly have been a garden.  At the western end of the great building, about the middle of the extremity of the great central inclosure, indications were discovered which probably belonged also to an entrance.  These indications consisted of two original openings in the wall, within which were found, evidently in their original position, in one a large squared stone, and in the other two similarly squared stones placed one upon another.  One of these was bevelled off at the outer edge into a plain moulding, and their general appearance led to the belief that they had formed the basis of something—perhaps of large columns.  Here, therefore, may perhaps have been the principal entrance into the long and extensive area which occupied the middle of this building.  It faced the modern Watling Street Road, which evidently represents another street; and it thus seems to admit of no doubt that this building formed the corner of two principal streets of the Roman city of Uriconium.

We will now return to the long alley, as we have ventured to call it, on the southern side of the building we have been describing.  It has been already stated that there were found in this alley two steps, formed each of a large squared stone, attached to two doorways in the western continuation of the Old Wall.  The more western of these two p. 38steps was very much worn by the feet of the people who had passed over it, as though it had led to some place of public resort.  It was at the more easterly of these doorways that the excavations were carried to the southward of the Old Wall.  This doorway apparently led into some open court which communicated with domestic apartments.  A trench carried directly southward from the doorway, brought the excavators to the semicircular end of a hypocaust, which had warmed a considerable room thirty-seven feet long, by twenty-five feet wide, and which was in a state of very perfect preservation when opened, although the floor which once covered it had entirely disappeared.  The pillars, which were formed of Roman square bricks, placed one upon another without mortar, and of which 120 were counted, were above three feet high.  This room has now been completely laid open, and on the western side has a complicated arrangement of walls, which evidently served some purpose connected with the heating of the hypocausts.  A considerable quantity of unburnt coal was found here.  The northern end of this hypocaust, the wall of which remained to the height of several feet, presents an imposing mass of masonry, and we learn from it the interesting fact that the Roman houses were plastered and painted externally as well as internally.  The exterior of the semicircular wall at the north end of this p. 39hypocaust was painted red, with stripes of yellow.  Near it lay an immense stone, hewn into the shape to fit the semicircular wall of the hypocaust, which had evidently formed part of a massive band of such stones at some height in the wall.  A strong piece of iron is soldered into it with lead, for the purpose of attaching something to the building externally.  A little alley, considerably wider than the spaces between the pillars of bricks, ran across this hypocaust, and through an opening in the wall, into another hypocaust, which was entered from without by a large archway, and this again was approached by a flight of three steps, each step composed of one large well-squared stone, descending from a square platform, which was apparently on a level with the original floors of the rooms.  When the steps were uncovered, a broken shaft of a large column was found lying across them.  The platform at the bottom of the steps, or at least the corner of it farthest from the arched entrance to the hypocaust, seems to have been used by the last occupiers of this building as a receptacle for the dust swept from floors and passages, for the earth, for about a foot deep on the floor, was literally filled with coins, hair-pins, fibulæ, broken pottery and glass, bones of birds and animals which had been eaten, and a variety of other such objects.

To the east of the entrance to the hypocausts, a small room only eight feet square was found, which p. 40had a herring-bone pavement like that of the great inclosure to the north of the Old Wall.  A rather wide passage through the eastern wall of this small room led into another room with a hypocaust, the floor of which is also gone.  The pillars of this hypocaust were rather more neatly constructed, but they seem to have been considerably lower than those of the hypocausts previously opened.  This hypocaust was the scene of a very interesting discovery.  Abundant traces of burning in all parts of the site leave no doubt that the city of Uriconium was plundered, and afterwards burnt by some of the barbarian invaders of Roman Britain at the close of the Romano-British period, that is, towards the middle of the fifth century.  The human remains which have been met with in different parts, bear testimony to a frightful massacre of the inhabitants.  It would seem that a number of persons had been pursued to the buildings immediately to the south of the line of the Old Wall, and slaughtered there; for in trenching across what were perhaps open courts to the south and south-east of the door through the continuation of the Old Wall, remains of at least four or five skeletons were found, and in what appears to have been a corner of a yard, outside the semicircular end of the hypocaust first discovered, lay the skull and some of the bones of a very young child.  In the last of the hypocausts we have been describing, p. 41three skeletons were found, that of a person who appears to have died in a crouching position in one of the corners, and two others stretched on the ground by the side of the wall.  An examination of the skull of the person in the corner leaves no room for doubting that he was a very old man.  One at least of the others was a female.  Near the old man lay a little heap of Roman coins, in such a manner as to show that they must have been contained in a confined receptacle, and a number of small iron nails scattered among them, with traces of decomposed wood, prove that this was a little box, or coffer.  The remains of the wood are still attached to two or three of the coins.  We are justified from all these circumstances in concluding that, in the midst of the massacre of Roman Uriconium, these three persons—perhaps an old man and two terrified women—had sought to conceal themselves by creeping into the hypocaust; and perhaps they were suffocated there, or, when the house was delivered to the flames, the falling rubbish may have blocked up the outlet so as to make it impossible for them to escape.  It is not likely that they would have been followed into such a place as this hypocaust.  These coins were 132 in number, and the following description of them has been given by Mr. C. Roach Smith:—

This is, I believe, the first instance which has occurred in this country, in which we have had the opportunity of ascertaining what particular coins, as being then in daily circulation, an inhabitant of a Roman town in Britain, at the moment when the Roman domination in this country was expiring, carried about with him.  Mr. Roach Smith, speaking p. 44of the great majority of these coins, these of the Constantine family, remarks to me—“I suspect these coins were sent into Britain even after the time of Valens, because they are all comparatively sharp and fresh.  It is not improbable that the procurators at Treves and at Lugdunum may have had large stores of these coins by them, which they sent out at intervals.”  A consideration of these coins gives us an approximation, at least, towards the date at which Uriconium must have been destroyed; Mr. Roach Smith agrees in the opinion that a comparison of them points to the very latest period previous to the establishment of the Anglo-Saxons.  At a later period the freshly struck coins of the Constantine family could not have been brought over.  They shew us that at that time the great mass of the circulating medium consisted of coins of the Constantine family, which again explains to us why the first coinage of the Anglo-Saxons was nearly all copied from the coins of the emperors of that family.  Again, the care with which these small copper coins (for only one is of plated silver) seem to have been hoarded up, and the anxiety of their possessors to preserve them in the midst of a frightful calamity, may perhaps assist us in forming an estimate of the relative value of money at this period.

The rooms which joined up to the south side of the Old Wall, and which have been more recently p. 45uncovered, were five in number, and it appears from the remains, which are distinctly visible on the face of the Old Wall, that they had vaulted roofs of the kind technically called barrel roofs.  In one of these rooms was found a quantity of burnt wheat, which would lead us to suppose that this might have been a store room.  The most easterly of these rooms has had the interior surface of its walls ornamented with tessellated work instead of fresco-painting; the lower edge of which, consisting of a guilloche border, still remains.  The floor below has a plain pavement of small white tessellæ, and is apparently that of a bath.  To the south of these rooms a long passage was discovered, which appears to have communicated at one end with the floor of the room in the hypocaust of which the skeletons were found.  In this passage was a square pit of very good masonry, through which a drain runs, nearly north and south.  The stucco of the southern face of the wall, forming the southern side of the passage just alluded to, presented an inscription scrawled in large straggling characters incised with some sharp pointed instrument, and closely resembling in character similar inscriptions which have been found on walls in Pompeii.  When first uncovered, two lines of this inscription, perhaps the whole of it, seemed to have been perfectly well p. 46preserved, but before anybody had had the opportunity of examining it, two casual visitors, with walking sticks, amused themselves with breaking off the plaster, in order apparently to try its strength, and were not observed by the workmen until the first line had been completely destroyed, and the second, which had been a shorter one, was very much broken into, though just enough remained to show that it must have been written in Latin.  Even this small remnant was nearly destroyed during the interruption of the excavations, and not a trace of it can now be seen.  Thus all the advantages of a discovery which might have been singularly important for our knowledge of the state of Britain at this period, have been lost through mischievous wantonness.

During the month of May, 1859, the work of the excavators was interrupted; when it was resumed, they proceeded to explore the building to which these hypocausts belonged, beginning from the side of the field adjoining to the Watling Street Road,—that is, from the side of one of the main streets of the old Roman town,—and they found walls in the line, or nearly in the line, of the western wall of the great public building just described.  Another street has since been discovered to the south, running east and west, parallel to that met with to the north of the buildings first excavated.  The excavations have since p. 47that time been followed in various parts of the two acres first inclosed by the Excavation Committee, and a large extent of ruins is now laid open.  But I will here interrupt my narrative, while I give an account of the general character of the buildings, the ruins of which have already been brought to light.

As yet, the excavations on the site of Uriconium have not been carried far enough to enable us to form any idea of the general distribution of the Roman town, but it is evident that the buildings on which the excavators are employed were inclosed by three main streets, crossing at right angles, forming a square mass.  It has been stated that the few discoveries hitherto made as to the character of the streets in the Roman towns in Britain would lead us to think that they were little more than narrow alleys, but this was certainly not the case with these three streets of Roman Uriconium, which seem to have been fine wide streets, and in the one to the north, the pavement of small round stones appears to have occupied only the middle part of the street, designed probably for carriages and horses.  A tolerably wide space on each side seems, as far as can be traced, to have been p. 48unpaved.  But, although we have as yet made little advance towards discovering the general character of Uriconium as a city, and the manner in which the houses were distributed over the Roman town, we had found sufficient fragments of different kinds to give us a tolerable notion of the houses themselves.

The average thickness of the walls of a house, even where they only separated one small room from another, was three feet.  They are rarely less than this, and it is only in one or two cases of what appeared to be very important walls that they exceed it, when they reach the thickness of four feet.  This measure of three feet was no doubt a well understood one for the wall of a house, and it was continued in the middle ages, when, in ordinary dwellings, only the division walls between house and house were of solid masonry.  Municipal regulations then fixed these partition walls at a minimum of three feet in thickness, the cause of which limitation was probably the fear of fires; and in these mediæval municipal regulations, it was further ordered, that closets or cupboards in the wall should in no case be made more than one foot deep, so that if your own cupboard and your neighbour’s happened to back each other, there would still be a foot of solid masonry between the two houses.  And p. 49the masonry of the Romans may well be called solid.  Its character may be seen perhaps to most advantage in the Old Wall above ground.  The process of building seems to have been to raise first, gradually, the facings of neatly-squared stones, supported no doubt between frames of woodwork, the supports of which left holes which are still seen in the face of the wall.  The interior was then filled up with rubble mixed with liquid and apparently hot cement, which formed the mass of the wall, and in setting has become in course of time harder than the stones themselves.  After a certain number of rows of facing-stones, the Roman builders almost invariably placed a string-course of broad thin bricks, the object of which is not at all evident, for they do not go through the wall so as to form real bonding-courses.  The Old Wall still standing in probably nearly its original height, will also give us a notion of the elevation of the principal houses of the Roman towns.

In spite, however, of this rather considerable elevation, which, reckoning for dilapidation at the top and the portion buried under ground, cannot have been much less than thirty feet, it seems nearly certain that the Roman houses in Britain had no upper stories, and that all the rooms were on the ground floor.  No traces of a staircase have ever been found, p. 50and all the fragments which are met with, indicate that the rooms were open to the roof.  These roofs appear to have been of substantial construction, and were probably supported on a strong frame of woodwork.  The common coverings of the Roman houses of this island consisted of large square tiles with strongly flanged edges, and these tiles being joined side to side, a curved tile forming the half of a cylinder was placed over the flanges of the two tiles which joined, thus holding them together, and at the same time protecting the juncture so that rain could not pass through it.  These tiles, and the manner in which they were arranged, will be understood by our figures, (pl. IV., figs. 1, 2, 3).  The Roman houses were also very commonly roofed with slates, or rather flags, and this appears to have been the more usual description of roofing in Uriconium.  These roof-flags are found scattered about abundantly on the floors, sometimes unbroken.  They are formed of a micaceous laminated sandstone, which is found on the edge of the north Staffordshire and Shropshire coalfield, at no great distance from Wroxeter, and must have produced a glittering appearance in the sunshine.  Their form is represented in our cut, (pl. IV., fig. 5); it was that of an elongated hexagon, with a hole at one end, through which an iron nail was passed to fix it to the wooden frame-work.  The nail is often found still remaining in the hole.  These flags, p. 51which are very thick and heavy, were placed to lap over each other, and thus formed a roof in lozenges or diamonds, as represented in fig. 6.  Slates forming one half of the hexagon (fig. 4), were placed at the top of the roof, so as to make a strictly horizontal line.  It is a curious circumstance, that in the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts we find roofs of houses which evidently represent both these methods, and which appear, therefore, to have been continued long after the Roman period.  In fact they are still used in Yorkshire, and perhaps in other counties, and have been used very recently on the Welsh border.  In the towns which were the head-quarters of a legion, as at Caerleon, Chester, and York, or which had been occupied for some length of time by legionary detachments, we often find the name and number of the legion stamped on the roof-tiles.  These roof-tiles were frequently used for other purposes.  They are sometimes employed in the string-courses in walls, when the builders appear to have run short of the ordinary square tiles or flat bricks; and they are still more frequently used to form the beds of drains and aqueducts, when the flanged edges were turned up and, set in the cement, formed the side of the water-course.  A very good example of this use of the roof-tiles may be seen in the drain at Wroxeter mentioned above.

p. 52Internally, the walls of the Roman houses were covered with fine hard cement, which was painted in fresco, that is, the colours were laid on the cement while it was wet, and they thus set with it, and became almost imperishable.  In some of the houses in Roman Britain, and especially in the large villas, the internal walls were covered with fine historical subjects as in the walls at Pompeii, and sufficient remains have been found in this island to show that they were here also executed in no mean style of art.  Nothing of this kind has yet been discovered in Uriconium; but numerous fragments are picked up in the diggings, on which the colouring is perfectly fresh, and which exhibit portions of designs which are always elegant and in good taste.  In one case a piece of the stucco from the internal surface of a wall contained some letters of an inscription.  One of the walls near the hypocaust where the three skeletons were found presented a singular and rather laborious method of ornamenting its interior surface.  Instead of being painted, it was tessellated, the surface being covered with tessellæ, one half of an inch by three-fifths in dimension, set in the cement, alternately of dark and light colours, in horizontal lines, so as to produce somewhat the appearance of chequer-work.  Perhaps, when entire, it presented an ornamental pattern.  I have already stated that a similarly tessellated wall p. 53was found in the easternmost part of this line of rooms.  Circumstances have come to light which show that the exterior of the walls of houses were also plastered and painted.  The exterior of the semicircular end of the largest hypocaust yet opened was thus plastered over, and painted red with stripes of yellow.

It is worthy of remark that in the walls, to the certainly not very great elevation they now generally reach, few doorways are discovered, a circumstance which is by no means easily explained.  Small rooms are found without any apparent means of access.  Perhaps, in such cases, the doorway was at a certain elevation in the wall, and was approached on both sides by wooden steps, which have long perished, and left no traces of the means of entrance.  Of course none of the walls of the houses remain sufficiently high to enable us to judge of the manner in which light was admitted into the rooms, whether from side windows, or from openings in the roof.  Probability, however, is in favour of roof-windows being in common use, and an interesting circumstance connected with the excavations at Wroxeter seems decisive as to the material of the windows.  Considerable quantities of fine window glass have been found scattered over the floors of the houses, of an average thickness of full one-eighth of an inch, which have been duly deposited in the Museum at Shrewsbury.  p. 54It is the more curious as it has been the common opinion, until recently, that the Romans, especially in this distant province, did not use window-glass; and the fragments of window-glass which have been found more recently in the excavations on the sites of Roman villas have been much thinner than that found at Wroxeter, and of very inferior quality.  It is evident, that some of the rooms, all the walls of which were only walls of separation from other rooms, must have received light from above, or have been quite dark.

I must now describe a peculiar characteristic of the domestic economy of a Roman house in Britain, and in the other western and northern provinces of the empire.  The Romans did not warm their apartments by fire lighted in them, as was the case in the middle ages, and in modern times, but by hot air circulated in the walls.  The floor of the house, formed of a considerable thickness of cement, was laid upon a number of short pillars, formed usually of square Roman tiles placed one upon another, and from two to three feet high.  Those of the largest of the hypocausts yet found at Wroxeter were rather more than three feet high.  Sometimes these supports were of stone, and in one or two cases in discoveries made in this country, they were round.  They were placed near to each other, and in rows, and upon them were lain first larger tiles, and over these a p. 55thick mass of cement, which formed the floor, and upon the surface of which the tessellated pavements were set.  Sometimes small parallel walls, forming flues instead of rows of columns, supported the floors, of which an example has already been found in the excavations at Wroxeter.  Flue-tiles,—that is, square tubes made of baked clay, with a hole on one side, or sometimes on two sides,—were placed against the walls end-ways, one upon another, so as to run up the walls.  These arrangements,—which were called hypocausts, from two Greek words, signifying heat underneath, and were used in Italy and Greece chiefly for warming baths, are represented in plate IV., fig. 7, where AA is the floor of cement, BB the pillars supporting it, and CC the flue-tiles running up the wall of the room.  They had an entrance from the outside, somewhat like the mouth of an oven, and fires being lighted here, the hot air was driven inward, and not only filled the space under the floor, but entered the flue-tiles by the holes in the sides, was carried by them up the inside of the wall, and no doubt had some way of escape at the roof.  The ashes and soot of the fires have been found in the hypocausts at Uriconium, just as they were left when the city was overthrown and ruined by the barbarians.  The ashes are chiefly those of wood, but considerable remains of mineral coal have been discovered.  These hypocausts must sometimes have p. 56become clogged and out of order, and it would be necessary to cleanse them, as people in aftertimes cleansed chimneys.  A sort of alley across the middle of the large hypocaust last-mentioned was probably intended for this purpose.  It communicated with another hypocaust adjoining it to the north by a doorway, and this other hypocaust was entered by a rather large archway at the foot of the steps already mentioned.  People appear to have been sometimes satisfied with having the hot air merely under the floor, and the flue-tiles were not always used.  Comparatively few of them, indeed, have been yet found in the hypocausts of Uriconium.

The requirements of agriculture have rendered it necessary to cover up again all the excavations to the north of the Old Wall, and the walls of the great public building at the corner of the two streets can no longer be seen by the visitor.  A piece of ground, however, immediately to the south of the Old Wall has been taken by the Excavation Committee at Shrewsbury upon a rent, and in this piece of ground the excavations are now carried on.  It forms a parallelogram, 319 feet long, by 279 feet wide, containing an area of exactly two acres, including p. 57the Old Wall at its northern edge.  This piece of ground has been strongly fenced round with hurdles, and it is entered by a gate from the Watling Street Road.  By the liberality of the Excavation Committee the public are admitted to this inclosure freely, and it is to be hoped that the visitors will acknowledge this liberality by carefully abstaining from committing any injury on the Roman remains, or by walking upon or entering into the parts in the course of excavation.

The plan annexed (pl. 5) of the excavations now in progress will enable me to explain them to the visitor.  The darkly-shaded mass a a represents the Old Wall, or portion of Roman masonry standing above ground; to the north of which lay the extensive building formed by the walls b b, c c, d d, running parallel to the Old Wall.  The wall d d, bordered upon a wide street.  To the east of these walls lay an inclosure, e, perhaps a court-yard, and a large space, f, which has been conjectured to have been a garden, but which has been very imperfectly explored.  All these remains have been explained above; they have been buried again, and the ground is now covered with crops.  The Old Wall, which stands just within the north-eastern corner of the space separated from the rest of the field by a fence of hurdles, now forms the northern boundary of the excavations.

p. 58The visitor is introduced into this space by a gateway from the road, nearly at its north-western corner.  Opposite this gateway he will see an apartment, which the excavators are now in the course of exploring.  It is nearly a square, and is about thirty-four feet in its longest dimension.  The side towards the street seems to have been open, or at least the masonry of the wall presents the appearance of having had wide folding doors, or a framework of wood of some kind in two compartments 6, 6.  In the centre of the room is a large pier of masonry (1), perhaps a table for workmen.  More towards the north-western corner, a sort of furnace or forge (2) was found, built of red clay, with a hole or cavity in the upper part sufficiently large for a man to thrust his head in.  As the surface of the cavity, internally, is completely vitrified, and as there was much charcoal strewed about, there can be no doubt that the cavity had been occupied by a very fierce fire.  A low wall has been traced, running across the room east and west in a line with this furnace; and two transverse low walls of similar character.  Upon the low wall a little behind the forge (at 3), the excavators came upon what was supposed to be the lower part of a column with its base; but it is formed roughly, and I think it more probable that it was a stone table for the use of the workman at the furnace.  It was at first supposed that this might belong to a colonnade running along the wall; but no trace of such a colonnade p. 59has been found, although a large piece of a shaft of a column lies in the middle of the room.  This column, however, is of larger dimensions than the supposed base (3).  Had such a colonnade existed, it seems so little in accordance with the existence of a forge, that we might be led to suspect that the room had, at some late period, been diverted from its original purpose, and occupied by a worker in metals, or even in glass, as fine specimens of glass were found scattered about, and also many fragments of metal.  But objects of all kinds seem to have been thrown about in such a manner, when the town was plundered, that it would be unsafe to argue upon the purpose of any particular building, merely from moveable articles found in it.  Among other things found in this room were nearly a dozen hair-pins, two of which were much more ornamental than any we had found before; a much greater quantity of fragments of Samian ware, and of higher artistic merit, than had previously been met with in one spot; a portion of a large bronze fibula; a number of coins, and other things.  One of the vessels of Samian ware is a fine bowl, with figures in high relief, representing a stag-hunt.  Upon the low wall of the sill (6) a number of copper Roman coins (about sixty) were found together; and near them the fragment of a small earthen vessel, in which probably they had been carried by some one who dropped them here as he was hurrying out of the place.  Turning from the gate of the field to the right, or south, p. 60along the inside of the hedge, the visitor will come to a portion of uncovered wall, h h, running north and south, upwards of eighty feet, in which there are two entrance gateways, i, p.  The first of these is about twelve feet wide, and was approached by a sort of inclined plane, formed of three large squared masses of stone, each about four feet square by eleven inches in thickness.  The other entrance which was only five feet wide, was approached by two steps, each similarly formed of one mass of stone; of which the lower step is worn very much at its south-west corner, in a manner to lead us to believe that the great majority of the people who passed through this entrance came up the street from the south.  The upper step, or stone, is so much worn by the feet of those who passed over it, that it broke into three pieces under the workmen’s picks.  On one side of it there is a deep hollow, representing nearly the form of a small human foot, which seems to have been scooped into the stone for some purpose with which we are not acquainted.  These two entrances lead into one square court, the floor of which, proved by the steps and inclined plane to have been on a higher level than the street without, was paved with small bricks laid in herring-bone work, like the great inclosure to the north of the Old Wall.  It is found to have been much damaged and mended in ancient times, which seems to countenance the supposition p. 61that the wide entrance and the inclined plane by which it was approached were intended for horses and perhaps for carts or for heavy barrows.  Among the objects found in excavating here was a portion of a horse-shoe.  On each side of this court a row of chambers is found, m m m, four on the north side and four on the south, from ten to twelve feet square.  The westernmost of these chambers, on the north side of the court, has been cleared out, and was found to be ten feet deep, with a low transverse wall at the bottom, the object of which is at present quite inexplicable.  A quantity of charcoal was found in this room, as though it had been a store-room for that article.  One of the other rooms, on each side of the court, seemed to have been a receptacle for bones, horns, &c.; and as some of these had evidently been sawn and cut, and others partly turned on a lathe, they suggested the idea of having belonged to manufacturers of the various objects made of this material which are found so commonly in the course of the excavations.  They may, therefore, have been the magazines of manufacturers and tradesmen, a notion which is somewhat confirmed by the circumstance of several weights of different sizes having been found in this part of the excavations; or they may have been mere depots for the stores and refuse of a large mansion or other establishment.  These rooms are, perhaps, all deep p. 62like the one already cleared out, but it is remarkable that, as high as the walls remain, that is, about two feet above the floor of the court, there is no trace of entrances to them, which must, therefore, have been rather high in the wall, and they were entered perhaps by a ladder.

The back part of this court consists of a long narrow inclosure, which is divided into compartments by four transverse walls proceeding from the western wall about halfway across the inclosure, thus leaving a passage along the eastern side.  These compartments have much the appearance of small shops or stalls for selling, and seem to confirm the notion that this building may have been a market-place.  The workmen, finding a doorway in the wall of the back of this inclosure, at n in the plan, a trench was carried through the ground to the eastward.  At about twelve feet from the opening at n, they came upon a wall at h, running parallel to the wall o o of the court, and beyond this they found first a narrow passage, and then a rise with a pavement of cement which extended some four or five feet, and then suddenly sank to a floor of large flag-stones, at a depth of upwards of four feet from the floor of cement.  This flagged floor, the position of which is marked by the letter q in the plan, was perhaps a reservoir of water; the bottom was found covered with black earth filled with broken pottery and other things, such as may p. 63easily have been supposed to have been thrown into a pond.  The water appears to have been only between two and three feet deep, as the floor on the opposite side runs about level with the ledge or step just mentioned, and is continued eastward until, at r, we come upon the rather massive walls of a building, the nature of which cannot be determined without further investigation.  At a short distance within this wall, at a depth of about three feet below the cement floor, we find a floor at s, about ten feet wide by thirty long, formed of flat Roman tiles, twelve inches by eighteen inches square.  This floor has been uncovered, and as there was an indentation in the middle which seemed to indicate that it was hollow underneath, a hole was made there, but it led to no discovery.  This seems also to have been a tank of water, perhaps a cold water bath.  The cement floor was continued easterly until it was terminated by a wall, t, which ran at right angles to the eastern end of the Old Wall, and appears to be the eastern termination of the buildings now in course of exploration.  The earth and rubbish from the excavations have been here thrown into a great mound, from the top of which the visitor can enjoy a bird’s eye view of the excavations.  A few yards to the north, he will come to the important line of excavations nearer to the Old Wall.  A small chamber, about eight feet square, with a herring-bone pavement in very good p. 64preservation, projects beyond the line of this eastern wall at u in our plan.  To the west of this is a small hypocaust v, the floor of which has been a little lower than that of the room u.  In this hypocaust were found the remains of two skeletons, one of which was that of a young person.  The northern wall of the room v is particularly interesting, because in its whole height of full nine feet, it presents the remains of the lines of flue-tiles which ran up it, hardly an inch apart, and which show that this room must have been intended to be very much heated.  It was, perhaps, a sudatorium or sweating room.  The opening from u to v occupies nearly the whole width of the former room, and was perhaps closed by a wooden door.  On the western side of the hypocaust, at w, the wall has a sort of basement, formed of large stones scooped out in a singular manner, the object of which is by no means evident.  We here come upon a series of passages, x, to the north of which were four rooms, z z z z, extending to the Old Wall.  On the face of the Old Wall, we can distinctly trace the springing not only of the walls of division, the lower parts of which are found underground, but of the vaulting, from which it appears that these rooms had what are technically called barrel-roofs of masonry.  They were slightly explored at the beginning of the excavations, and in one of them was found a quantity of burnt wheat, as though it had been a store-room.

p. 65In the passages alluded to, there is at y, a square pit, somewhat like what might be a cess-pool, of very good and substantial masonry, at the bottom of which runs north and south a very well formed drain, the bed of which is formed of large roof-tiles.  To the south of this is a hypocaust, A, which differs from the other hypocausts yet opened in being partly formed of low parallel walls instead of rows of pillars.  On the wall of the passage leading to this hypocaust from the east was found the inscription mentioned at page 45.  Westward from the hypocaust A, but without any apparent communication between them, was another hypocaust, B, which had been constructed in the usual manner, the floor supported by rows of low columns formed of square thin bricks.  It was in this hypocaust that the three skeletons mentioned before (p. 41,) were found, the man who possessed the money crouching in the north-west corner, and the two persons supposed to be women, extended along the side of the northern wall.  The opening into this hypocaust was through its southern wall, from the interior court, so that the fugitives must have crept along the whole length of the hypocaust to reach their place of concealment.  The part of this interior court, immediately adjacent to this hypocaust, which has been excavated to some extent, presents several interesting features.  A breach in the eastern boundary wall had been newly repaired with much inferior p. 66masonry at the time when the city of Uriconium was taken and destroyed; and it is a curious circumstance that some large pieces of stone lie here on the floor of the court, unfinished by the masons, as though repairs and alterations in the buildings were going on at the very moment of the final catastrophe.  Adjoining to this hypocaust, at its north-west corner, is a square room, c, with the herring-bone pavement, exactly like that at u in character and dimensions, which had opened into the room above the hypocaust B, much in the same manner as u opened in the room v.  Separated from this room by a wall, but apparently without any communication with it, is an interesting staircase D, leading down, to the entrance to a larger and apparently more important series of hypocausts.  This staircase descended from a square room, about the same size as the room C, which had a smooth pavement of cement.  It is composed of three steps each formed of a large squared stone.  A part of the space at the bottom, the north-eastern corner, appears to have been used by the later Roman inhabitants of this building as a receptacle for the sweeping of the floors, and when it was first opened the earth, to the height of about sixteen or eighteen inches from the floor, was filled with all kinds of objects, such as coins, hair-pins, fibulæ, needles in bone, nails, various articles in iron, bronze, and lead, glass, broken pottery, bones of edible animals and p. 67birds, stags’ horns, tusks and hoofs of wild boars, oyster shells, in one of which lay the shell of a large nut, &c.  A large shaft of a column lay across the steps.  The Roman masonry here is very good.  To the right hand, towards the south, a rather large arch, turned in Roman bricks, led into the hypocaust E, a doorway in the southern wall of which formed the communication between this hypocaust and the still larger hypocaust F.  The latter had supported what must have been a handsome room, which was about fifty feet long, including the semicircular northern end, by thirty-five feet in breadth.  When first opened, this hypocaust was in a state of preservation in which such buildings are seldom found in this country.  A hundred and twenty columns of bricks were counted, most of them at their original height of rather more than three feet.  At the north-eastern corner, the columns supported a small portion of the floor in its original position.  It is a mass of cement, eight inches thick, with the upper surface, which no doubt had formed the floor, perfectly smooth.  During the time that the Excavation Committee were excluded from the field, all the pillars of this interesting hypocaust were thrown to the ground, and a great part of the bricks which formed the supporting columns were broken to pieces—even the piece of the floor and its supports at the north-east corner were overthrown.  A very exact drawing of the p. 68latter, however, had been preserved, which served as a pattern for restoring it; and it is to the ingenuity and labour of Dr. Henry Johnson that the public owes the restoration of this hypocaust as far as it was possible to restore it.

Returning to the steps by which these hypocausts were entered, at D, the floor from which we descended appears to have an opening of some kind to the west, which looked down upon a court outside the semicircular end of the hypocaust F, which from this point presents to the view an imposing mass of masonry.  In the corner just under this opening the remains of a very young child were found, which we might almost imagine to have been slaughtered in the room above, and thrown out into the court.  This court, or open space, seems to have been continued to the wall a a, and to have been entered by a doorway in that wall at g, which was approached from the passage to the north by a step formed by a large squared stone.  On the outside of the semicircular end of the hypocaust F, lay, as if it had fallen or been thrown down, an immense stone, carefully worked into the shape of the arc of a circle, and no doubt forming one of a course at some unknown elevation in the wall.  On the outward side of it, a large iron pin was soldered into it with lead, evidently for the purpose of attaching some weighty object on the outer side of the building.

p. 69Another step and doorway in the wall a a was found at h, which must have been much more frequented than the other, for the stone which formed the step was worn in an extraordinary degree by the rubbing of footsteps.  It led to an inclosure P, which presents the appearance of having formed public latrinæ; and which is separated by a long narrow inclosure from the room already described as apparently the shop of a worker in metals.

Such is a brief and general description of the ruins of Uriconium, at present open to the visitor.  The real character of the buildings we have been describing appeared for a while very doubtful.  The first discoveries led to the belief that it was a great mansion, perhaps the principal mansion in the Roman city, the residence of the chief municipal officer; but in this case we might have expected to find some very fine Mosaic or tessellated pavement, specimens of which had been met with in other parts of the area of the town.  On the contrary, all the floors yet discovered to the south of the Old Wall, with the exception of those of herring-bone brickwork, and that of a supposed bath, seemed to have been of mere smoothed cement.  This led us to suppose that we were still exploring buildings erected for some public purpose.  A comparison of the character of these various buildings leaves no room for doubting that they belonged to the public baths of Uriconium; and further p. 70excavations to the south and west shewed that they formed an extensive square (k, k, k, k), the northern side of which was formed by the Old Wall and its continuation westward; and the southern side of which bordered upon the other street running east and west, the pavement of which, similar to that of the street at l, has been uncovered in its whole extent along the line, L L.  The western and southern sides of the square were formed by a wide gallery or cloister (k, k, k), no doubt the ambulatory, which was considered as an important part of the public baths of the Romans.  The ground to the eastward, in which no buildings could be traced, may have been gardens, which were also usually attached to the baths of the Romans.

Having once decided that the building we have thus explored, is the public baths, another equally interesting question arises out of it.  The public baths of the Roman towns in Britain are not unfrequently mentioned in inscriptions commemorating the repairing or rebuilding of them; but it is a circumstance of some importance that this building is combined with the basilica, or town hall.  Both seem to have participated in the same accidents, and to have undergone decay together.  Thus an inscription found at Lanchester in Cumberland (supposed to be the Roman town of Epiacum) speaks of the baths and basilica (BALNEVM CVM BASILICA); and at Ribchester, in Lancashire, the baths and basilica (BALINEVM ET BASILICAM) p. 71were rebuilt after having fallen into ruin through age.  We are therefore, I think, justified in concluding that the two great public buildings, the baths and the basilica, usually joined each other; and I think we may venture further to assume that the large building to the north of the Old Wall, the remains of which are now covered up, was the basilica of Uriconium.  The proportions of this building are rather extraordinary, and cannot be easily explained; but it is probable that in a provincial town the basilica served a variety of purposes.  An inscription found at Netherby in Cumberland, speaks of a basilica for practice in riding (BASILICAM EQVESTREM EXERCITATORIAM.)

We may now proceed a little further in identifying the topography of the ancient town.  The line of the buildings we have traced parallel to the Watling Street Road is at some distance within the hedge of the field; and I believe that, when the farm buildings were erected on the opposite side of the road, what appeared to be the front of buildings facing the opposite direction, were found likewise at some distance within the field.  This, with the road, would make a very wide space; very much wider than either of the two transverse streets.  Moreover, a glance at the plan will shew that, beyond the transverse street to the south, this wide space became considerably narrowed; and in fact it seems to have been reduced to the width of an ordinary street.  It is my belief that this wide p. 72space was the forum of Uriconium; and in that case it is rather remarkable that the basilica held here exactly the same place, in regard to the forum, as at Pompeii.

We have thus already brought to light a very interesting portion of the ancient Roman town, and have learnt something more than we knew before of the character and economy of the Roman towns in Britain.  The basilica, as we have seen, came up to the front of the street, and formed the side of a transverse street; but this was not the case with the baths, for a space of some width between them and the forum was occupied by other buildings, which I have already described.

Other apartments surrounding the metal-worker’s shop are in course of exploration, and will, I think, make us better acquainted with the character of the whole of this line of buildings which looked upon the open space which I have supposed to be the forum.  I have already said that this open space contracts to the south of the transverse street L L, in what has been no more than the breadth of an ordinary street, which ran down towards the river.  A gutter, very well made, of carefully squared stones, and remarkably well preserved, runs near the houses on the eastern side of the street; the only side which at present can be explored, as it is near the hedge of the Watling Street Road.  It runs very near the walls of the houses, is a foot wide, and about a foot deep, and from place to place square p. 73stones are laid in lozenge-fashion, apparently intended for stepping stones, but they must have stopped the current of water down the channel.  The buildings at this corner consist of small rooms, and were probably private houses.  The existence of walls running parallel and transverse to the street L L has been ascertained along the whole length of its southern side; but they have not yet been sufficiently explored even to be laid down in the plan.

The objects of antiquity found in the course of the excavations have been so often alluded to, that the visitor will no doubt expect at least a brief and general description of them.  I have already described those which illustrate the building and construction of a house, and we naturally continue the description by turning to those articles which belong especially to domestic life.  Of this class, the most numerous division, and that which strikes us first, is the pottery,—of which certainly the most remarkable to the general observer is the ware resembling in colour and general appearance bright red sealing wax, known commonly as Samian ware, a name the propriety of which has been disputed.  The Roman writers speak of an earthenware much used at table, p. 74and said to have received its name from having been originally made at Samos.  It is described as being of a red colour, as being of more value than the common pottery, and as being proverbial for its brittleness, all which characteristics belonged to the red ware found in this country, which was covered with tasteful subjects of all kinds in relief, and was evidently much valued, as we often find vessels in this ware which had been carefully mended, and the brittleness of which was such that we seldom find a specimen unbroken.  Such mendings, chiefly by means of metal rivets, are exhibited in specimens of Samian ware found in the excavations at Wroxeter, and deposited in the Museum at Shrewsbury, where there are also several pieces of this pottery, presenting subjects which are interesting and by no means of common occurrence.  It may be further observed that the Samian ware in this country resembles a Roman ware of which the potteries have been found at Aretium, the modern Arezzo, in Tuscany, but this ware was much superior, especially in the degree of artistic talent displayed in its ornamentation, to that which was in use in this island, and which no doubt was imported from Gaul, where, especially on the banks of the Rhine, the potteries in which it was made have been found.

Extensive potteries have also been found in this island, especially at Castor, in Northamptonshire, p. 75where there was a Roman town named Durobrivæ, and on the banks of the Medway, at Upchurch, in Kent.  The ware from both these potteries is of a blue or slate colour, produced by imperfect firing in what is called a smother-kiln; that is, the air being excluded and the heat being insufficient thoroughly to bake the pottery, it retains so much carbonaceous matter as to give it a black colour.  The pottery of these two establishments is distinguished by the difference of shapes.  The ornamentation of the Upchurch ware is in general of a very simple character; that of the pottery from Castor is much more elaborate, and often consists of hunting scenes and other subjects, laid on in a white substance after the pottery had been baked.  Specimens of both these wares are found at Wroxeter.

The excavations at Wroxeter have brought to light at least two new classes of Roman pottery, both evidently made in Shropshire.  The first is a white ware, made of what is known as the Broseley clay, and consisting chiefly of very elegantly formed jugs, with narrow necks; mortaria, or vessels for rubbing or pounding objects in cookery, the interior surface of which is covered with grains of hard stone; and bowls, which are often painted with stripes of red and yellow.  The other Romano-Salopian pottery is a red ware, differing in shade from the red Roman wares usually found, and also made from one of the p. 76clays of the Severn valley.  Among the vessels in this ware are bowls pierced all over with small holes, so as to have served the purpose of colanders.  We find also some very curious specimens of an imitation of the Samian ware; but we have as yet no means of ascertaining where it was made.

Many very interesting fragments of glass vessels have also been found in the excavations at Wroxeter.  Two or three other objects intended for domestic purposes have been met with, such as a small bowl or cup made of lead, and what appears to have been the handle of some larger vessel, made of block tin, neither of which metals, used for such purpose, are of common occurrence among Roman remains in this country.  A ladle and several knives have also been found, and a handle of a knife made of stone, as well as several whet-stones.

Of personal ornaments the most numerous are the hair-pins, most of which are made of bone, though there are a few of bronze, and one of wood.  Their use was to hold together the knot into which the Roman women rolled up their hair behind the head, and through which the pin was thrust.  They are, on an average, about three inches long, with a large head rudely ornamented; and it will be remarked that the shank is thicker in the middle, and that it becomes generally thinner near the head, no doubt to prevent the pin from slipping out of the p. 77hair.  Some of these pins had evidently been saturated with an oily substance, which shews that the ladies in Roman Britain applied oil to their hair.  Several fibulæ of the common Roman forms, have been met with; they are all of bronze, of superior workmanship to the hair pins, and most of those hitherto found at Wroxeter are, or have been, enamelled.  Their use was to fasten the mantle and other parts of the clothing.  Among the personal ornaments found already in the excavations are a number of buttons, finger rings, bracelets, glass beads, and other objects, of which it is not necessary here to give a particular description.  Of two combs, both of bone, one is remarkably neat in its form and make.  Several bone needles may also be mentioned, and a pair of bronze tweezers for eradicating superfluous hairs.

Roman coins are found in considerable numbers, but many of them are so worn and defaced that it is no longer possible to decide to what emperor they belonged.  The earliest met with during the present excavations is of the emperor Domitian.  A great number are small coins of the Constantine family of emperors.  Only two silver coins have yet been found, the others are of bronze or brass.  The peasantry call them dinders, a name which, though it represents the Latin denarius, was no doubt derived from the Anglo-Norman denier.

Many objects of a more miscellaneous character p. 78have also been found during the present excavations; or have found their way into the Museum from former discoveries.  Among these are three artists’ pallettes, for using colour; several weights, some marked with Roman numerals; a steelyard; several keys; portions of iron chains; styli, for writing on wax tablets; an iron trident, which may perhaps have been the head of a staff of office or authority; one or two spear heads; a strigil for scraping the skin in the sweating baths; a portion of an iron horse-shoe; and two or three very nice statuettes in bronze.  The most curious, however, of these miscellaneous objects is a medicine stamp, intended to mark packets or bottles of what, in modern times, would be called patent medicines.  A certain number of these Roman medicine stamps have been found in Britain and on the Continent, and they are all, like this stamp found at Wroxeter, for salves or washes for the eyes, diseases of the eyes having been apparently very common among the inhabitants of the western provinces of the Roman empire.  The Wroxeter stamp, intended for a collyrium or salve for the eyes called dialebanum or dialibanum, gives us in all probability the name of a physician resident in Uriconium.  The inscription may be read as follows, filling up the abbreviations:—TIBerii CLaudii Medici DIALIBAnum AD OMNE VITium Oculorum EX Ovo, i.e., the dialebanum of Tiberius Claudius the p. 79physician, for all complaints of the eyes, to be used with egg.

A few stones, with Roman inscriptions, chiefly of a sepulchral character, have been dug up at Wroxeter in the course of accidental excavations.  Three of these were found in 1752, and are preserved in the library of Shrewsbury School.  The first inscription may be read thus:—

C. MANNIVS
C. F. POL . SECV
NDVS . POLLEN
MIL . LEG . XX
ANORV . LII
STIP . XXXI
BEN . LEG . PR
      H . S . E.

intimating that it marked the grave of a soldier of the twentieth legion (which was stationed at Chester, the Roman Deva) named Caius Mannius, of the Pollian tribe.  Another commemorated a soldier of the fourteenth legion, and has been supposed to belong to a very early period, as that legion was withdrawn from Britain before A.D. 68.  It was the legion which suffered so much in the war against Boadicea, and this soldier may perhaps have been engaged in that war, although his having died in Britain does not necessarily imply that the legion to which he had belonged was there at the time, or indeed that it had ever been there, unless we had some other p. 80reasons for supposing that it had been there.  His name was Marcus Petronius, the son of Lucius, of the Menenian tribe, and the inscription may be read as follows:—

M. PETRONIVS
L. F. MEN
VIC . ANN
XXXVIII
MIL. LEG
XIIII . GEM
MILITAVIT
ANN.  XVIII
SIGN . FVIT
   H . S . E.

The third of these inscribed monuments was divided into three columns or tables, commemorating three members of the family of a citizen of Uriconium, named Deuccus.  The inscription on the third column is entirely erased, but the two others may be read as follows:

Another sepulchral stone, also preserved in the Library of Shrewsbury School, was found in 1810, and bore an inscription commemorative of Tiberius Claudius Terentius, a soldier of the cohort of Thracian cavalry, which may be read as follows:—

TIB . CLAVD . TRE
NTIVS . EQ . COH
THRACVM . AN
ORVM . LVII. STIP
ENDIORVM
   H . S.

p. 81In the excavations on the site of the cemetery, in the autumn of 1862, a sepulchral stone was found, which had not improbably been placed over the door of a sepulchral chamber of masonry.  There had been a figure above, the lower part of the legs and feet of which alone remain.  The slab bears the following inscription, which from the damage the stone has sustained is very difficult to decipher, but I owe this reading to the knowledge and acuteness of my friend Mr. Roach Smith.  I may add that some of the letters are extremely doubtful

AMINIVS . T . POL . F . A
NORVMXXXXVSTIPXXII . MIL . LEG.
IIGEM . MILITAVITAQNVNC HIC SII
LEGITE . ET . FELICES . VITA . FLVS . MINV
IVSTAVINIERAQVATIEGIIIE . INTV
TANARA . DITIS . VIVITE . DVMSPI . . .
   VITAE . DAT . TEMPVS .  HONESTE.

It is clear, at a glance, that the latter part of this inscription contains three lines in hexameter verse; unfortunately they are the lines most rubbed and most difficult to make out.  Dr. Mc. Caul, president of the University of Toronto, in Canada, in his recent work on “Britanno-Romano Inscriptions,” suggests that they may be—

Perlegite et felices vitâ plus minus jutâ;
Omnibus æqua lege iter est ad Tænara Ditis.
Vivite, dum Stygius vitæ dat tempus, honeste.

The two last words of the first line are extremely doubtful, and I confess that I do not believe in p. 82Dr. Mc Caul’s reading, which, of course is but conjectural.  The second does not appear at all to answer to what remains of the original, with the exception of the last words Tænara Ditis.  But of the last line, Mr. Smith’s reading is much the best, and indeed appears to me to be the correct one,—

Vivite, dum spatium vitæ dat tempus, honeste.

The part preceding the verses may be read—

Aminius (perhaps Flaminius), Titi Pollioni Filius, annorum xxxxv., stipendiorum xxii, miles legionis vii geminæ.  Militavit aquilifer.  Nunc hic situs est.

It may be remarked that in many respects this is one of the most curious Roman inscriptions found in this island, and that it appears to be of rather an early date.

Another mere fragment of a stone, of the present existence of which I can learn nothing, is said to have contained the letters:—

LERT
FGAI
...TILES.

Lastly, a monument of stone, which, during the middle ages had been formed into a holy water stoop, and which is now in the vicarage garden, presents what has formed part of a Roman inscription—

BONA . REI
PVBLICÆ
NATVS.

It has probably been a dedication to one of the emperors, or an inscription commemorative of him.

p. 83It has been stated before, that the site of Uriconium is of very great extent.  If the visitor, after having examined the excavations, would seek an agreeable walk, he may turn off by the smith’s shop already mentioned, along the northerly continuation of the Watling Street Road, which soon becomes a deep and pretty country lane, and crosses the Bell Brook.  Soon afterwards, on the rise of a bank, we come to a spot where the ancient town wall crossed this road, and where there are said to be traces of one of the gateway entrances to Uriconium.  At the latter part of the year 1862, excavations were made in an adjoining field to trace the line of the town wall, which was found remaining to a height of three or four feet; but it was of very rough construction, built merely of small stone boulders mixed with clay, and had evidently been raised hurriedly, at a late period of the history of Uriconium, to meet some sudden emergency.  There had evidently been an entrance opening here, but there were no traces of gateway buildings, which were perhaps only of timber.  Outside the walls, on the bank to the right, was one of the principal cemeteries, and here the sepulchral inscriptions mentioned above were found.  Successful excavations were made in 1862 on the site of this p. 84cemetery, and many Roman graves were opened which furnished the Museum in Shrewsbury with another inscribed monument of great interest, a number of sepulchral urns and vessels of glass, and various other objects.

If, instead of going northward, the visitor follows the Watling Street Road towards the south, he will soon reach the village of Wroxeter, and may examine its church.  A new gate to the churchyard has recently been erected, and Mr. W. H. Oatley, of Wroxeter, who holds the office of churchwarden, has contributed a shaft of a Roman column, and two Roman capitals, which, together with another shaft given by the Rev. E. Egremont, are now placed on each side of this gateway.  The two capitals, which were dragged out of the river Severn, are worthy of particular attention.  They are singularly rich in ornament, and mark that late period of Roman architecture which became the model of the mediæval Byzantine and Romanesque.  I cannot help wishing that they were safely deposited in the Museum at Shrewsbury, and I think that the Roman columns would serve as well for gateway supports without the capitals, which probably did not belong to them.  The church of Wroxeter is a substantial Norman building, with later alterations, and on the outside of the southern wall of the chancel are the remains of a very interesting Norman doorway, which has been built up.

p. 85The chancel internally is chiefly remarkable for some fine monuments with effigies of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, interesting especially for their costume.  It has at present a low flat whitewashed ceiling, but there is a fine old timber roof above, and it is greatly to be regretted that the unsightly ceiling has not been removed, so that the chancel might again be open to its lofty roof of timber.  At the western end of the church is an early font, pl. 7, which has been formed of a very large Roman capital, taken from some important building in the city of Uriconium.  Such applications of Roman monuments to later ecclesiastical purposes are by no means uncommon.  In the garden of the vicarage, which adjoins the churchyard, are a few fragments of Roman architecture and sculpture, which have been carefully preserved by the present vicar, the Rev. E. Egremont.

Near the churchyard stands the residence of Mr. Oatley, who has also collected in his garden a few fragments from the ancient city and its neighbourhood.  Among these is a cylindrical stone, which at first sight might be taken for part of a column, but which appears, from a few remaining letters of an inscription, to have been more probably a Roman milliarium or mile-stone.  Mr. Oatley has placed a Roman capital on the top of it, and both are represented in pl. 6.  Several architectural fragments are p. 86also preserved in the garden of Mr. Stanier.  Two of the most interesting of these, belonging to the shaft of the same column, or to those of two similar columns are represented in pl. 15.

The Watling Street Road leads us direct from the gateway of the churchyard to the river Severn, which is here crossed at present by a ford.  On the right is a large rugged field overlooking the river, and occupied by Mr. Oatley, which has been trenched in several directions, but nothing was discovered except a Roman well, ten feet deep, which is kept open, and is now partly filled with clear spring water.  In an orchard at the corner of this field, near the road, were found a number of human skeletons, attended with some remarkable circumstances, for an account of which I refer the reader to Dr. Johnson’s remarks at the end of this little volume.  On the other side of the Watling Street Road, the ground rises to a little knoll, which looks down upon the river, and seems to have formed the southern corner of the inclosure of the city of Uriconium.  The top of this knoll has been carefully explored, and the walls of a square building, perhaps of a tower, were uncovered.  Among the objects found on this spot were a head sculptured in stone, and a mould for casting Roman coins, both of which are deposited in the Museum at Shrewsbury.  The impress on the coin-mould is that of a coin of Julia p. 87Domna, the wife of the emperor Severus, (the commencement of the third century); and it is rather a curious circumstance that a silver coin of this empress, which fits the impress exactly, has been found in the excavations near the Old Wall.  This method of multiplying the imperial coinage by casts seems to have been very common in these distant provinces, and was perhaps exercised by the imperial or municipal officers.  Another coin-mould, also with the impress of Julia Domna, was found at Wroxeter in 1747, and two, one of Severus himself, and the other of Plautilla, in 1722.

In conclusion, I may perhaps be allowed to make a remark on some of the various points on which the excavations on the site of Uriconium have already thrown more or less illustrative light during the short period in which they have as yet been carried on.  We see how, by examining their buildings and comparing the objects that are turned up by the pick and the spade, we get an insight into the condition of the inhabitants of Roman Britain, and learn to what degree they enjoyed the luxuries and comforts of life.  We see that they possessed a great majority p. 88of the refinements of modern society—far more than can be traced among the population of the middle ages.  We are taught even the character of their food by remains of edible animals.  The comparison of other objects enables us to judge to a great degree of the state and extent of manufactures and commerce.  We learn from inscriptions on their sepulchral monuments and altars the names and occupations of some of the inhabitants of the ancient town, and the races to which they belonged; and from this partial information we are enabled by induction to obtain a general view of the whole.  We are thus enabled to form a truer notion of the manner in which this country had been inhabited and governed during nearly four centuries; and we have the further hope of eventually discovering monuments which will throw some light on the more particular history of this neighbourhood in these remote ages.  We learn, finally, from the condition in which the ruins of Uriconium are now seen, and especially from the numerous remains of human beings which are found scattered over its long-deserted floors, the sad fate under which it finally sank into ruin, and thus we are made vividly acquainted with the character and events of a period of history which has hitherto been but dimly seen through the vague traditions of writers who at best knew them only by hearsay.

p. 89Catalogue of Wroxeter Antiquities in the Museum at Shrewsbury.

I.
OBJECTS CONNECTED WITH THE ARRANGEMENT AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE HOUSES AND OTHER BUILDINGS.

1.  Roofing flags, of micaceous sandstone, form generally hexagonal, with a hole for the nail.—See pl. IV., fig. 1.

2.  Tiles of various kinds:—small square tiles, flue-tiles, roof-tiles, &c.  Large oblong square tiles for bonding-courses in the walls, &c.  Square tiles for making the pillars in the hypocausts.

3.  Specimens of the concrete which covered the hypocaust, to the depth of eight inches or more, forming the floor of the apartment.

4.  Eight different specimens of the tessellated, or mosaic, pavement, taken up as it was found, and framed.

5.  Drawings of the same, made by Mr. George Maw, of Broseley, and presented by that gentleman to the Museum.

p. 906.  Sculpture in sandstone; a head of late Roman art, which appears to have formed part of the architectural ornamentation of a building.

7.  Bases, capitals, and shafts of columns.

8.  Stucco, covering the walls, coloured, plain, and with some formal patterns.  One specimen, bearing the letters A. R. C. A., having formed part of an inscription on the wall.  Tessellated ornamentation of the surface of a wall, dark and light tesseræ, so as to form an irregular pattern.

9.  Umbilicus, or hinge for a door.

10.  Iron bolts, shaped iron stancheons, and nails, for fixing roof and flue-tiles upon the walls.

11.  Many tiles bearing the impression of the foot of domestic or wild animals,—some of the dog; other, of the sheep, pig, horse, and ox.

II.
OBJECTS FOR DOMESTIC PURPOSES.

1.  Pottery:—

a.  Samian ware.

b.  Upchurch pottery.

c.  Durobrivian pottery.

d.  Romano-Salopian ware, made of clay obtained from Broseley.

e.  Pieces of red earthenware, probably made in Shropshire.

2.  Glass:—

a.  Fragments of flat or window glass.

p. 91b.  Portions of bottles, &c., generally coloured, some opalescent.

c.  Fragments of a cup, ornamented with spots of deep purple glass.

d.  One green glass bottle, 6½ inches high, with narrow neck, found in the cemetery, quite entire.

e.  A green glass jar, with wide mouth, about 5 inches high and 6 inches wide, also found in the cemetery.  It was full of soil, everywhere penetrated by roots of plants.

f.  Two metallic mirrors or specula, one in fragments, the other entire.  They are of white metal, a compound of tin and copper, with a large proportion of the former.—(Cemetery.)

g.  Three very pretty lamps.  One bears the figure of Hercules, another that of a dolphin, a third that of a boy kneeling.—(Cemetery.)

h.  A silver fibulæ.

3.  Bronze statuette of Venus and Mercury.

4.  A strigil, (fragment.)

5.  Part of an iron horse-shoe.  Iron bit of a bridle.  Iron spur.

6.  Two masks, one made of terra cotta, the other of pottery.

7.  Anomalous earthenware vessel.

III.
IMPLEMENTS AND UTENSILS.

1.  Weights: one in lead, 20¼oz.; another in stone, 11½oz.

p. 92Weight in lead, marked ii., weighs 2¼oz.; another also in lead, weighs 2½oz.

2.  Ladle; and neck of some vessel made of block tin.

3.  Several keys, of different forms.  Iron padlock.

4.  Large shackles, chains, &c., of iron.

5.  Knives, spear-heads, and portions of other weapons.  Two axe-heads.  Bone handle of a sword, very curious.

6.  Several whet-stones.  Stone handle to a knife.  Touchstone.

7.  Iron trident.

8.  Rings of iron, bronze, and lead.

9.  Styli of bronze and iron; bronze tweezers; bronze and iron spoons; steelyard.

10.  Small cup of lead; ditto of thin copper.

11.  Large plates of lead, purpose unknown.

12.  Cock made of lead, a child’s toy.

13.  Fragment of a lamp in red pottery.

14.  Three painters’ pallettes.

15.  A curious iron box—(ointment box?)

16.  Iron trowel.

17.  Bronze lancet (?)

IV.

PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.

1.  Hair pins, in great variety; more than 30 specimens p. 93have been found made usually of bone; with some of bronze, but these are much more slender.  Pl. 11.

2.  Bodkins or needles made of bone.

3.  Fibulæ, and buckles in great variety.

4.  Bracelets or armlets, and brooch.

5.  Bronze studs or buttons, some flat, and others very convex.

6.  Finger rings:—a. silver; b. yellow bronze; c. bronze, with iron wire; d. bronze, with open work on one side; e. fragment of one of wood; f. iron signet ring: device engraved upon a blue stone, a fawn coming out of a nautilus shell.

7.  Combs made of bone, one much ornamented.  Pl. 10, figs. 5, 6.

8.  Beads of glass of various sizes, some large to suspend round the neck, others to string together upon a thread.

9.  Bronze bracelet of twisted work.

COINS.

1.  Coins found in the present excavations at Wroxeter.

2.  Coins found at Wroxeter, at different times, and given to the Museum.

3.  The coins found with a skeleton in the hypocaust.

4.  Coining-mould of baked clay.  Julia Domna.

p. 94CINERARY URNS.

1.  Large red earthenware urn, containing human hones (burnt), inclosed in an outer urn of lead, which was brought from Wroxeter many years ago.

2.  Another Cinerary urn of black pottery, containing burnt human bones, found in a field adjoining the cemetery, and outside the town walls.  Purchased by the secretary.

3.  A large Cinerary urn, found in the recent excavations, ten inches high, and thirty in circumference, almost entire, containing bones, but not human.—See pl. 13, fig. 2.

4.  Cinerary urns in red and black pottery of various sizes, from 4 to 12 inches high.  Some contained burnt human bones and unguent bottles.—(Cemetery.)  Many small flask-shaped bottles were found, some broken, some entire, some which had evidently been exposed to heat.  Oily matter was detected in one; hence they have been termed unguent bottles.—(Cemetery.)

V.
MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTS.

Medicine Stamp, found at Wroxeter in 1808, by Mr. Upton; purchased from his family in 1859, by the late Beriah Botfield, Esq., M.P., who presented it to the Museum.

p. 951.  Oyster shells in great number; shells of some nut found in an oyster shell.

2.  Remains of small animals and birds.

3.  Nondescript articles in iron, shapeless masses of lead, innumerable fragments of pottery, bone, &c.

4.  Fragments of horn and bone which have been cut with a saw or other tool.

5.  Fragments of bone, which have been turned in a lathe.

6.  Inscribed sepulchral stone with Latin inscription, partly legible.  There has been a statue on the top.—(Cemetery.)

7.  A skiff-shaped vessel in bronze, with round handle, and a lid which closed with a catch.

8.  Several legs of the fighting cock, with very large natural spurs.

9.  Roundels, formed chiefly from the bottoms of earthenware vessels, perhaps used in some game; others made with a hole in the centre.

10.  Skulls of the dog; one, that of a dog of the mastiff kind, of an unknown species.  Bones of horse, ox, roe, and red deer, (Cervus elaphus); also fragments of the horn of a species allied to the elk of Ireland, (Strongylocerus spelæus.)  Very numerous remains of the wild boar, including bones of the hoof, jaw, and tusks.

Among other bones of the ox are some of a very large kind, now unknown in this country.

p. 96Also, the crania of the Bos longifrons, more than one bearing evident marks of the fatal blow of the axe on the forehead.

11.  Specimens of mended pottery:—1.  Samian ware. 2.  Upchurch. 3.  Romano-British pottery.

12.  Slabs of stone for grinding or mixing colours, painters’ pallettes.

13.  Specimen of Hepatic iron ore.  Ditto of Barytes or heavy spar.

14.  Iron tire of a wheel, 3ft. 3ins. in diameter, 1½ inch in breadth.  Two iron hoops, supposed to have belonged to the nave of the same wheel.

15.  Two hoops of another nave, with the wood remaining between them.

Human Remains.

1.  Parts of three human skeletons found in the hypocaust B.  Two of the skulls are almost entire, and one is broken into fragments.  The latter is remarkable for its great thickness.  One of the two former from its form, is most probably the head of a female, and the bones of the pelvis of one skeleton are also characteristic of the female sex.  One jaw-bone must have belonged to a very old person, as not only the teeth but even p. 97the sockets are gone.  One hundred and thirty-two coins were found in the hypocaust with these skeletons.  See page 41.

2.  Five human heads, and other parts of human skeletons, were first dug up in the orchard, near the river.  Of these, four were singularly deformed,—the one eye being in advance of the other and the face oblique.  Ten other skulls have since been found in the same place, and have been arranged in the Museum.  Of the ten above-mentioned three are deformed like the others, four are so broken and defective that their form cannot be ascertained, three are not deformed.  One of the latter is a very large skull, well formed, but with very strong projecting cheek (malar) bones, and a projecting occiput.

3.  The principal bones of a skeleton (female?) belonging to one of the skulls, stretched on a board (as well as could be done on the spot) just as it lay in the ground.

The circumstances under which these skeletons were found are full of interest.  The greater part of them (at least twenty have been found, but not all in a state to be taken up) were evidently put into the ground with a certain degree of attention, that is, buried.  They were not thrown heedlessly into a pit, but carefully deposited at full length, and generally near together, the legs and arms for the most part extended, or, as in the p. 98case above described, one arm lying across the body.  In general, nothing particular has been found near them, but only the usual contents of the soil, such as stones, roots, and fragments of pottery.  In one instance an iron ring, in another, some nails were met with, and in a third a single coin of Claudius Gothicus.  But all these might have occurred accidentally in the neighbourhood of the bodies, in an old Roman site, and not have been buried with them.  No vestiges of wood derived from coffins, or of apparel, were discovered.  There were no traces of weapons or articles of domestic use, which were generally buried by the Romans with their friends, and the place where these remains were found is within the walls, and could not, therefore, be a Roman cemetery.

4.  In more than one instance, bones of very young children have been found; but in one instance, alluded to at page 68, almost an entire skeleton of a child was found, which has been preserved, and is in the Museum.  This was found outside the semicircular end of the great hypocaust, where there must have been a small court.  From the smallness of the bones of the skeleton, and from the circumstance of the teeth being still contained within the jaw-bone, it may be inferred that this was a very young infant—perhaps still in arms.

5.  A thigh bone has been found, which, having been fractured, has become united during life.

p. 99The most interesting circumstance connected with the human remains found at Wroxeter, is the large relative proportion of deformed skulls.  Of the nineteen crania found in the orchard and since deposited in the Museum, eleven are more or less crooked.  It has been supposed, and indeed the opinion is still entertained by some antiquarians, that this deformity was congenital and not posthumous, that is to say, that the persons to whom these skulls belonged lived and died with deformed heads.  And this was my own view before I had learned that bones are capable of being bent by pressure in the ground.  There can be little doubt that the deformity has been produced by posthumous pressure, aided by moisture and the solvent action of certain acids that always exist in vegetable mould. [99a]  Other instances of a like effect have been described by Dr. Sherman, [99b] and, in America, by the Rev. D. Wilson. [99c]

H. J.

p. 100APPENDIX.

On November the 11th, 1858, at the General Meeting of the Shropshire and North Wales Natural History and Antiquarian Society, held at the Museum, Shrewsbury, the President, Beriah Botfield, Esq., M.P., proposed that excavations should be commenced at Wroxeter.  He had written to the Duke of Cleveland, and obtained his Grace’s consent to do so.  He also made the very liberal offer to give fifty guineas towards the expenses, provided that fifty other gentlemen could be found willing to subscribe one guinea each.  A Committee was formed, consisting of the following noblemen and gentlemen to carry on the work:—

The Right Hon. the Earl of Powis, Powis Castle

Beriah Botfield, Esq., M.P., F.R.S., Decker Hill

R. A. Slaney, Esq., M.P., Walford Manor

Rev. B. H. Kennedy, D.D., Shrewsbury

Rev. E. Egremont, Wroxeter

Rev. R. W. Eyton, Ruyton, Shiffnal

Rev. H. M. Scarth, Bathwick

Samuel Ashdown, Esq., Uppington

W. H. Bayley, Esq., Shrewsbury

William F. F. Foulkes, Esq., Stanley Place, Chester

Henry Johnson, Esq., M.D., Hon. Sec., Shrewsbury

George Stanton, Esq., Shrewsbury

Albert Way, Esq., Worham Manor

Samuel Wood, Esq., Shrewsbury

Thomas Wright, Esq., F.S.A., Brompton

A Metropolitan Committee has since been thought desirable, and held its first meeting August 3rd.  It consists of the following distinguished noblemen and gentlemen:—

The Right Hon. Earl Stanhope, President of the Royal Society of Antiquaries

The Right Hon. Viscount Hill, Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire

p. 101The Right Hon. Lord Braybrooke

The Right Hon. Lord Talbot de Malahide

The Right Hon. Lord Lindsay

The Right Hon. Lord Newport, M.P.

The Right Hon. the Lord Chief Baron

Beriah Botfield, Esq., M.P.

The Hon. Rowland C. Hill, M.P.

R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., M.P.

C. Octavius S. Morgan, Esq., M.P.

H. Danby Seymour, Esq., M.P.

W. Tite, Esq., M.P.

C. C. Babington, Esq., F.R.S., St. John’s Coll., Cambridge

The Rev. E. L. Barnwell, General Secretary of the Cambrian Archæological Association

Sir John P. Boileau, Bart., F.R.S., V.P.S.A.

The Rev. Dr. Bosworth, F.R.S., F.S.A., Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford

The Rev. Dr. J. Collingwood Bruce, F.S.A., Hon. Sec. of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Talbot Bury, Esq., F.R.I.B.A., A.I.C.E.

Benjamin Bond Cabbell, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A.

Robert Chambers, Esq., Edinburgh

Sir James Clarke, Bart., F.R.S.

James Dearden, Esq., F.S.A.

C. Wentworth Dilke, Esq.

J. Hepworth Dixon, Esq., F.S.A.

Joseph Durham, Esq., F.S.A.

The Rev. E. Egremont, Vicar of Wroxeter

F. W. Fairholt, Esq., F.S.A.

Augustus Guest, Esq., L.L.D., F.S.A.

S. Carter Hall, Esq., F.S.A.

J. O. Halliwell, Esq., F.S.A., F.R.S.

The Rev. C. H. Hartshorne

Fredk. Hindmarsh, Esq., F.R.G.S., F.G.S., Hon. Sec.

The Rev. T. Hugo, F.S.A.

Dr. Henry Johnson, Hon. Sec. of the Excavation Committee, Shrewsbury

Joseph Mayer, Esq., F.S.A., Liverpool

Sir Roderick I. Murchison, F.R.S., &c.

Frederick Ouvry, Esq., F.S.A.

The Rev. H. M. Scarth

Charles Roach Smith, Esq., F.S.A.

Vice-Admiral W. H. Smyth, F.R.S., F.S.A.

W. S. W. Vaux, Esq., F.S.A., President of the Numismatic Society

Albert Way, Esq., F.S.A.

Thomas Wright, Esq., F.S.A., Treasurer.

J. O. SANDFORD, PRINTER, SHREWSBURY.

PLATES.

Plate 1: The north side of the Old Wall at Wroxeter

Plate 2: Wroxeter Church, Shropshire (Vignette)

Plate 3: First Roman Hypocaust Discovered at Uriconium 1859

Plate 4: Roman Tile-Roof, Roman Flag-Roof, Section of Roman Hypocaust, &c.

Plate 5: Plan of Walls, discovered by the Excavations at Wroxeter, Salop, from February 3rd to September, 1863.

Plate 6: Column in the garden of W. H. Oatley Esq., Wroxeter

Plate 7: Ancient Stone Font in Wroxeter Church

Plate 8: Capitals found at Uriconium

Plate 9: Samian, Upchurch, and Romano-Salopian Pottery

Plate 10: Rings and Combs

Plate 11: Hair Pins &c.

Plate 12: Skulls from Wroxeter

Plate 13: Roman Remains from Wroxeter

Plate 14: Upchurch Pottery, Adz, Spear Head, and Romano-Salopian (Red) Ware

Plate 15: Carved stone fragments from Uriconium, in the Garden of Edward Stanier, Esq., Wroxeter

Plate 16: Sepulchral Stone

ADVERTISEMENTS. [102]

J. O. SANDFORD.

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p. 103LION HOTEL,
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The Nobility, Gentry, and Public of Shrewsbury and its Vicinity, are respectfully informed that this old-established and well-known Hotel, has undergone considerable renovation and change in every department, and that nothing will be spared to make it the most complete and comfortable Hotel in the county.  An entirely new tariff of charges has been arranged (including servants’ fees) on the most reasonable charges.

N.B.—The Lion Omnibus runs in connection with all the Trains to
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POST HORSES ALWAYS IN READINESS.
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SHREWSBURY: J. O. SANDFORD, HIGH STREET.

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Shrewsbury & Wroxeter Illustrated.

A Series of Views for the Stereoscope, by F. Bedford. 1s. each.

1.  Shrewsbury, Ireland’s Mansion.

2.  Shrewsbury, the Market House.

3.  Shrewsbury, the Market Square.

4.  Shrewsbury, Statue of Clive, in the Market Place.

5.  Shrewsbury, Elizabethan Houses, in the Market Place.

6.  Shrewsbury, the Cross Keys Tavern, High Street.

7.  Shrewsbury, Old House, Princess Street, Market Place.

8.  Shrewsbury, Shearman’s Hall, and Old Post Office Inn.

9.  Shrewsbury, Old Houses, in the Wyle Cop.

10.  Shrewsbury, Old Timber Houses, in the Abbey Foregate.

11.  Shrewsbury, Gate Way to Council House, St. Nicholas’ Chapel.

12.  Shrewsbury, in the Court Yard to the Council House.

13.  Shrewsbury, the Royal Grammar School.

14.  Shrewsbury, the Castle, Garden Front.

15.  Shrewsbury, the Castle, from the Entrance Gateway.

16.  Shrewsbury, the last remaining Tower of the Old Walls.

17.  Shrewsbury, English Bridge.

18.  Shrewsbury, St. Giles’s Church.

19.  Shrewsbury, Old Church of St. Giles.

20.  Shrewsbury, the Abbey, from the South East.

21.  Shrewsbury, the Abbey, West Front.

22.  Shrewsbury, Old St. Chad’s Church.

23.  Shrewsbury, St. Mary’s Church, view from South West.

24.  Shrewsbury, St. Mary’s Church, South Porch.

25.  Shrewsbury, St. Mary’s Church, from the Infirmary.

26.  Shrewsbury, St. Julian’s Church, and Spire of St. Alkmond.

27.  Shrewsbury, St. Chad’s Church.

28.  Shrewsbury, the Portal to the Shoemaker’s Arbour, Kingsland.

29.  Shrewsbury, Lord Hill’s Column.

30.  Shrewsbury, the Stone Pulpit.

31.  Shrewsbury, St. Mary’s Watergate.

32.  Shrewsbury, the Ferry and House of Industry.

33.  Shrewsbury, Avenue in the Quarry.

34.  Shrewsbury, the Dingle in the Quarry.

35.  Shrewsbury, the Whitehall.

36.  Wroxeter, remains of Floor in the Baths.

37.  Wroxeter, supposed Enameller’s Shop.

38.  Wroxeter, Public Baths, looking West.

39.  Wroxeter, the Old Wall, and Hypocaust.

40.  Wroxeter, Public Baths, from the S.W.

41.  Wroxeter, the principal Hypocaust.

42.  Wroxeter, Public Baths, looking East.

43.  Wroxeter, the Excavations, seen from W.N.W.

Published by CATHERALL & PRICHARD, Eastgate-row,
Chester, and sold by all dealers in slides.

VINCENT CRUMP,

BY SPECIAL APPOINTMENT

CONFECTIONER

To Her Majesty the Queen,

WYLE COP AND PRIDE HILL,

SHREWSBURY.

ROYAL SHREWSBURY CAKES.

FOOTNOTES.

[99a]  See Abstract of Proceedings of Royal Society, June, 1862.

[99b]  Crania Britannia.

[99c]  Pre-Historic Man, vol. ii. p. 306, &c. &c.

[102]  In this transcription the advertisements have been moved to the end of the book.  In the original the first two (J. O. Sandford) come before the frontispiece.  The rest then follow after the Appendix and come before the Plates with the exception of the last two (Shrewsbury and Wroxeter Illustrated; Vincent Crump) which came after the plates.—DP.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUINS OF THE ROMAN CITY OF
URICONIUM, AT WROXETER, NEAR SHREWSBURY***


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