Early Britain—Roman BritainConybeare, John William Edward
History
Early Britain—Roman Britain
Conybeare, John William Edward
Great Britain -- History -- Roman period, 55 B.C.-449 A.D.
the many other trades which must have figured in Romano-British
life,--goldsmiths, silversmiths, iron-workers, stone-cutters,
sculptors, architects, eye-doctors, are all thus commemorated.[239]
C. 14.--But then, as always, the life of Britain was mainly rural. The
evidence for this unearthed in the Cam valley has already been spoken
of, and in every part of England the "villas" of the great Roman
landowners are constantly found. Hundreds have already been
discovered, and year by year the list is added to. One of the most
recent of the finds is that at Greenwich in 1901, and the best known,
perhaps, that at Brading in the Isle of Wight. Here, as elsewhere,
the tesselated pavements, the elaborate arrangements for warming (by
hypocausts conveying hot air to every room), the careful laying out of
the apartments, all testify to the luxury in which these old landlords
lived. For the "villa" was the Squire's Hall of the period, and was
provided, like the great country houses of to-day, with all the best
that contemporary life could give.[240] And, like these also, it was
the centre of a large circle of humbler dependencies wherein resided
the peasantry of the estate and the domestics of the mansion.[241] The
existence amongst these of huntsmen (as inscriptions tell) reminds
us that not only was the chase, then as now, popular amongst the
squirearchy, but that there was a far larger scope for its exercise.
Great forests still covered a notable proportion of the soil (the
largest being that which spread over the whole Weald of Sussex)[242],
and were tenanted by numberless deer and wild swine, along with the
wolves, and, perhaps, bears,[243] that fed upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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