Londinium, Architecture and the CraftsLethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
History
Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts
Lethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
England -- Antiquities, Roman; London (England) -- Antiquities, Roman; Romans -- England -- London
Dr. Guest argued that London was founded as a Roman camp at the time of
the Claudian conquest; but it is now agreed that the name is Celtic; and
it must not be forgotten that London is and always was a port. When we
first hear of London only seventeen years after the Claudian conquest,
it was already, as Tacitus says, famous for the number of its merchants,
and this must imply that it was a principal port. Dr. Haverfield, while
admitting that the name is Celtic, went on to say: “The name Londinium,
the place of Londinos, witnesses at most to nothing more than one wigwam
or one barn.” This “at most” can only mean that every town presumably
begins with one building; in London, however, the building is not likely
to have been a barn amid the bare gravels, but rather a boatman’s house.
Further evidence for the existence of a pre-Roman town is brought out by
the large number of Celtic objects found on the site and in the
neighbourhood, but they have never been properly catalogued as a group.
Dr. Haverfield allowed that three pieces of imported Samian ware in the
British Museum might belong to the period A.D. 10-40. “We might then
conclude that through the influx of Roman traders London had been noted
as a suitable trading centre a few years previous to the Roman conquest;
but the minute dating of these potsherds is not easy, and we must leave
the question of pre-Roman London unsettled. Either there was no
pre-Roman London, or it was an undeveloped settlement, which may have
been on the south bank of the Thames” (_Journ. Rom. Studies_, vol. i. p.
146). The evidence of such early imports is greatly strengthened by
other discoveries at Silchester. Mr. May, speaking of the early “Samian”
ware, says: “The Silchester examples are of much significance. Together
with the contemporary Belgic imitations they prove that the inhabitants
of the capital of the Atrebati were importing costly luxuries in
considerable quantities from Italy and Northern Gaul at the beginning of
the Christian era.” Early Belgic pottery has been found in London as
well as “Samian,” and there is in the British Museum a wine jar of an
early type found in Southwark. Some British pottery was doubtless made
in Londinium itself before the Roman conquest. Mr. Lambert has described
specimens of coarse wares in _Archæologia_. Of one of these he writes:
“Bead-rimmed pot, coarse grey ware, irregularly burnt. A pre-Roman type,
surviving into the Roman period.” He dates it A.D. 50-80, I suppose
thinking that it cannot have really been pre-Roman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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