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
_Floors._—The floors which have been found were most generally of
concrete, tiles and mosaic. In Rochester Museum are some lumps of
material from concrete floors. There were also floors of “rough stones”
and of “chalk stones.” A better kind of concrete floor was that known as
_opus signinum_, made of lime and broken pottery polished on the
surface; this made an admirable floor. Another excellent and much used
surface was obtained by coarse tesseræ of tile from 1 in. to 2 in.
square; sometimes pieces of yellow, black and white were intermixed. In
Rochester Museum is a tile fragment subdivided by indented lines
imitating this coarse kind of mosaic, also a square of light buff tile.
At the Guildhall is a tile a Roman foot square, having incised squares.
Tiles were of various forms and sizes. In the Reading Museum are round
and polygonal tiles, and a very pretty floor formed of such tiles with
coarse tesseræ intermixed. Some small paving tiles have been found (not
in London) with patterns impressed on the surface (Fowler’s engravings).
In the British Museum is a tile 7 in. square, and a large tile about 18
by 14 in. is scored on the surface neatly, like the crosses of a Union
Jack (cf. Fig. 7); it seems to be abraded on the surface, and may be a
paving tile—if so, it must have made an excellent floor. Roach Smith
mentions large tiles about 2 ft. square and 3 in. thick, and some of
these are in the British Museum. Such tiles, as large as paving slabs,
were useful in covering hypocausts, spanning the intervals between the
little piers on which the corners rested.
In the British Museum and at the Guildhall are portions of paving of
small tiles set on edge in a herring-bone pattern. The former is
described as having been found at Bush Lane, the latter near Dowgate
Hill on the Walbrook. “Near by was piling and the cill of a bridge which
crossed the brook from E. to W.” This seems to be the same pavement as
that described in _The Builder_, 1884, as being on the west bank facing
the brook; there was a second landing-stage in Trinity Square Gardens,
on “the edge of a haven,” with a pavement over oak piling. (The haven at
the tidal inlet to Walbrook was doubtless the original port of London.)
I have seen similar herring-bone pavement of tiles on edge in Rome. I
doubt there having been a bridge here.
_Plastering._—External walls would mostly have been plastered. C. Knight
mentioned the discovery near the Bank of traces of a Roman building, and
of what was “apparently the basis of a Roman pillar (circular?) built of
large flat bricks incrusted with a very hard cement, in which the
mouldings were formed exactly as is done in the present day.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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