Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts — John Shaqi
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
Mr. Lambert, from planning the find-spots of Roman coins, comes to the
conclusion that the wall was not in its later position until the fourth
century. The type of walling is especially characteristic of the fourth
century. Haverfield has pointed out some earlier cases of the use of
bonding tiles, but these seem to be exceptional. (See also what is said
of Colchester in _J.R.S._, 1919.) Daremberg and Saglio give 309 as the
date of the earliest wall of our kind in Rome. (They illustrate an
example from Timgad, in North Africa, which closely resembles the wall
of London.) I suggest that a point of evidence may be found in the
Constantinian coin, which has a city gate or fortification for device,
and the inscription PROVIDENTIAE CAESS, with the mint mark of London
(Fig. 37). This device was not invented for London, but I cannot think
that at such a time it could have been adopted if Londinium still
remained an open city—it would have invited too obvious irony after what
had happened in 296. This coin was issued between 320 and 324, and I
suggest that it may be accepted as a record of the walling of the City,
or, perhaps more probably, the beginning of the works. The coins of
Helen mentioned by Camden were issued about this time. In the later half
of the fourth-century London acquired the title of Augusta, and this
change of style probably followed on the change of status of its having
then been completely walled. (I find that Mr. Reg. Smith has already
made this same suggestion in _V.C.H._) Sir Arthur Evans has recently
called attention to a silver coin of Valentinian the Elder as having in
an abbreviated form the monetary stamp of _Londinensis Augusta_. “A
group of coins shows that the Mint at London, which had been closed
since the time of Constantine, was restored by Valentinian in A.D. 368”
(_Proceedings, S. A._, 1915, p. 105). I suggest that this is a probable
date for the completion of the river wall. Several of the cities of Gaul
were protected by walls at a still later time.
[Illustration:
FIG. 37.
]
Many of the carved fragments found in the bastions can be little earlier
than the year A.D. 300. The important monuments of which remnants have
been found must have been destroyed when the long, wide strip required
for the original wall and its ditch was cleared, for the bastions
themselves did not go beyond this ground. It seems possible that the big
stones were reserved for founding bastions; this is more likely than
that distant monuments were destroyed to provide foundation stones.
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