Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and PresentTimbs, John
History
Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and Present
Timbs, John
England -- Social life and customs
Three fine wide streets, paved with small round stones in the roadway,
have been found in Uriconium. The Roman houses in Britain had no upper
stories, and all the rooms were on the ground-floor; no traces of a
staircase have ever been found; the roofing in Uriconium was slates or
flags, fixed with an iron nail to the wooden framework; they lapped over
each other, in lozenges or diamonds; some of the walls were tesselated
in ornamental patterns; few doorways were discovered; window-glass was
found one-eighth of an inch thick, though until recently it was thought
that the Romans, especially in this distant province, did not use
window-glass. The rooms were sometimes heated by hot air circulated in
the walls, from hypocausts, and flue-tiles with holes in the sides for
the escape of the air; though the hot air merely under the floor was
more used, the ashes, wood and coal, and the soot of the fires were
found in the hypocausts at Uriconium just as they were left when the
city was overthrown and ruined by the barbarians. A large hypocaust is
described with 120 columns of bricks, and is thought to have belonged to
the public baths. A wide space is pointed out as the forum of Uriconium,
and the basilica here holds exactly the same place as at Pompeii.
We have thus glanced at the houses of Uriconium; we now turn to their
domestic articles. First is the pottery, of which the most striking is
the ware of the colour of bright red sealing-wax, commonly known as
Samian ware; several of the pieces found at Wroxeter have been mended,
chiefly by metal rivets. There were also found specimens of the Upchurch
ware, of simple ornamentation; and of the pottery from Castor,
ornamented with hunting-scenes laid on a white substance after the
pottery had been baked: the colour of both wares is blue, or
slate-colour. Two classes of Roman pottery, both evidently made in
Shropshire, were also found: the first, a white ware, consisted of
elegantly formed jugs, mortaria or vessels for rubbing or pounding
objects in cookery; and bowls painted red and yellow. The other
Romano-Salopian pottery is a red ware, and included bowls pierced all
over with small holes so as to have served for colanders. Fragments of
glass vessels were found, with a ladle, several knives, a stone
knife-handle, and several whetstones. Hair-pins of bone, bronze, and
wood were found, with bronze fibulæ, buttons, finger-rings, bracelets,
combs, bone needles, and bronze tweezers for eradicating superfluous
hairs. The most curious of the miscellaneous objects is a medicine-stamp
for salves or washes for the eyes, inscribed with, probably, the name of
a physician resident in Uriconium. The stones with Roman inscriptions,
chiefly sepulchral, are numerous. The church, a Norman edifice, at
Wroxeter contains amongst other architectural and sepulchral fragments
two capitals, richly ornamented, of the late period of Roman
architecture which became the model of the mediæval Byzantine and
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