The Roman remains found up and down the place prove my assertion that
the people who lived here were what we should call substantial. One need
not catalogue the long list of Roman _trouvailles_; but, to take the
more important, in the year 1819 there was discovered, in taking up the
foundations of some old houses belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital, in
St. Thomas's Street, a fine tesselated pavement, about ten feet below
the surface of the ground. In the following year, in the area facing St.
Saviour's Grammar School, seven or eight feet below the surface, there
was found another, of a more elaborate design. Only a part of this was
uncovered, as the Governors of the School forbade further investigation:
it remains to this day still to be examined and unearthed, under the
present potato and fruit market. At the entrance of King Street, at a
depth of fifteen or sixteen feet, were found a great many Roman lamps, a
vase, and other sepulchral deposits. And in tunnelling for a new sewer
through Blackman Street and Snow Fields, in 1818 and 1819, and again in
Union Street, in 1823, numerous Roman antiquities were discovered. In
Trinity Square was found a coin of Gordianus Africanus. In Deverill
Street, south of the Dover road, other coins were discovered; in St.
Saviour's churchyard, a coin of Antoninus Pius. It has also been proved
that an extensive Roman cemetery existed on the south of the ancient
settlement. In the year 1840, when excavations were going on for the
purpose of building a new wing to St. Thomas's Hospital, another
tesselated pavement was disclosed, with passages and walls of other
chambers, all built on piles, showing that the houses beside the
causeway were thus supported in the marshy ground; Roman coins and
pottery were also found here. Another pavement was discovered on the
opposite side, south of Winchester Palace. On the river bank, at the
corner of Clink Street, an ancient jetty was found; and in the new
Southwark Street, deep down, groups of piles, pointed below, on which
houses had been built. In many of the later buildings Roman tiles have
been found. These remains are quite sufficient to prove that many
wealthy people lived in Roman Southwark, and that they occupied villas
built on piles beside the causeway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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