Dr. Sutherland published the plan of the bath with this description
having "_drawen_ out in dotted lines" the supposed arrangement of the
baths. To make the account of these discoveries of 1755 complete,
I must explain that the _Hypocausta Laconica_, or stoves, to the
eastward, which he described as each measuring 39ft. by 22ft., were,
I believe, the _tepidarium_ and the _caldarium_. The two semi-circular
recesses, or small rooms, to the north, I should consider were each
a _sudatorium_ if the floors had not been 2ft. 6in. lower than the
adjoining apartment. In the centre was the stove by which the system
was heated (the _praefurnium_). To the north of these, Dr. Sutherland
figures, in dotted lines, three chambers omitted in my plan. Although
I believe he had some authority for giving them, I am somewhat at a
loss to assign a use to these rooms. They might be stoves, as, if
the Romans desired to have a bath artificially heated, this would be
the correct position for the brazen vessels, described somewhat
unintelligibly by Vitruvius, as three in number. If this was the case,
each semi-circular recess just described was a _calda lavatio, balneum
or labrum_. [A similar _labrum_, but of smaller scale, was discovered
at Box, near Bath, last year, and I have discovered on the property of
Mr. Charles I. Elton, F.S.A., M.P. (author of "Origins of History")
a similar one.] The floor being 2ft. 6in. lower than the adjoining
apartment points to this belief. These, I have little doubt, were
those artificially heated baths, and were cased either with lead,
stone, marble, or small white tesseræ, as at Box. To the south of
the _tepidarium_, Dr. Sutherland gives a precisely similar suggested
plan as that to the north, but here again I have not copied him,
believing he had not sufficient data. In all probability here was an
_apodyterium_ (which might or might not be heated with a _hypocaust_)
where the bathers deposited their clothes. Dr. Sutherland thought that
to the east of the discoveries which he described there would be found
probably at some future day "similar _Balnea pensilia_."[9] In opening
the Roman drains I found a branch one at this place, which induces
me to think that a large cold or swimming bath occupied the eastern
wing, the _baptisterium_ or _frigida lavatio_. Still farther eastward
are fragments of Roman buildings which I have seen only in a very
fragmentary way, as no excavations of any extent have been made. I
believe the apartments necessary to complete the system of the modern
Turkish bath, or rather the ancient bath, with the requisite waiting
rooms and corridors, stood there.
[Footnote 9: These baths and adjoining rooms occupied the block
between Church Street and York Street, including Kingston Buildings.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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