"Not quite the whole of the villa probably has been explored; the baths,
for instance, are not yet found. But we have ample details, and can
form a general judgment. The villa at Brading was neither of the best
period nor of special size and splendour, but neither was it a
farmhouse. It must have been the residence of men of the upper classes,
owners (we may suppose) of broad acres all around. They may not have
possessed great wealth or many articles of luxury; they may have carried
such things away with them when they abandoned the house. Some time in
the dim period of which we know so little, early in the fifth century,
the place was burnt by enemy or accident, and the Romano-British life
which it had sheltered came utterly to an end."
If there are no baths there is at all events an excellent specimen of a
hypocaust, or Roman heating arrangement, to be seen. The chief interest
for visitors, however, lies in the well-preserved specimens of mosaic
flooring which have been said by some authorities to be among the finest
of their kind in England; this view, however, is not held by the writer
quoted above, who says: "The Brading mosaics are elaborate and
ambitious; let us add that their execution does not wholly lack spirit.
But as artistic achievements they are not successful. They must
unquestionably be ranked beneath the best specimens of mosaics found
both in England and abroad."
However this may be to the specialist, the designs are exceedingly
interesting to the ordinary observer, who will gaze with great delight
at the quaint representation of Orpheus playing on the lyre and
surrounded by animals, as well as at the pastoral designs in the other
rooms. A small charge is made for entrance, and the lesser objects are
preserved in cases for more convenient inspection.
Other Roman remains, including coins, have been found at many places in
the island, and the traces of a villa at Carisbrooke. Of remains other
than Roman there are not many, the principal find being that at Arreton,
where, at the opening of some barrows on the downs, knife-blades,
spearheads, and coarse pottery of the Anglo-Saxon times were unearthed
beside the skeletons with which they had been buried. At Rowborough
there are some very curious remains of "pit-dwellings." In the first of
the valleys where these are to be found there are ten pits, each twenty
to thirty feet wide and more or less circular. Some are now filled up
with a growth of brushwood. Above the last pit a long excavation runs
up the valley for some twenty or thirty yards, and this may be an old
road. A good deal higher up there is a large basin-like excavation. In
the second valley there are seven pits, and in the third about eighteen.
It is possible that these may not be dwellings, but remains of very
early attempts at chalk-getting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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