Roman Britain in 1938

Abstract

Mr. V. E. Nash-Williams reports discoveries on three sites. (1) At Llantwit Major, Glamorganshire, where a house was partially excavated in 1888, trial cuttings showed that the structural remains covered an area of about 2 acres, enclosing roughly a square of about 300 ft., on the N, S, and W sides of which were the main buildings with detached outbuildings on the E side. In its final stage the plan was of winged-corridor type with main range on the W and others to the N and S, the latter possibly additional; it was fronted by an internal colonnade of imported freestone and faced on to a cobbled courtyard. A subsidiary range had been tacked on at right angles to the N wing. The walls of local limestone and sandstone remained up to 6 ft. and were decorated with coloured plaster; the floors were mostly of opus signinum. A hypocaust or furnace-chamber in the western or main range, after long use, had been filled in with refuse and a small iron-smelting furnace had been built over it. Two rooms in the N wing, opened in 1888, were cleared ; much of the geometric pavement survived. Three or four more skeletons were found ; they had been buried in rough cists sunk into the pavement or cut through the walls, and therefore at a period when the house was no longer in use. A massively constructed outbuilding, measuring 80 by 26 ft., stood just within the remains of a ditch system. (2) At Caerleon a trench was cut on the SW side of White Hart Lane in the praetentura of Isca abutting on the SE defences. It revealed the primary clay rampart, 15 ft. wide and 6 ft. high, with the inner face of the latest stone rampart outside it ; inside the rampart, and between it and the rampart roadway, a stone building had been inserted (cf. JRS xix, 182). The roadway was 20 ft. wide and heavily metalled and was bordered by the stone culvert of the main drainage-system. On the inner side of the roadway the walls and floor of a stone building, probably a barrack-block, were found.