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The Early Plan and Town Houses of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
The 1938–9 excavations at Calleva, of which Mrs Aylwin Cotton's report has recently appeared (1), show how much more can be learnt about a Romano-British town when modern scientific excavation technique is used to supplement the efforts of earlier antiquaries. George Fox, St. John Hope and Mill Stephenson (to whom all honour) achieved the complete plan, labouring from 1890–1908 each year for months at a time at the total excavation of the hundred acres within the city walls. Now Mrs Cotton by selective excavation and a study of stratigraphy has built up the outline chronology so urgently required : thus we have now both a Map and a Time-Chart for this city. Mrs Cotton's report shows that the original Roman city extended up to the outer earthwork, hitherto thought to be of pre-Roman construction, covering an area of some 230 acres (2), and that the walls with a slightly earlier bank behind them are a contraction of the latter half of the 2nd century A.D. (3) The evidence was clear ; the metal of the streets and layers of dark occupation soil of Hadrian-Antonine date continued under the bank (4)) and the streets continued on the same alignment in the space between the wall and outer earthwork (5). Of the street plan Mrs Cotton observes (6) inter alia that the chessboard ‘ is singularly rectangular ’ and that ‘ it did not exist, at any rate in its later form when the Bath Building in Insula XXXIII was built about the reign of Nero ’. It was these two comments and their footnotes that sent me searching the shelf with Archaeologia ranged heavily along it, and that prompted this article.
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- Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1948
References
1 Archaeologia 92 (1947), p. 121 ff.
2 It may be compared to Corinium (Cirencester) 240 acres.
3 The Bank is dated to c. A.D. 160-170 (p. 129), and the Wall to the close of the 2nd century, probably to Severus, A.D. 193-217, loc. cit., p. 132.
4 ibid, fig. 1 and pl. XXXI.
5 ibid, fig. 5.
6 ibid, p. 135.
7 Archaeologia 59.2, p. 341, pl. LXXIV. The site was chosen for its water supply.
8 See D. Atkinson, Wroxeter, 1923-7, p. 333, Appendix B, for a discussion of its origin.
9 Archaeologia 59.2, p. 342, fig. 3, a and b.
10 I am indebted to Mr Smallcombe of the Reading Museum for allowing me to have the material identified by Dr Wallis of Bristol. Mr Melville of the Geological Survey has identified other Oolites used in the city wall of Silchester, Arch. 92, p. 143.
11 Archaeologia 59.2, p. 346 and fig. 2.
12 The final large-scale plan is in Archaeologia 61.2, pl. LXXXV.
13 Archaeologia 53.2, p. 543.
14 The northern line is the later course ; in one of the two rectangular buildings built across the southern line a coin hoard of mid 4th century date was found. Arch. 61.2, p. 477-9-
15 Ancient Town Planning.
16 e.g. R. E. M. Wheeler, Verulamium, Insula iv, pl. xxxi.
17 Arch. 52.2, pl. xxx, p. 745 ff. Coins of the 3rd and 4th century are recorded from the site.
18 Arch. 61.1, p. 206, pl. XXIII.
19 P. Lambrecht, Contributions d l’étude des divinités Celtiques, p. 145 ff. Modens, at Lydney, is another example: see Wheeler, Lydney Excavation Report, p. 101.
20 Arch. 59.2, pl. LXXIII and p. 338.
21 ibid, pl. LXXIII, and p. 340.
22 It seems likely to be a room like House 4 in its later phase.
23 Arch. 61.1, pl. XXIII. They were so identified by Hope, p. 204.
24 Arch. 56.1, p. 107, pl. v.
25 R. G. Collingwood commented that this double corridor type was commoner at Silchester than elsewhere (Archaeology of Roman Britain, p. 110). I cannot accept his suggestion that it developed from the strip-house (loc.cit., p. 109), since there is no evidence for entry at the gable end.
26 Arch. 56.1, pl. VII, p. 110
27 ibid, p. 112 ff.
28 Arch. 55.2, pl. XXIII, p. 419.
29 ibid, p. 412.
30 Arch. 57.2, pl. XXX, p. 232.
31 ibid, p. 234.
32 Arch. 92, p. 135-7.
33 Possibly the Forum too ; Dr Richmond has drawn attention to a fragment of a bronze lappet from an Imperial statue of 1st century type found in the Basilica. Antiq.Journ., 1944, p. 7.
34 Lowther, Antiq.Journ., 1937, p. 28.
35 Ward Perkins, Antiq.Journ., 1938, p. 339.
36 Hawkes and Hull, Camulodunum. Site A.1, fig. 19, p. 89.
37 J. P. Bushe-Fox, Wroxeter, 1912, fig. 8. Sites i-iv, early 2nd century.
38 For example the courtyard House III.2 which superseded three late 1st century timber- framed buildings in the mid 2nd century. Wheeler, Verulamium, p. 94, pls. XXVIII-IX.
39 Archaeologia 59.2, p. 366, fig. 13. See also Ephemeris Epigraphica IX, no. 1267. These tiles were made at a tilery at Little London, two miles ssw of Silchester, where another stamped example, almost identical, was found in 1925 {Antiq. Journ. vi, p. 75 ; illustrated in Hants Field Club Proc. XVI, p. 59). I am much indebted to Mr R. P. Wright for these references. The discovery of this imperial tilery is important as showing the central government taking part in the early development of the cantonal capital.
40 The temple of Neptune and Minerva at Chichester, set up by the authority of Cogidubnus, the client king created by Claudius, is often instanced as the earliest example, but it must not be forgotten that Cogidubnus outlived the rebellion of A.D. 61 and may have reigned for another decade in the light of Tacitus’ comment—is ad nostram usque memoriam fidissimus mansit. (Agricola, XIV).
41 Archaeologia 92, p. 124-5.
42 D. Atkinson, Wroxeter, 1923-7, p. 24 ff.
43 J.R.S. 1947, p. 174.
44 Wheeler, Verulamium, p. 49 ff.
45 It ought to be possible to re-excavate selected sites at Silchester to get this evidence just as it has been possible to recover much of the history of Bronze Age barrows that have been dug unscientifically.