Roman Britain in 1914 | Page 9

as three shops giving on to the north and south Street which bounds its eastern end. Certainly it became, in course of time, a large corridor-house with a south aspect and an eastern wing fronting the street, and as such it underwent several changes in detail. Beyond its western end lay a still more puzzling structure. An enceinte formed by two parallel walls, about 13 feet apart, enclosed a rectangular space of about 150 feet wide; the western end of it, and therefore its length, could not be ascertained; the two corners uncovered at the east end were rounded; an entrance seems to have passed through the north-east corner. It has been called a small fort, an amphitheatre, a stadium, and several other things. But a fort should be larger and would indeed be somewhat hard to account for at this spot; while a stadium should have a rounded end and, if it was of orthodox length, would have extended outside the town into or almost into the Severn. Interest attaches to a water-channel along the main (north and south) street. This was found to have at intervals slits in each side which were plainly meant for sluice-gates to be let down; Mr. Bushe-Fox thinks that the channel was a water-supply, and not an outfall, and that by the sluice-gates the water was dammed up so as, when needed, to flow along certain smaller channels into the private houses which stood beside the road. If so, the discovery has much interest; the arrangement is peculiar, but no other explanation seems forthcoming.
Small finds were many and good. Mr. Bushe-Fox gathered 571 coins ranging from three British and one or two Roman Republican issues, to three early coins of the Emperor Arcadius, over 200 Samian potters' stamps, and much Samian datable to the period about A.D. 75-130, with a few rare pieces of the pre-Flavian age. There was a noticeable scarcity of both Samian and coins of the post-Hadrianic, Antonine period; it was also observed that recognizable 'stratified deposits' did not occur after the age of Hadrian. Among individual objects attention is due to a small seal-box, with wax for the seal actually remaining in it.
It appears that it will probably not be possible to continue this excavation, even on a limited scale, next summer. Mr. Bushe-Fox's report for 1913 is noticed below, p. 52.
(xvi) Lincoln. At Lincoln an inscribed fragment found in 1906 has now come to light. It bears only three letters, IND, being the last letters of the inscription; these plainly preserve a part of the name of the town, Lindum. See below, p. 34.
(xvii) Gloucester. Here, in March 1914, a mosaic floor, 16 feet square, with a complex geometrical pattern in red, white, and blue, has been found 9 feet below the present surface, at 22 Northgate Street. Some painted wall-plaster from the walls of the room to which it belonged were found with it.
(xviii) Discoveries in London have been limited to two groups of rubbish-pits in the City, (a) At the General Post Office the pits opened in 1913 (see my Report, p. 22) were further carefully explored in 1914 by Mr. F. Lambert, Mr. Thos. Wilson, and Dr. Norman; the Post Office gave full facilities. Over 100 'potholes' were detected, of which about forty yielded more or less datable rubbish, mainly potsherds. Four contained objects of about A.D. 50-80, though not in great quantity--four bits of decorated Samian and eight Samian stamps--and fourteen contained objects of about A.D. 70-100; the rest seemed to belong to the second century, with some few later items intermixed. One would infer that a little rubbish was deposited here before the Flavian period, but that after about A.D. 70 or 80 the site was freely used as a rubbish-ground for three generations or more. Two objects may be noted, a gold ring bearing the owner's initials Q. D. D. and a bit of inscribed wood from the lining of a well or pit (p. 35). (b) At the top of King William Street, between Sherborne Lane and Abchurch Lane, not so far from the Mansion House, five large pits were opened in the summer of 1914, in the course of ordinary contractors' building work. They could not be so minutely examined as the Post Office pits, but it was possible to observe that their datable potsherds fell roughly within the period A.D. 50-100, and that a good many potsherds were earlier than the Flavian age; there must have been considerable deposit of rubbish here before A.D. 70 or thereabouts, and it must have ceased about the end of the century. A full account of both groups of pits was given to the Society of Antiquaries by Mr. F. Lambert on February 11, 1915; illustrated notices of the Post Office finds were