Chapter III: Part 3

Several years ago a mass of masonry with a face to the south was found under Bishopsgate Street a little within the line of the wall; underlying it was “puddling of flint and clay” over a wide area. It was suggested at the time (_Archæeol._ lx. p. 58) that this masonry and foundation might have belonged to Roman Bishopsgate, and the finding of what seems to have been a similar platform at Newgate strengthens the hypothesis. It had long ago been pointed out by T. Wright that the gate at Lymne was raised on a platform of big stones. At Lymne and Pevensey entrance gates had round-fronted towers, and the great gate at Colchester had quadrants.

Mediæval Aldgate had two round-fronted towers; these are shown in the Survey of Holy Trinity Priory mentioned above, and they are so similar to the bastions of the wall that I was led to suggest that the double gateway and towers were probably substantially Roman work (Fig. 40). Some confirmation of this is given in _V.C.H._, but compare _Archæologia_, xliii. Fitzstephen, writing at the end of the twelfth century, says that London had “double gates,” and this was doubtless so from Roman days.

FIG. 40.
]

The Roman ditch outside Aldersgate, with a foundation for a bridge pointing towards the gate, was found about thirty years ago, and this is evidence for a Roman gate on this site (_Archæol._ lii.). Ludgate is guaranteed as Roman by the antiquity of the Strand and Fleet Street. Stow says that in 1595 he observed on the north side of Fleet Street from Chancery Lane to St. Dunstan’s Church, 4 ft. below the surface, “a pavement of hard stone, more sufficient than the first, under which they found in the made ground piles of timber almost close together, the same being black as pitch and rotten, which proved that the ground there, as sundry other places of the City, had been a marsh.” Close piling was such a common Roman procedure that it may not be doubted that what Stow observed was the Roman road to Ludgate.

Mediæval Aldgate can be restored very fully by comparing the plan mentioned above with the view of the City given by Braun and Hogenberg (_c._ 1550). The gate is so accurately represented that two stair turrets appear over the positions where stairs are shown in the plan. If this gate is so accurately drawn, then the other indications may be accepted. In the Pepys collection, Cambridge, is an engraved view of a gate dated 1688; in the list of contents this is described as Cripplegate, but I believe it is rather Bishopsgate. It was an unaltered mediæval structure, with corbelled battlements and three statues in niches, one on each of the towers and one in the centre. Newgate is also represented in a woodcut view of about the same time, and in an engraving of considerable accuracy, from a book entitled _Herba Parietis_; here even Whittington’s coat-of-arms plainly appears. For a possible view of the Bridge gate, _c._ 1416, see an article by Mr. Weale in the _Burlington Magazine_, 1904.

A Roman road on piles has recently been found in Southwark (_Archæol._ lxiii.). Adding the Bridge gate, we now have evidence for the existence in Roman days of the six chief gates of Londinium. It has been suggested that there may have been an earth bank inside the walls, as at Silchester, but the different relation of the fronts of the gates to the walls in London are contrary arguments.

_Ditches._—When the site of Newgate was excavated I saw the slope of the ditch clearly defined by the blacker earth lying above the clean yellow gravel. The latest and clearest account of the ditches is in _Archæologia_, lxiii. There was first a narrow V-shaped ditch dug when the wall was first built. A second wider ditch was excavated outside the other, which was at least partly filled when the bastions were built. There were similar double ditches at Silchester, and it has been pointed out that there the earlier V-shaped ditch probably supplied the gravel for building the wall; possibly this was the case at London too. The wide ditch was probably further expanded in front of the gates; it was about 75 ft. wide at the top of the bank outside Aldersgate.

_The Original Port of London and the Bridge._—The space within the completed walls has been computed to have been about 330 acres by Dr. Philip Norman. Dr. Haverfield says: “At London, Silchester, Trier, Cologne, the walls seem to have enclosed the town at near its largest” (_Romanization_). Roach Smith first remarked that from the position of burials within the area of the City we might infer the position of an earlier Londinium. Loftus Brock also, following Woodward, in pointing out that the northern cemetery had come within the space enclosed by the City Wall at Bishopsgate, used the same argument. Mr. Reginald Smith plotted all the known burials on a plan. Mr. Lambert has also laid down the find spots of coins of different dates. In his recent paper in _Archæology_ he suggests that a stratum of charred material between London Bridge and the Walbrook represents the early Londinium destroyed by Boadicea. A large number of rubbish pits have been found within the walls. Putting these facts together it is evident that the original site of Londinium must have been by the inlet of the Walbrook, and it is probable that this little tidal creek was the first port of London—the seaport of Celtic Verulam, to which an old road led by Aldersgate and Islington. It is likely that before the Roman walls were built some defensive bank would have been thrown up between the Fleet and the Walbrook; compare the earth banks at Colchester. Can Barbican represent such a defence?

London Bridge is mentioned in the tenth century. Stow tells us that it was first of timber. Then in 1067 a charter speaks of “Botolph’s Gate, with a wharf which was at the head of London Bridge.” He goes on: “About the year 1176 the stone bridge was begun near unto the bridge of timber, but towards the west, for Botolph’s wharf was, in the Conqueror’s time, at the head of London Bridge.”

Nothing was known of a Roman bridge until last century. Then when the old stone bridge was destroyed evidence was found which convinced observers of the time that a Roman bridge had preceded it on the same line. Recently some writers, while accepting the Roman bridge as proved, have preferred to put it back to Stow’s line. Haverfield says: “No traces of a Roman bridge have yet been found (_Archæologia_, lx.): the oldest mediæval bridge (eleventh century) is said by Stow to have been near Botolph’s wharf (see plan).” This plan shows the bridge “temp. William the Conqueror” far to the east of Fish Street Hill (see also _V.C.H._). Exactly what Haverfield meant by saying that no traces of the bridge had been found is hard to say; it seems to have been as loose a statement as the one which seems to imply that the earliest mediæval bridge was of the eleventh century.

Roach Smith, a cautious observer, was entirely convinced by the evidence that the mediæval bridge followed the course of the Roman bridge. “Throughout the line of the old bridge many thousands of Roman coins, with abundance of Roman pottery, were discovered, and beneath some of the central piles brass medallions of Aurelius, Faustina and Commodus. The enormous quantity of Roman coins may be accounted for by the practice of the Romans ... they may have been deposited upon the building or repairs of the bridge, as well as upon the accession of a new emperor.... The beautiful works of art which were discovered alongside the foundations, the colossal bronze head of Hadrian, the bronze images of Apollo, Mercury, Atys ... and other relics were possibly thrown into the river by early Christians” (_Archæol. Jour._, vol. i.). This seems substantial evidence. The charter cited by Stow only speaks of a wharf as being at the head of London Bridge; it does not tell us that the bridge ran into the middle of the wharf. The Roman bridge was linked up with an approach from the south over a raised causeway; the bridge-ends would have required much consolidation, and the foundations in the great tidal river must have been extremely difficult to construct. We should need very clear demonstration before we could believe that the early Saxons did more than patch up the work of skilled Roman engineers. Altering of the bridge to the Gracechurch Street line on the City side in 1176 would have meant replanning on a big scale. The ancient line of approach on the south side is guaranteed by the area of Roman finds (see _V.C.H._ plan). Gracechurch Street is known to have existed before the Conquest, and the positions of the ancient churches of St. Magnus’s and St. Olaf’s at each end of the bridge are significant: the bridge, I believe, was in the parishes of these two churches.

Much more might be said, but I cannot think it is necessary. I conclude that the Roman bridge followed the line between the “Borough” and Gracechurch Street, and that the phrase in the charter was nothing more than a general indication of the position of the wharf.

After the building of the Roman bridge, Billingsgate may have succeeded the Walbrook creek as the chief port of London.

One of the sights of Londinium which may best be imagined is the approach over the bridge. Or we may think of the ring of turreted walls of the City by the river as seen from the northern heights. Or, again, we may think of the sights from the walk on the City Walls; the Kent hills beyond the Thames estuary, with ships coming up to make fast at Dowgate; then, turning to look inward over the City, we may imagine the narrow streets and plastered, red-tiled, houses. It must have been grim and grey when the roofs were covered with snow, and we may wonder what dwellers from the south thought of our fogs. Yet Londinium was a romantic city, a little Rome in the west, and we want some good story about it which shall bring it out of archæology into the minds of the citizens and the hearts of the children.

FROM A CARVING ON AN ALTAR AT RISINGHAM.
]

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+CHAPTER IV+

CEMETERIES AND TOMBS

“O more than mortal man that did this town begin, Whose knowledge
found the plot so fit to set it in. Built on a rising bank within a
vale to stand, And for thy healthful soil chose gravel mixed with
sand.”

DRAYTON’S _Polyolbion_.

CEMETERIES

THE site of London by a noble tidal river, or rather at the head of a long estuary, on clean gravel ground intersected with streams, was well chosen. The ground was open heath with scrubby vegetation, except for woods here and there where the soil was suitable. Sir Thomas More planned his “Utopia” on a site similar to that of London. The buildings of London have spoilt an excellent golf course! The walled city set down in the fair land must have been beautiful indeed, as seen from the Hampstead or Surrey hills. On approaching the turreted walls by the straight and narrow roads, the traveller would have had to pass through a wide belt of cemeteries. Around Londinium in its later state, the gardens of the dead would have come right up to the city ditch, just as at Constantinople the beautiful Turkish cemeteries, with their noble cypresses, lie close beside the walls of the city.

“Around Rome was a great belt of cemeteries; the sides of the main roads issuing from the gates were especially favoured sites; the chief region of all was that crossed by the Via Appia and Via Latina” (Lanciani).

“An immense field of the dead had extended all along the north-eastern quarter of ancient London, from Wapping Marsh to the fen beyond Moorfields” (C. Knight).

Goodman’s Fields, Moorfields, Spitalfields, were all cemeteries, and it is curious that they all have in common the name of fields. In the valley of the Fleet River by Ludgate and Blackfriars on the west were also cemeteries; and others lay beyond Southwark (Battersea Fields and St. George’s Fields?). The city of the dead must have been impressive on account of its extent and the number of its population, and doubtless it was beautiful. The harsh horror of modern cemeteries is a new thing on the earth. In antiquity, cemeteries had beauty, poetry, history.

The monuments of Londinium would have been of many kinds, small and big—columns, sculptures, mausolea, altar-tombs, tomb-houses, and steles or slabs. These tombs were not cold and pale, but profusely carved, and, doubtless, in most cases, coloured. The monuments in the museum at Trèves show many traces of colour—red, green and yellow, if I remember aright. Dr. Ashby recently described a huge Roman necropolis at Syracuse in words which might apply to Londinium. “Fragments of memorials were found, varying from simple steles and columns to the chapel with rich architectural forms, the decorative portions being in soft limestone with considerable traces of polychromy.” Painting over coarse soft stone was a general tradition, and bright colour liberally applied would greatly change the aspect of rather crude carvings. At Bath an inscription mentions the repair and repainting of a building. This might be internal painting, but it was an external inscription and probably included outside work. The Corinthian temple at Bath was decorated with colour on the exterior. Mr. Irvine says of a piece of the cornice: “Considerable portions of the red paint with which it had been covered remained among the carving.”

Finds of burials are still not infrequent in London; as specimen cases I quote two recent newspaper clippings: “A workman excavating in Cannon Street Road, Stepney, has unearthed an urn containing bones at a depth of 2 ft. below the road level; Sir C. H. Read observed that it provided a link in the track of the Roman road eastward, as the custom was to deposit these urns at the sides of the roads” (December 19, 1919). “The discovery of two Roman urns in Mansell Street, Goodman’s Fields, is of considerable importance. The urns were found about 10 ft. below the garden of a house. Both contained inner cinerary urns with calcined remains. The perfect one resembles an ordinary jar with a cover; the outer urn is perfectly round, and has handles on each side by the mouth. It is believed that the site was that of a Roman villa; bricks and tiles having been discovered in other parts of the site” (1913). The urns are now in the London Museum.

The actual monuments once on the east of the City are represented by the fragments found in the Tower Hill bastion; those to the north, by the stones found in the Camomile Street and other bastions; those on the west, by the soldier’s monument found at Ludgate Hill by Wren, by later discoveries near Ludgate Hill, in 1806, and the fragment of the monument of Celsus found on the Blackfriars site.

_Steles._—A memorial slab in the Guildhall Museum is particularly interesting, as it is obviously in the tradition of Hellenistic art. It is a true stele of the usual small scale, about 2 ft. wide and 2½ ft. high; it bears a relief sculpture of a soldier in a panel bordered by pilasters and finished with a pedimental top (Fig. 41). This broken slab is in the reserve collection and is not usually visible, nor is it in the catalogue; the supposition is that it was found in one of the bastions with so many other remnants of tombs. It must, I think, be one of the earliest Roman monuments discovered in London.

FIG. 41.
]

At the Guildhall is shown a sculptured slab thus described: “Monumental tablet, marble, bearing in relief the figure of a man armed with a trident and sword (?), and having a shield-like protection to the upper portion of his left arm; above is a fragmentary inscription; Greek; 21¾ × 15½ × 3½ in.: Tottenham Court Road.” It was illustrated in an early volume of _Archæologia_ (xi. p. 48). On the original drawing at the Society of Antiquaries is written: “This white marble slab was found by Mr. Miller among the ruins of a house at Islington. It is now fixed up on the front of a warehouse in High Timber Street, near Labour-in-Vain Hill.” (This was south of Thames Street in the City.) The inscription is given by Hübner. With the writer in _V.C.H._, we may doubt whether this slab is not an importation like the Arundel Marbles; but other works in white marble will be described in this section, and gladiators were well known in Londinium (Fig. 42).

FIG. 42.
]

FIG. 43.
]

In the British Museum is a small stele with a well-carved relief of a man heavily draped in a dignified pose and classical taste, and also having a Greek inscription. This stone slab is little more than 1 ft. wide by about 2½ ft. high (Fig. 43). It was obtained in 1911, but it was drawn by Archer about eighty years ago. It was found in White’s Conduit Fields, that is, near Lamb’s Conduit Street. This, too, has a Greek inscription of which I can only make out the last word and a few other letters:

. . . . . ΟC
. . . . . ΟΥ
. . Ε ΧΑΙΡΕ

The last word is Farewell. I have felt some doubt as to this really pretty little work being a London antiquity. My sketch is given from Archer’s drawing. Although he may have restored it to some degree, it is probable that it has suffered from decay since he drew it. Other Greek inscriptions have been found in Britain.

There is another stele at the Guildhall which is so similar in several respects to the one just described that it might have been carved in the same shop. It is described in the catalogue as a “Monumental slab, limestone, on which is represented a figure of a man and child; the former is clothed in a toga, the folds of which he is holding in his left hand; 26 × 13½ × 2¼ in.” That two slabs so much alike should be discovered in one city, is a strong argument in favour of their having originated there. Notice, further, how the little pediment over the British Museum slab resembles that of the slab of the soldier first described. Again, the wide, plain margins are like those of the Gladiator slab. The evidence seems to be in favour of our accepting all the four slabs described as truly London works.

In the British Museum (the Roman corridor) is a tall inscribed slab of the headstone type, about 6½ ft. high (Fig. 44). We may see clearly that it is a descendant of the steles by noting a few little points. It has the side pilasters and a pediment on which some lumps carry on the tradition of acroteria. An inscription occupies the field where the steles have sculptured reliefs, and a lower space is occupied by a festoon. From the inscription, NA ATIENI, it seems that it commemorated a man born in Athens. This slab is especially like a large stele at Cirencester which had two panels, the upper one having a relief and the lower an inscription. Proportions, pilasters, pediment are all like our London slab. Haverfield assigned the Cirencester slab to the end of the first century, and the London one can only be a little later. The inscription terminates with the early formula: H[IC] S[ITUS] EST.

FIG. 44.
]

This slab is much weathered and it stands at the Museum in a bad light, where it is difficult to make out the details. Running stems, with flowers on the pilasters, are quite pretty (Fig. 45), and, indeed, the whole thing has dignity. The lettering was free and doubtless more elegant than the painted forms now suggest.

Several larger memorial slabs have been found in London which had big reliefs of soldiers. One at the Guildhall and another at Oxford will be described under sculpture. There are two fragments in the British Museum which may stand for the type and be discussed here. One is a head a little less than life-size, part of a standing figure in a round-topped recess. Above is an inscription naming Celsus a _speculator_; it was found at Blackfriars in 1876 (_The Builder_). This much-injured fragment appears very rude, but the others of this class were competent works of sculpture. The second is only a head now in the upper gallery at the Museum; both were probably works of the first half of the second century. Four _known_ examples of this type must represent many—perhaps dozens which once existed.

FIG. 45.
]

At the Guildhall is a fragment of sepulchral sculpture, which may have been part of a larger monument rather than of a stele, but I will speak of it here. Just enough remains to allow of the restoration of the scheme. A winged Cupid at the end of a panel which doubtless bore an inscription, would have been one of a pair. The Cupid holds an ivy-leaf, symbol of the grave, and above is a festoon with a bird perched on it (Fig. 46). Two or three grave slabs at Chester with reliefs of sepulchral banquets have similar festoons and birds which must have had symbolic reference to an after-life.

FIG. 46.
]

A much-battered fragment of relief sculpture at the Guildhall may, I think, be a remnant of a sepulchral banquet; it shows the upper part of a man in a recess with the point of what looks like the arm of the usual sofa-like bench behind him.

_Chests and Coffins._—In earlier Roman Britain bodies were cremated and the ashes disposed in urns, lead boxes, and in other ways. There is in the British Museum a truly magnificent urn of hard porphyry-like stone which was found in Warwick Square. At the Guildhall is part of a sarcophagus-like chest about 2 ft. by 2½ ft. (Fig. 47). Its discovery was recorded by Price thus: “A coped stone of a marble tomb has been discovered near to the west door of St. Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate; associated with it was a coin of Constantine Junior, A.D. 317-340” (_London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Trans._, vol. v. 413). The material has shining particles, and seems to be white marble. In this respect it should be compared with the gladiator relief already described, and the fine Clapton sarcophagus mentioned below. The association with the coin must have been accidental, for this chest cannot, I think, be later than the second century. It would have contained an urn holding burnt bones; compare a rude stone cist from Harpenden in the British Museum.

FIG. 47.
]

An excellent account of London graves is given in _V.C.H._ Stow described the finds in Spitalfields in his day thus: “Divers coffins of stone, and the bones of men without coffins, and great nails of iron were found a quarter of a yard long. I beheld the bones of a man lying, his head north, and round about some such nails, wherefore I considered them to be the nails of his coffin.” Many plain coffins of stone have been found in the City and suburbs. In an old MSS. collection which I have, is the note: “About Dec. 1717, was taken up out of ye ground near ye new church of Rotherhithe, a stone coffin of prodigious size in which was ye skeleton of a man 10 foot long” (!). A Minute of the Society of Antiquaries (July 28, 1725) reads: “An ancient glass vase of bell-shape found in a stone coffin, 14 ft. under the ground by the portico of St. Martin’s Church [in the Fields]; ’tis now in Sir Hans Sloan’s collection.” The “vase” was doubtless one of the little ⊥-shaped bottles. Price described a stone coffin found in Fleet Lane nearly 8 ft. long, containing a skeleton in lime.

The wooden coffins must have been still more common. Conyers, about 1670, recorded the finding of one in an excavation at Fleet ditch. “About ye middle of the new ditch as low as ye bottom of ye old wall there were found an oak coffin turned black, of boards with bands, a man’s length from ye old ditch wall, upon the old wharfing, or, as I suppose, natural ground wharfed upon. In this coffin was a glass vial in ye fashion ⊥ [an expanded base with long neck], and brass like a hinge, these lay amongst the bones, the glass I have by me” (Conyer’s MS.). This was evidently one of the chests described by Mr. Ward: “Wooden coffins or chests were in common use, as the presence of iron nails, iron or bronze bindings, hinges, and other mountings prove.” An oak coffin was found in Moorfields in 1873, the objects from which are now in the British Museum.

Two stone coffins are preserved in the Guildhall collection. Two containing lead coffins were found at Pie Corner, St. Bartholomew’s, in 1877 (_London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Trans._, vol. v.). Lead coffins were usually ornamented, and will be further considered. It is probable that some of the coffins of wood and of stone were Christian burials.

The coffins of stone described were roughly wrought, and they were buried in the ground. Others, however, have been found which are handsome pieces of workmanship, and bear inscriptions.

FIG. 48.
]

Three well-decorated stone sarcophagi found in London are at the Guildhall, the British Museum and Westminster Abbey. The sarcophagus at the Abbey is the earliest in style. It was found under the green at the angle between the north transept and the nave in 1869, and now rests by the entry to the Chapter House. On the cover is a large cross which seems to have been cut on the old stone in the twelfth century. Yet the evidence seems to have been against reuse in Christian times. It was the opinion, however, of the discoverers that it had been moved from its original site, but it was found close to the presumed Roman road to the river bank. The front has a panel with an inscription in excellent lettering, giving the name of Valerius, a superventor in the army, and beginning MEMORIAE. This form is found in two or three other British inscriptions, and was frequently used on tombs at Lyons. The Westminster inscription and the panel in which it is placed are of comparatively early style, and it is difficult to think that such work can be later than about A.D. 200. On the other hand, it is said that the new mode of burial at full length in a sarcophagus was not adopted in Britain until about A.D. 250. I do not suppose that our example is so late as this. The front may be compared with a slab in Edinburgh Museum, _c._ A.D. 160 (_J.R.S._, ii. p. 128). The Lyons inscriptions of a similar type are also of the age of the Antonines. Altogether, I cannot think that the Westminster tomb is later than A.D. 200. It is possible that it may first have contained cinerated remains and not have been a sarcophagus proper.

FIG. 49.
]

The sarcophagus at the British Museum was found in Haydon Square, Minories, the site of a part of a cemetery where in 1797 “many curious fragments of Roman pottery as well as glass vessels were discovered, and two complete urns with bone ashes, etc., were taken up.” This stone sarcophagus contained a lead coffin, now also in the British Museum. At the Society of Antiquaries is an accurate drawing of both made at the time of the discovery. The cover was securely clamped down with iron (Fig. 48). At the centre of the front is a simple medallion portrait head, the rest is filled with flutes (Fig. 49). The outer face of the cover, which slants up to a ridge, is carved with acanthus leaves (Fig. 50), the inner slanting side is plain, and this shows that it stood in a building or against a wall. At the two ends are carved baskets of fruits, and these must be symbolical (Fig. 48). This tomb had no inscription; it belonged to a time when inscriptions were few. Whether itself the tomb of a Christian or not, it is of a Christian type, and I should date it about A.D. 340.

FIG. 50.
]

The sarcophagus now at the Guildhall was found at Clapton in 1867; it resembles that last described, and must be very nearly of the same date. It lay east and west, “the Christian orientation,” as Mr. Reginald Smith notes. The cover was attached to the lower part by strong iron straps (cf. Fig. 48). It is described as white marble or oolitic limestone, and there are many sparkling particles in the material. The front, which is 80 in. long, has a portrait bust at the centre in a circle, above a panel in which is the inscription, and the rest is filled with vertical flutings (Fig. 51).

FIG. 51.
]

The cover is lost, the back and ends are plain, and it probably stood in a building. The portrait relief is curiously early Christian in character. The fluting is exceptionally refined and effective. This is a truly beautiful work, and doubtless if it were in an Italian museum it would be much better known to Englishmen than it is. A full and excellent account of it is given by Price (_London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Proceed._, vol. iii.), in which he compared it with some tombs in the Lateran Museum, showing that it is in the style of early Christian monuments _c._ 340-50. (The same paper contains descriptions of several plain stone coffins.)

The inscription on the Clapton tomb was very short, hardly more than names, and it does not seem to have contained any expression of faith. The Haydon Square tomb had no inscription. This reticence is characteristic. “The historical inscriptions of this age can be counted on the fingers of one hand.... It is curious to find a noteworthy lack of ordinary sepulchral inscriptions of private persons in the fourth century; there are very few Christian tombs, but it is much more surprising to find a lack of those of the ordinary heathen type. Conceivably fourth-century tombs were handiest for the Saxon invader” (Sir C. Oman, _England before the Norman Conquest_). Christian inscriptions are very few in France also; there are not, I believe, half a dozen of the fourth century existing.

This tomb and the other are good examples of the skilful way in which forms were obtained in a block of stone without cutting to waste; observe how the mouldings in Figs. 49 and 50 lie just on the surfaces. This is a lesson for our own days.

I have felt that this able work in fine material could hardly have had its origin in Britain, but further consideration suggests that the balance of evidence is in our favour. We have seen that other works are in white marble; there are in the British Museum two or three fragments of white marble slabs, while in the London Museum there is a complete one. Several fragments of dado linings are also known. In the heyday of the mosaic pavements there must have been some “firm” of marble importers in London. The general resemblance of the Clapton sarcophagus to that found at Haydon Square is strongly in favour of their common origin. The cover was attached to the receptacle in a similar way with iron straps in both; in each case the flutes are separated by a sunk line. The man’s bust is very similar to the upper parts of the figures on the third and fourth steles above described. Altogether, I could suppose that both sarcophagi came from one shop, and that they were both the resting-places of Christians.

FIG. 52.
]

A number of tablets which have been found must have been fixed in buildings or against walls. At the British Museum is a small fragment with a part of an animal incised, probably one of a pair facing a central object. (Compare the griffins on the enamelled plate found in London, in the British Museum.) Some of these tablets are of Purbeck and other native marbles, and this shows that we had competent marble masons settled here—probably the same as the mosaic workers.

A small tablet, found in Goodman’s Fields, about 12 in. by 15 in., now at the Society of Antiquaries, was described by Roach Smith as of native green marble; and a fragment in the British Museum, found in Philpot Lane, is of green marble. The former (Fig. 52), judging by the wording of the inscription and style of the lettering, may be dated about A.D. 100.

On the whole, these Roman tombs had dignity and beauty, and a study of picked examples throughout Britain would be worth making. The lettering is admirable, and the inscriptions often have a quite human sound which is touching. The portrait reliefs are competent common work. We should now have to go to an R.A. for such things, and come away again without getting them. Some of the symbolic decoration speaks a universal language; the flowering scroll border and festoon of the slab, and the baskets of fruits on the sarcophagus, both in the British Museum, are more than ornaments. A stele at Colchester having a relief of a seated woman putting away her spinning into her work-box is really poetical. The sculpture is crude, but the idea is as fresh and beautiful as any tomb in the world can show.

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+CHAPTER V+

SOME LARGER MONUMENTS

“The Cemetery had for years been overcrowded with burned and
unburned burials; rains had caused the mounds to settle and the
ground had resumed its even surface.... I beg you to see that the
earth is raised to a mound again, and to have a smooth slab placed
upon it.”

—SIDONIUS, A.D. 467.

JOVE AND GIANT COLUMNS

A FEW of the more important sepulchral monuments have been reserved for special consideration. First among these I wish to discuss the fragments of what I suppose to have been examples of Jove and Giant columns, a class of monument frequently found on the Continent. These columns, it has been thought, were not naturalised in Britain. In _Archæologia_, lxix., Professor Haverfield, calling attention to an inscription at Cirencester, which seems to have formed part of a small column of the kind, said that except for this inscription no other evidence had been found in Britain for the existence of such columns. Again, in another place, after speaking of figures of the Mother Goddesses, he added, “We may ascribe to another immigrant the _Colonne au géant_ found at Cirencester” (_Romanization_). A large number of these monuments has been found in north-east Gaul. The main element was a decorated column the capital of which supported a sculptured group of “Juppiter and a fallen barbarian giant.” Such a column usually stood on a pedestal having an inscription to the god; around the pedestal were relief sculptures of several figures, and there were four busts on the capital. Professor Haverfield, whose description I have been condensing, agreed with a suggestion made by Mrs. Strong that a fine Corinthian capital at Cirencester, which has four busts set among the acanthus leafage, may have belonged to the Jove and Giant pillar. This, however, is negatived by the scale of the capital as compared with the inscribed stone, which is only about 1½ ft. square. Further, as he himself allowed, a second capital similar to the other exists, except for its upper part. Both the complete capital and the fragment were found on the site of the Basilica, and we may hardly doubt that both belonged to that building.

FIG. 53.
]

Jove and Giant pillars, as I have called them, have been exhaustively treated in a German work (_Hertlein_, 1910). Espèrandieu, in his volumes on Roman sculptures in Gaul, very fully illustrates two of these monuments, one at Cussy-la-Colonne, near Autun (2032), and another at Merten (4425), also a large number of fragments. He describes the Cussy column as having been about 44 ft. high (including the sculptured group) and 2 ft. in diameter; the bottom of the pillar was carved in a trellis pattern (Fig. 53). The column at Merten was about 48 ft. high with a diameter of 2¼ ft. Under the number 4130, Espèrandieu says of a square sculptured stone: “It is generally agreed that these ‘four-god stones’ are not altars but pedestals. They supported a second stone, usually of octagonal form, with representations of the Gods of the Week upon it. From this rose a column and capital, and, crowning all, a god riding and crushing under the hoofs of his steed a giant who terminates in two snakes.” Such columns had a religious significance, and “their frequency, above all on the banks of the Rhine, is surprising” (No. 4425). A good résumé of what had been said of these monuments was given by Mrs. Strong in 1911 (_J.R.S._); the general conclusion was that the Jove of the pillar was a sun and thunder divinity, “A Romanised sun-god”; the columns embodied “a whole allegory of times and seasons.” “Hertlein interprets the columns as Irmin-säulen, symbols of the universe; columns such as, according to Teutonic mythology, supported the heavens, here typified by Juppiter as lord of the skies.” Some writers had preferred to see a Roman emperor riding over a barbarian.

In the British Museum there is a carved fragment of a highly decorated column which, I have little doubt, belonged to a Jove and Giant column. This stone was found built into the lower part of the City Wall along the river bank. Roach Smith, in whose collection it was, described it first in 1844 (_Archæol. Jour._, vol. i.) as: “A portion of a decorated stone which appears to have formed part of an altar.” Later he visited the Jove and Giant column near Autun, and in describing it in _Collectanea Antiqua_ (vol. vi.) he refers to our stone. Subsequently in the Catalogue of his collection he spoke of the stone as: “Fragment in green sandstone, with a trellis pattern with leaves and fruit. It appears to have formed part of a sepulchral monument, and was taken from the foundations of a Roman wall in Thames Street.” In saying this he doubtless had the Cussy monument in his mind, for that was understood to be a sepulchral monument. Our fragment is from a circular shaft which must have been about 2½ ft. in diameter. The surface is carved over with a pattern like a trellis of laths, in the interspaces of which appear leaves and bunches of grapes Fig. 54 is restored from the fragment).

FIG. 54.
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FIG. 55.
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There is another stone in the British Museum which also probably formed part of a Jove and Giant column (Fig. 55). This was found at Great Chesterford, an important Roman site in Essex. It is described as a “Basin with bas-reliefs of the Roman deities.” These figures have long ago been identified as four of the seven gods of the days of the week (Thos. Wright). The fragment was made into a basin in modern times; it is really half of an octagon, and on the top surface appear the sinkings for two big cramps which linked this to an adjoining similar stone (Fig. 56). For what is known of it, see Roach Smith’s account in _Collectanea Antiqua_ and the _Journal of the Archæological Association_, vol. iii. In the latter it is said that it is irregular and not semi-octagonal; but the breaking down of the upper part into the recesses which contain the reliefs gives the appearance of irregularity—that is all. The octagon was 3¾ ft. in diameter. One of the sides was blank. One-half of this blank side remains, and also half of the opposite side, which retains enough of the sculpture to show that the figure carried a spear over the right shoulder. The next figure, going clockwise, was Mercury; he had a mantle over his left shoulder and carried his wand; points remaining by his hair show that his cap was winged. The third figure was Jove, a mature figure with broad breast, bearded head, and long hair. The fourth figure, who carried a hand-mirror, was Venus. These figures agree very closely with a set of the planets arranged in similar order on a mosaic floor found at Bramdean, and by this comparison it is evident that the one with a spear was Mars. The eighth, or blank, side followed the figure of Venus, so that the series must have begun with Saturn, in the Roman way. We may now say that the eight sides contained figures of the Deities of the Days in proper order: Saturn, Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus.

FIG. 56.
]

Espèrandieu illustrates two stones from a very similar monument found in France at D’Yzeures (iv. p. 136). These are the halves of an octagon about 3 ft. 7 in. across which was built up in courses. One of the stones comes from a lower course, the other from an upper. The vertical joints ran from an angle to an angle so that they should not cut through the sculptures on the sides. These reliefs were “possibly the Divinities of the Days of the Week.” We have also in England remnants of a similar sculptured octagon which was built up in courses. These are in Northampton Museum, and are illustrated in _V.C.H._ One of two stones shows the tops of the heads of a series of figures, the other stone has their feet. They are described as “Two fragments of an octagonal monument having figures in shallow niches, possibly the Deities of the Days of the Week” (Haverfield, vol. i. p. 181). Both these stones were of little height, the upper one only contained the crowns of the heads of the figures and flat curves forming the tops of the niches (compare Fig. 56).

We are now in a position to restore the Chesterford octagon (Fig. 56). The heads of the figures on the stone in the British Museum are not complete, for a bed joint runs just over the eyes, and the crowns of the heads must have been on another stone, as at Northampton. Two other courses, at least, beneath what is represented by the existing fragment, would have been required to complete the figures, and indeed their feet were possibly on a narrow base-course, as at Northampton. The Chesterford stone and the fragments at Northampton must represent important Jove and Giant pillars. The size of the former, it should be observed, seems most suitable for a column shaft of about 2½ ft. in diameter, the size of the lattice column represented by the fragment in the British Museum (Fig. 54), which probably, as said above, was itself part of a Jove and Giant column. There is thus high probability that there were important Jove and Giant columns, having pedestals sculptured with the Deities of the Days, at London, Chesterford and Northampton. If this is so, such columns must have been frequently erected in Britain, and we may look for evidences for the existence of others.

FIG. 57.
]

In vol. iii. of _Collectanea_ Roach Smith illustrated a small highly decorated column found at Wroxeter, 13 in. in diameter. It was similar to the Cussy column in having a lattice pattern below and a scale pattern above. Here and there were little relief subjects—a Cupid and a youthful Bacchus with grapes. This was probably part of another Jove and Giant column, or at least of a single sepulchral column; there would hardly have been more than one so decorated.

Several pieces of small highly decorated columns have been found in London, which must, I think, have belonged to memorial pillars and not to edifices. One of these found in the Houndsditch bastion, only 9 in. in diameter, was decorated with a simple lattice pattern (Fig. 57). Another is in the London Museum, which, in the part preserved, has a scale pattern (Fig. 58). A third fragment, at the Guildhall, has again both lattice and scale patterns (Fig. 59).

FIG. 58.
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FIG. 59.
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Jove and Giant columns were doubtless sepulchral, but they were also religiously significant. They were intended to suggest ideas of the conquest of evil powers and of renewal. Dr. Haverfield was, I think, mistaken in the passage quoted above in speaking of the giant as a barbarian; he was rather a power of darkness, and this is brought out by a piece of British evidence. Figures of four such creatures, each terminating in two serpents, fill the corners of a mosaic floor found at Horkstow; they support a large circle divided into two rings and a centre; in the outer ring are Nereids and swimming creatures, in the inner one little genii with baskets of flowers, etc. The rings are divided into four parts by radial bands, and the general suggestion must be of the seasons and the cosmic order. The snake-legged creatures in the corners are the _Aloadæ_, the giants who attempted to scale Olympus by putting Pelion on Ossa. They are here in their proper places in the chaos outside the circle of the ordered world, “the wheel of nature.” This pavement helps to explain the general idea which led to the erection of Jove and Giant pillars, and shows that these ideas were current in Britain. The column is the world-axis set round by planets and seasons; above, the power of light and order hurls back the giant of gloom and strife (see Daremberg and Saglio, _Aloadæ_). In the foreign examples of the sculptured groups which rested on the capitals of the columns Jove sometimes had a wheel as his weapon, and wheels have been found carved in Roman altars in Britain. “The sides of two large altars to Jupiter at Walton House bear the thunderbolt for Jupiter and a wheel, which possibly equates the Jupiter of these altars with the Gaulish ‘wheel-god’” (Ward). An altar at Housesteads invokes the sun-god. The Jove and Giant pillars are evidence of a time when the old mythological names had been refitted to express ideas of good and evil, cosmic forces, and supposed planetary influences. The mosaic floors, as we shall see, provide further evidence of what was “higher thought” in third-century Roman Britain.

FIG. 60.
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_Mausolea._—When the bastion of the City Wall in Camomile Street was destroyed, many sculptured stones from small but very richly decorated edifices were found. Price recognised that some of them must have belonged to an important sepulchral monument comparable with the Igel monument near Trèves. I saw, in 1912, some stones at Trèves which had a scale pattern cut on a roof-like slope, and soon after my return I noticed a stone of the same sort in the Guildhall Museum. Without having Price’s words in my mind I came to the conclusion that in the cemeteries of Londinium there must have been mausoleum-like monuments of the kind which the Museum at Trèves had shown me were common in the neighbourhood of that city. Several of these mausolea are now illustrated in Espèrandieu’s great work on the Roman sculptures of Gaul. In 1913 I offered a tentative restoration of a London monument of this type in the _Architectural Review_.

FIG. 61.
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FIG. 62.
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In Fig. 60 I have roughly sketched two stones at the Guildhall which evidently came from a mausoleum of the Trèves type, also a course from a fluted angle pilaster, showing part of an inscription. Compare No. 5153 in Espèrandieu’s work, where we find a similar scale pattern, angle pilasters bonded in courses with masonry, and the lettering of an inscription coming close up to the pilaster. Another stone at the Guildhall has a capital of a small angle pilaster on a similar course. This capital has heads set amongst the leaves almost exactly like the capitals of the Igel mausoleum at Trèves (see Fig. 61). Another stone at the Guildhall is part of a frieze in two bands, the upper one of festoons and the lower one of trees, and dogs coursing hares (Fig. 62). Similar hunting subjects are found on foreign monuments; the festoons and the scale of the work are also appropriate for a structure of the mausoleum kind, and these five stones may very well have belonged to the same monument (Fig. 63). On another stone at the Guildhall is part of an inscription in widely-spaced lines containing the letters ... R LXX, doubtless part of ANNOR LXX, which actually occurs on the tall headstone in the British Museum. At least two mausolea are probably represented by the stones at the Guildhall. Like the Igel monument, they were probably the tombs of rich merchants. There must have been a large number of tombs of this type in Britain. Bruce and Roach Smith illustrated and described foundations of three tombs by the Roman road near High Rochester, one circular and two square; the first was possibly big enough to have been a tomb-house. At Bath, some years ago, I noticed a stone which could only have been part of a square monument (Fig. 64). This had the tops of the niches cut like shells.

FIG. 63.
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Another stone at the Guildhall, found like the others in the Camomile Street bastion, has a short length of a decorated angle column recessed as a “nook-shaft” and about a foot in diameter (Fig. 65). This, I think, must have formed part of a similar monument. (This stone is not, I think, given by Price, but it appears in an illustration in _J.B.A.A._)

The mausolea of Londinium must have been very similar to the monuments at Trèves, and it may not be doubted that they would have been coloured as some of those were coloured. (I have a note that sculpture, as well as the decorative carving, was coloured.) The braided work of Early Saxon monuments would have been “picked out” in colour in a similar way, and I believe that fragments which have been found prove this.

FIG. 64.
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FIG. 65.
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FIG. 66.
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ALTAR-TOMBS

Another type of tomb, of which many examples exist in the Museum at Trèves, is an altar-like structure having a square body surmounted by a slab ending in two big bolster-like rolls covered with scale or leaf ornament (see Espèrandieu). Tombs of this type have been found in Pompeii. We have in the British Museum parts of a very fine monument of this class. One of two stones is a great roll, and another has an inscription in handsome letters. These were found together in the foundations of one of the bastions of the City Wall at Tower Hill, as described in _The Builder_, September 4, 1852. In the illustration which was reproduced before (Fig. 33), a pile of other stones is shown, one of which, a moulding with a return, may have been the base of the same monument. The inscribed stone in the British Museum shows that the body of the monument was made up of four stones arranged as in the plan (Fig. 66), and cramped together; the size of this part was probably 7 by 5 Roman feet. It was not a sarcophagus, as the form seems to suggest, but a chest in which an urn containing ashes was placed. The examples at Trèves show that it was lifted on a high base. The covering part of our monument was made up of three stones of which one of the two end-pieces is in the Museum. The two end-pieces had large volute-like rolls similar to those on altars—for example, the little altar of Diana at Goldsmiths’ Hall. On these altars the central part usually rises again between the rolls into a gable-like shape, and that this type was followed in our tomb is shown by several examples at Trèves, as well as by the existing end stone which was evidently one of three; the little relief decoration on the remaining edge is suitable to have followed from relief carving in the central stone (Figs. 66 and 67). This tomb was a work of high quality, but it is badly shown; the two stones could be set up together so as to show the size and importance of the monument. If this were done and the Haydon Square and Clapton sarcophagi were shown with it, we should obtain a better understanding of the monuments of Londinium.

FIG. 67.
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