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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
"Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts" by W. R. Lethaby presents a nuanced exploration of the architectural and artisanal heritage of Roman London. Employing a richly descriptive prose style, Lethaby delves into the interplay between architecture and craftsmanship, examining how local materials and techniques shaped the urban landscape. The book is firmly rooted in the context of late 19th-century scholarship, marking a period when the revival of interest in classical antiquity was intertwined with the burgeoning Arts and Crafts movement, lending the text both scholarly rigor and an appreciation for the aesthetic dimensions of London's historic fabric. W. R. Lethaby was a prominent figure in the Arts and Crafts movement, whose fascination with medieval and Renaissance influences infused his architectural philosophy. His experience as an architect and educator, amassed through his involvement with numerous art and architectural institutions, undoubtedly provided him with a discerning eye for both craftsmanship and historical accuracy. Lethaby's commitment to the integration of art and utility reflects his broader vision for a society that honors its cultural heritage while embracing innovation. This volume is indispensable for anyone interested in the intersection of history, architecture, and craft. Lethaby's insights not only illuminate the physical remnants of Londinium but also evoke a sense of the lives and skills that contributed to its creation. Readers will find their understanding of urban heritage enriched, gaining a deeper appreciation for the enduring legacy of London's architectural evolution. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts
Table of Contents
Introduction
Uniting the city’s ancient name with its lived fabric, Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts insists that genuine architecture arises where civic purpose, humane proportion, and skilled making meet, and that London’s identity is legible in the intelligence of its workmanship.
W. R. Lethaby’s book is a work of architectural reflection and cultural criticism set in London, written by a leading architect, educator, and Arts and Crafts advocate of the early twentieth century. Drawing on the era’s reformist design discourse, it explores how buildings, streets, and artifacts embody values as well as techniques. The use of “Londinium” evokes the city’s deep past while focusing attention on the modern metropolis. Within the broader context of Arts and Crafts thinking in Britain, the book addresses how construction, craft training, and civic life interrelate, offering readers a sustained meditation on the built environment’s ethical as well as aesthetic stakes.
As a reading experience, the book is essayistic, lucid, and quietly persuasive, preferring measured observation over polemic. Lethaby’s voice balances historical awareness with practical insight, writing as someone who understands both the drawing board and the workbench. Without relying on grand rhetoric, he guides readers to attend to materials, methods, and the social conditions that make enduring work possible. The mood is reflective and civic-minded, encouraging a way of looking rather than supplying a catalogue of monuments. It is a study that invites the general reader and the practitioner alike to think about how cities are actually made and maintained.
Central themes include the integrity of materials, the dignity of labor, and the responsibilities of designers to the commonwealth. The book argues for continuity between design and making, challenging any sharp divide between conception and craft. It treats buildings as the outcomes of learned habits and cooperative endeavor, not as isolated gestures of taste. In this view, architectural form emerges from purpose, place, and skill, and the ordinary carries as much meaning as the exceptional. The title’s gesture to London’s antiquity underscores the long memory of techniques and traditions that shape the city’s streets, spaces, and surfaces.
Lethaby’s method is to read the metropolis as a workshop: he attends to how stone, brick, timber, metal, and glass are handled; how patterns of use refine a plan; and how patient workmanship steadies civic character. He is attentive to education—the ways in which apprenticeships, schools, and shared standards transmit knowledge—and to the public culture that supports good work. Rather than treating style as a fashion, he considers it a consequence of making well. The result is a portrait of London not as an agglomeration of facades but as a living organism knit together by practices, tools, and collaborative arts.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance is plain. Its emphasis on durability, fitness for purpose, and local skill resonates with current debates on sustainability, preservation, and the social value of craft. It raises questions about how cities can cultivate excellence without extravagance, how education might align creative ambition with material understanding, and how public institutions enable or hinder good building. The humane tone—firm in principle, modest in claims—offers a counterpoint to purely technocratic or purely aesthetic approaches, suggesting that the health of urban life depends on the often-unseen, collective intelligence of makers and maintainers.
Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts will appeal to those interested in architecture, urban history, design education, and the Arts and Crafts tradition, as well as to attentive walkers of London’s streets. It offers a framework for looking closely and judging fairly, equipping readers to see workmanship as a civic asset rather than a private luxury. In doing so, it aligns beauty with use, and ambition with responsibility. Lethaby’s reflections neither idealize the past nor romanticize the present; instead, they propose standards by which any city might measure its building culture, and invite us to care for what we make together.
Synopsis
W. R. Lethaby’s Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts surveys London’s built environment as the cumulative work of organized making. Bringing together historical observation, topographical reading, and reflections on building practice, he traces how the city’s form emerges from the labor and coordination of craftsmen across eras. The narrative sets out its scope by linking place, time, and technique, using archaeological reports, civic records, and surviving fabric to outline a method. London is treated as a continuous workshop where architecture is not an isolated art but a social process, and the book aims to show how that process shaped both monuments and ordinary streets.
The account begins with Roman Londinium, explaining how the site on the Thames dictated the early plan. Lethaby describes the bridge, riverfront, streets, and defensive works as practical responses to trade and security. He notes the basilica, baths, and wall as markers of official organization and imported craft systems, while acknowledging the fragmentary state of evidence. Materials, joints, and setting out are treated as clues to technique and administration. The Roman town is presented as a toolkit of building habits introduced to Britain, setting precedents in surveying, standardization, and the division of labor that later generations adapted to new needs.
After Rome, the book charts continuity and change in early medieval London. While much physical fabric was lost, Lethaby emphasizes persistent lines of movement, church sites, and defensive patterns that guided later building. The emergence of parishes and wards shaped responsibilities for repair and construction. Timber and stone practices coexisted, with workshops forming around major ecclesiastical works. The narrative points to the proto-guild environment in which masons, carpenters, and smiths organized themselves, and to the influence of monastic management. Architecture here is portrayed as incremental, guided by use and custom rather than by written theory, yet disciplined by shared craft rules.
In the high medieval period the city’s commercial expansion fostered formal guilds and civic institutions. Lethaby outlines how livery companies regulated training, quality, and pricing, reinforcing standards that affected both grand and ordinary building. Civic architecture, from the Guildhall to bridges and markets, is presented as collective work shaped by jurisdiction and finance. Cathedrals and abbeys are discussed as centers where design and making were coordinated, with masons’ lodges and site organization illustrating the integration of drawing, geometry, and handwork. The chapter emphasizes the interdependence of trades and the gradual refinement of forms through repetition, maintenance, and repair.
Late medieval and Tudor London are described through domestic and commercial building types, notably timber-framed houses with projecting upper stories. Lethaby considers plot patterns, street frontages, and building lines as products of custom and regulation aimed at stability and fire control. Craft ordinances and apprenticeship systems ensured continuity of technique, while local materials and supply routes shaped detail. Ornament is treated as the byproduct of method, with profiles and carvings arising logically from tools and joints. Economic cycles affected output and standards, but the city’s fabric remained a record of disciplined making, where practical solutions accumulated into recognizable urban character.
The Great Fire and its aftermath form a major turning point. Lethaby narrates the survey and replanning efforts, the role of the City authorities, and the organization of rebuilding under new statutes. He highlights how Christopher Wren’s office coordinated design, measurement, and craft execution across many parishes, standardizing elements without erasing local conditions. Brick and stone construction superseded much timber work, and classicism provided a common language for proportion and detail. The practicalities of contracts, measurement, and material supply receive attention, demonstrating how architectural intent was realized through a managed collaboration among trades within tight civic and economic constraints.
From the Georgian era into the nineteenth century, the book follows expansion, infrastructure, and new materials. Lethaby notes the spread of terraces, squares, and estates, where surveying, speculation, and pattern books shaped consistent streets. Iron, glass, and later steel introduced possibilities for larger spans and more light, influencing markets, stations, and bridges. He examines how component manufacture and transport altered site practice, shifting some work from the yard to the factory. The architect’s role broadened as regulation, sanitation, and public works demanded coordination across many crafts. Despite standardization, the city’s character still depended on informed workmanship and careful supervision.
Turning to principles, Lethaby articulates architecture as the ordered cooperation of crafts directed to use, durability, and beauty. He argues for truth in materials and economy of means, with proportion derived from measurable relations and the discipline of making. Ornament is shown as integral when it grows from structure and tool action, not applied as disguise. Examples from London illustrate how good results follow from clear purpose, competent drawing, and fair organization of labor. He advocates instruction grounded in workshops and real problems, cautioning against detached academicism. For him, the city’s best work exemplifies thoughtful procedure rather than stylistic display.
The book concludes by presenting London as a civic artifact built by generations of coordinated hands. Lethaby underscores that sound architecture depends on just arrangements among patrons, designers, and craftsmen, and on standards that respect materials, context, and public welfare. He urges continuity with tradition where it embodies practical wisdom, while welcoming invention that serves need. The overall message is that the health of architecture and crafts is inseparable from the city’s health. By understanding how buildings are made and maintained, London can be guided toward coherent growth, with craftsmanship providing the measure of authenticity and long-term service.
Historical Context
Written in the early 1920s by the architect-historian W. R. Lethaby, the book surveys London as both ancient Londinium and the modern metropolis, with the City and Westminster as its principal stage. It emerges from a post–First World War moment when archaeology, museums (notably the London Museum, opened in 1912), and municipal reform focused attention on the city’s material past. Lethaby writes as a leader of the Arts and Crafts movement and an educator in London institutions, using the capital’s fabric to argue for the unity of making and design. The time and place are thus doubly framed: Roman foundations and medieval craft traditions read through a 1920s lens of conservation, civic duty, and technical education.
The Roman conquest of AD 43 established Londinium as a strategic river port; after the Boudican revolt of AD 60–61, which burned the nascent town, it was rebuilt in stone with a forum-basilica (c. 70–90), a riverside quay system, and a bridge across the Thames. By the 2nd century, its population likely approached 40,000–60,000, and a defensive wall was added c. 200–225, portions of which survive near Tower Hill. Roman roads radiated to Verulamium and beyond, anchoring trade and craft supply. Lethaby treats these strata as the city’s structural memory: surveying walls, pavements, and construction techniques to show how Roman order, materials, and infrastructure set patterns later crafts and builders repeatedly reinterpreted.
After imperial withdrawal (formalized in 410), London contracted until revival under Anglo-Saxon and then Alfredian control. Viking attacks in 842 and 851 devastated the port; in 886 Alfred the Great reoccupied and refortified the old walled “Lundenburh,” re-establishing the city markets and repairing the bridge. Ecclesiastical foundations anchored civic life—St Paul’s Cathedral was first established in 604 under Bishop Mellitus with support from King Sæberht. Early law codes and borough customs began to regulate trading and workmanship. Lethaby reads this phase for its urban continuity: the refortified Roman circuit, revived wharves, and ecclesiastical patronage shaped craft organization, workshop siting, and the intertwining of sacred and mercantile building that persisted into the Middle Ages.
The Norman Conquest (1066) reorganized power, patronage, and materials. William I began the Tower of London c. 1078, employing Gundulf of Rochester and Caen stone; Old St Paul’s was rebuilt in the Romanesque after 1087. The first stone London Bridge rose between 1176 and 1209 under Peter of Colechurch, consolidating river trade and tolls. Civic autonomy advanced with Henry I’s charter (c. 1130) and recognition of the Commune (1191). Craft guilds gained structure: the Weavers received a royal charter in 1155; records of the Masons appear in 1356; the Carpenters secured a charter in 1477. The Guildhall (1411–1440) symbolized corporate craft authority. Lethaby mines these institutions—halls, ordinances, apprenticeships—as the framework that disciplined workmanship and transmitted technique.
The Black Death of 1348–49 reduced London’s population perhaps by a third to a half, constraining building but also creating opportunities for reorganized labor and parish rebuilding in the later 14th and 15th centuries. Tudor policies then rechanneled patronage: the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1541) redistributed lands and workshops, expanding Crown and private commissions and the Royal Works. The Statute of Artificers (1563) regulated apprenticeships and wages, shaping how trades trained and protected skill. Lethaby uses these shifts to show how craft identity adapted to changing sponsors—from monastic to royal and mercantile—and how statutory control, often negotiated through livery companies, sustained standards while accommodating new materials, imported timbers, and continental techniques.
The Great Fire of London (2–5 September 1666) destroyed some 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, the medieval St Paul’s, and the civic core from Pudding Lane to the Guildhall. In the aftermath, the Rebuilding of London Act (1667) created Fire Courts to settle property disputes and mandated brick and stone construction, party walls, thicker chimney breasts, and widened thoroughfares. Robert Hooke, as Surveyor to the City (from 1667), laid out new street lines and building plats. Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor of the King’s Works, led a vast ecclesiastical and civic rebuilding: approximately 51 parish churches were reconstructed between the 1670s and 1690s, while the new St Paul’s Cathedral rose from 1675 to its completion and consecration in 1710. This program mobilized an army of craftsmen—stone masons such as Edward Strong (father and son), master bricklayers, carvers including Grinling Gibbons, and smiths and plasterers organized through their companies—operating within precise contracts, measured work, and site logistics that became models for later building. Subsequent London Building Acts in the early 18th century (notably 1707 and 1709) elaborated façade types and construction classes, embedding fireproofing and standardization in the urban fabric. Lethaby treats the Fire and its legislative-technical response as the decisive crucible of London’s craft modernity: he analyzes Wren’s geometry, Hooke’s surveys, and the codified detail of walls, cornices, and roof timbers to argue that honest construction, material logic, and the disciplined collaboration of trades produced a civic architecture at once beautiful, economical, and safe—an ethos he urges the 20th century to recover.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century expansion refined that framework. The Consolidating Building Act of 1774 standardized terrace construction and sash-window proportions, shaping Georgian streetscapes built by speculative builders and skilled bricklayers. Infrastructure transformed the metropolis: West India Docks opened in 1802; Regent’s Canal linked 1812–1820; Joseph Bazalgette’s sewers and the Thames Embankment (1858–1870) answered the “Great Stink” of 1858 with massive civil engineering. Guild regulation waned, but education strengthened: the City and Guilds of London Institute (1878) promoted technical training; the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1877) advocated conservative repair; the London County Council (1889) backed the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1896), where Lethaby served as founding principal and later, as Professor of Design (1900–1911), advanced workshop-based pedagogy. The Port of London Authority (1909) and wartime demands (1914–1918) further reorganized labor and materials—contexts the book addresses through London examples.
The work functions as a social and political critique by opposing speculative, appearance-driven building to a civic culture of well-governed craft. Lethaby exposes the costs of industrial fragmentation—alienation of labor from design, shoddy materials, and the erosion of guild-mediated training—and argues for public responsibility in setting codes, funding education, and preserving historic fabric. By elevating post-Fire legislation, municipal engineering, and livery endowments that became modern technical institutions, he indicts laissez-faire neglect and class divisions that separated architects, patrons, and makers. The book’s London case studies champion equitable apprenticeship, fair wages tied to skill, and the ethical obligation of city authorities to ensure buildings are honest, durable, and worthy of the community.
Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts
CHAPTER I BUILDING MATERIALS AND METHODS
IT is curious that Roman buildings and crafts in Britain have hardly been studied as part of the story of our national art. The subject has been neglected by architects and left aside for antiquaries.[1q] Yet when this story is fully written, it will appear how important it is as history, and how suggestive in the fields of practice. This provincial Roman art was, in fact, very different from the “classical style” of ordinary architectural treatises. M. Louis Gillet in the latest history of French art considers this phenomenon. “It is very difficult to measure exactly the part of the Gauls in the works of the Roman epoch which cover the land, such, for instance, as the Maison Carrée and the Mausoleum at St. Remy. There is in these chefs d’œuvre[3] something not of Rome. The elements are used with liberty and delicacy more like the work of the Renaissance than of Vitruvius. In three centuries Gaul had become educated: these Gallo-Roman works, like certain verses of Ausonius, show little of Rome, they are already French.” We should hesitate to say just this in Britain, although the Brito-Roman arts were intimately allied to those of Gaul. In fuller truth and wider fact, they were closely related to the provincial Roman art as practised in Spain, North Africa, Syria, and Asia Minor. Alexandria was probably the chief centre from which the new experimenting spirit radiated. We may agree, however, that in the centuries of the Roman occupation, Britain like Gaul became educated and absorbed the foreign culture with some national difference. In attempting to give some account of Roman building and minor arts in London, I wish to bring out and deepen our sense of the antiquity and dignity of the City, so as to suggest an historical background against which we may see our modern ways and works in proper perspective and proportion.
Tools, etc.—Roman building methods were remarkably like our own of a century ago. The large number of tools which have been found and brought together in our museums are one proof of this. We have adzes and axes, hammers, chisels and gouges, saws, drills and files; also foot-rules, plumb-bobs and a plane. The plane found at Silchester was an instrument of precision; the plumb-bob of bronze, from Wroxeter, in the British Museum, is quite a beautiful thing, and exactly like one figured by Daremberg and Saglio under the word Perpendicularum. At the Guildhall are masons’ chisels and trowels; the latter with long leaf-shaped blades. At the British Museum is the model of a frame saw. Only last year (1922) many tools were found at Colchester. (For the history of tools in antiquity, see Prof. Flinders Petrie’s volume.)
A foot-rule found at Warrington gave a length of 11·54 in. The normal Roman foot is said to be 11·6496 in. (also 0·2957 m.). This agrees closely with the Greek foot and the Chaldean. (What is the history of the English foot?) The length of the Roman foot, a little over 11½ of our inches, is worth remembering, for measurements would have been set out by this standard. For example, we may examine the ordinary building “tile” used in Londinium[1]. In the Lombard Street excavations of 1785 many Roman bricks were found which are said to have measured about 18 in. by 12 in. I have found this measurement many times repeated, and also three more precise estimates. Dr. Woodward said that bricks from London Wall were 17-4/10 in. by 11-6/10 in., and he observed that this would be 1½ by 1 Roman foot. Mr. Loftus Brock gave the size of one found in London Wall as 17 in. by 11⅝ in. Dr. P. Norman gave the size of another tile as about 17½ in. by nearly 12 in. At the Guildhall are several flue and roof tiles about 17½ in. long, and a large tile 23¼ in. long. We shall see when we come to examine buildings that the dimensions in many cases are likely to have been round numbers of Roman feet.
Masonry.—Walling had three main origins in mud, timber and stone. Walling stones were at first, and for long, packed together without mortar. Mud and stone were then combined; later, lime mortar took the place of mud, being a sort of mud which will set harder. In concrete, again, the mortar became the principal element. Stone walling was at first formed of irregular lumps. When hewn blocks came to be used a practice arose of linking them with wood or metal cramps. There are also three main types of wall construction—aggregation of mud, framing of timber, and association of blocks of stone. A later development of mud walling was to break up the material, by analogy with hewn stone, into regular lumps separately dried before they were used; thus crude bricks, the commonest building material in antiquity, were formed. Roofing tiles were developed from pottery, and such tiles came to be used for covering the tops of crude brick walls. Then, later, whole walls were formed of baked material, and thus the tile or brick wall was obtained. An alternative method of using mud was to daub it over timber or wattle (basket work) of sticks; and this seems to have been a common procedure in Celtic Britain.
Interesting varieties of concrete walling were developed by Roman builders. One of these was the use of little stones for the faces of a wall, tailing back into the concrete mass and forming a hard skin or mail on the surfaces, very like modern paving. Triangular tiles with their points toothed into the concrete mass were also used. Then tile courses were set in stone and concrete walls at every few feet of height.
I have been speaking of general principles and history, not limiting myself to Britain and Londinium, but the evolution of the wall is an interesting introduction to our proper subject.
Fig. 1.
In Londinium wrought stonework must have been very sparingly used because of the difficulty and cost of transit. There were columns, pilasters, plinths, cornices, etc., but it may be doubted whether there were any buildings other than small monuments wholly of such masonry. Even in the first century the “details” of masonry were far from being “correctly classical,” and ornaments were very redundant and inventive. Provincial Roman building was something very different from the grammars propounded by architects. As we may study it in the fine museums of Trèves, Lyons, and London, it seems more like proto-Romanesque than a late form of “classic.” The Corinthian capitals of Cirencester are very fine works indeed; the acanthus is treated freshly, the points of the leaves being sharp and arranged as in Byzantine work; a sculptured pediment and ornamental frieze at Bath are also free and fine. On the other hand, moulded work is usually coarse and poor. An interesting architectural fragment found in London was the upper drum of a column which had several bands of leafage around the shaft and was a remote descendant of the acanthus column at Delphi (Fig. 1). Parts of small columns and their bases have been found, the latter with crude mouldings. I mention them because small circular work was usually turned in a lathe like Saxon baluster-shafts. A small capital from Silchester in the Reading Museum is of the bowl form so characteristic of Romanesque art.
Fig. 2.
A few fragments of mouldings and other stones are in our museums (Fig. 2), and a considerable number of semicircular stones have been found which must have been copings. Large wrought stones were usually cramped together; lewis holes show how they were hoisted; smaller wall-facings were, I think, cut with an axe instead of a chisel. We find mention of one stone arch (a small niche?) in a Minute of the Society of Antiquaries: “Mar. 8, 1732: Mr. Sam Gale acquainted the Society, yt in digging up some old foundations near ye new Fabric erected Anno 1732 for ye Bank of England Mr. Sampson ye architect discovered a large old wall, eight foot under ye surface of ye ground, consisting of chalk stone and rubble, next to Threadneedle Street, in which was an arch of stone and a Busto of a man placed in it standing upon ye plinth, which he carefully covered up again: there was no inscription but he believed it to be Roman.”
Mortar and Concrete.—Roman builders early learnt how to make good mortar and concrete,[2q] being careful to use clean coarse gravel and finely divided lime. They also found that an addition of crushed tiles and pottery was an improvement, and for their good work used so much of this that the mortar became quite red. “Roman mortar was generally composed of lime, pounded tiles, sand and gravel, more or less coarse, and even small pebbles. At Richborough the mortar used in the interior of the walls is composed of lime and sand and pebbles or sea-beach, but the facing stones throughout are cemented with a much finer mortar in which powdered tile is introduced” (T. Wright).
One of the advantages of coarsely-crushed tiles is that it absorbs and holds water so that the mortar made with it dries very slowly and thus hardens perfectly. In Archæologia (lx.) an analysis is given of “mortar made with crushed tiles as grit in place of, or in conjunction with, sand.” In Rochester Museum a dishful of the crushed tile is shown which was taken from a heap found ready for use at the Roman villa at Darenth. I may say here that I have found mortar prepared in this way wonderfully tenacious, and suitable for special purposes like stopping holes in ancient walls. A strong cement made of finely powdered tiles, lime and oil was used by Byzantine and mediæval builders and probably by the Romans also. Villars de Honnecourt (thirteenth century) gives a recipe: “Take lime and pounded pagan tile in equal quantities until its colour predominates; moisten this with oil and with it you can make a tank hold water.” The use of crushed pottery in cement goes back to Minoan days in Crete.
In London a long, thick wall of concrete formed between timbering was recently found between Knightrider and Friday Streets; it showed prints of half-round upright posts and horizontal planking; it bent in its course and may have been the boundary of a stream. On the site of the old Post Office a Roman rubbish pit was found, about 50 ft. by 35 ft. in size. “In late Roman times the whole pit had been covered with concrete about a foot thick and a building had been erected on the spot” (Archæol. lxvi.). At Newgate the Roman structure was erected on a “raft” of rubble in clay finished with a layer of concrete. Rubble in clay formed the foundation of the City Wall.
Fig. 3.
Many walls, described as of chalk, rubble or rag-masonry, have been found in London—one instance at the Bank has been quoted above. Chalk and flints were the most accessible material after local gravel, clay and wood. Mr. F. W. Troup tells me that “in the foundations for the Blackfriars House, New Bridge Street, we exposed a remarkable foundation (possibly not Roman). It consisted of rammed chalk, fine white material about 4 ft. wide and high, laid on great planks of elm 6 in. thick, which appeared to be sawn. These were laid side by side in the direction of the length of the wall, which ran along the west bank of the Fleet River.” I mention this, although it was probably a mediæval wall, as an example of a record; we ought to have every excavation registered. The walls of a room found in Leadenhall Street in 1830 were of rubble forming a hard concretion, with a single row of bond tiles through the thickness of the wall at about every 2 ft. in height. A sketch of this wall at the Society of Antiquaries shows it plastered outside and in. This was one of the common types of walling. Better stone walls were formed with face casings of roughly-squared little stones—what the French call petit appareil—as described above. An immense amount of piling was used in wet ground under streets and wharves, as well as walls. Foundations have been discovered of three rows of piles close together with a wall coming directly on their heads (Fig. 3). A wall found on the site of the Mansion House seems to have had only one row of piles; it was plastered outside.
Tile Walling.—The brick commonly used in Rome was a crude or unbaked block; the burnt walling tile was, as said above, developed from pottery, and it always remained pottery-like in texture and thin in substance. As Mr. T. May has said of bricks: “They were made of heavy clay, well tempered and long exposed; the modern practice is to use the lightest possible clay right off without tempering.” Walling tiles were used in Londinium not only as bonding courses, but for the entire substance of walls. It is usual to write “Roman tiles or bricks” interchangeably, but in origin and character the thing was a tile, and, indeed, roofing tiles with flanged edges were used as a walling material occasionally. Tiles were of various sizes and shapes, but an oblong, 1½ ft. by 1 ft. and about 1½ in. thick, was most usual. In the Guildhall Museum are several triangular tiles which must, I think, have been used for facing walls with concrete cores. Solid tile walling was used in Londinium so extensively that it was evidently a common material for better buildings. The Lombard Street excavations of 1785 exposed “a wall which consisted of the smaller-sized Roman bricks, in which were two perpendicular flues, one semicircular and the other rectangular; the height of the wall was 10 ft. and the depth to the top from the surface was also 10 ft.” Here we have evidence of a brick wall rising the full height of one story at least (Archæol. viii.). Roach Smith noticed a wall in Scott’s Yard “8 ft. thick, entirely composed of oblong tiles in mortar.” Mr. Lambert has recently described some walls of brick 3¼ ft. thick found at Miles Lane. A building in Lower Thames Street had walls of red and yellow tiles in alternate layers. This fact I learn from a sketch by Fairholt at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and such use of bricks of two colours was a common practice. In Hodge’s sketches of the tile walls of a great building discovered at Leadenhall Market it is noted that some of the courses were red and buff. Price recorded of walls, 2½ ft. thick, found in the Bucklersbury excavations, that “the tiles were the usual kind of red and yellow brick.”
More recently a bath chamber has been found in Cannon Street built of tiles which on the illustration are indicated in alternate courses of red and yellow. In the description in Archæologia, it is remarked: “It would appear that the yellow was preferred, the red being employed where they were not visible.” Years ago Charles Knight observed that the tiles used in the City Wall at America Square varied from “bright red to palish yellow.” This has been confirmed by more recent accounts in Archæologia. Finally, Roach Smith, describing the discovery of a part of the South or River Wall of the City (Archæological Journal, vol. i.), says that the tiles used as bonding bands were straight and curved-edged (that is, flanged roof tiles), red and yellow in colour. At the Guildhall there are a roof tile and a flue tile of yellow colour. Building with tiles may for long have been customary, but the use of red and yellow tiles in the way described would probably have been a fashion during a limited time only, and in that case it follows that the buildings erected with red and yellow tiles are likely to be nearly contemporary; the date would, I suppose, be the fourth century. Specially made tiles were used for columns. At the Guildhall are several round tiles 8 in. diameter, suitable for the piers of a hypocaust[4]. Also some semicircular tiles 12 in. in diameter. In Rochester Museum are some quadrants making up a circle about 1½ ft. in diameter. Tiles, eight of which made up a circle, have lately been found at Colchester, and in the Guildhall Museum is a course of a round column made up of twelve tiles around a small central circle. A large number of columns were evidently of such bricks plastered.
Fig. 4.
Arches and Vaults.—The arches in the City Wall, where it passed across the Walbrook, described by Roach Smith, were of no great span (3¼ ft.). They were constructed of ordinary tiles and were of a roughly-pointed shape. Arches of this form were not infrequently used in Roman works; they were not the result of inaccurate building. About a dozen years ago a well-built pointed arch of alternate tile and tufa, found at Naples, was described in Archæologia. The tiles, although thin, were sometimes made slightly wedge-shaped, and the city gates at Silchester seem to have had arches of such bricks.
The only London vault which I can find mentioned is one found exactly two hundred years since at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. A Minute of the Society of Antiquaries reads: “May 2, 1722: Mr. Stukely related that the Roman building in St. Martin’s Church was an arch built of Roman brick and at the bottom laid with a most strong cement of an unusual composition, of which he has got a lump. There was a square duct in each wall its whole length, of 9 in. breadth; there were several of these side by side: this building is below the springs on the gravel.” This building that was an arch, with its many flues, and cement floor—doubtless opus signinum[2]—was obviously a Roman bath chamber, but probably it was quite small.
Fig. 5.
Evidence of the existence of fairly large vaults has been found at the Baths of Silchester, Wroxeter and Bath. These were all constructed in a most interesting and suggestive way of voussoirs made as hollow boxes in the tile material. Similar box voussoirs have been discovered at Chedworth and elsewhere.
Fig. 6.
Fig. 7.
Fig. 8.
