Spanish Mackeral and Negotiable Virtue
It is some years since excavations along the north bank of the Thames in London uncovered the substantial complex of wooden wharves, docks and warehouses that made Londinium the most important city in Roman Britain. Although those excavations have long since disappeared under the latest tide of high-rise office blocks that now dwarf St Paul's Cathedral, archaeological work in the area is continuing and the latest discovery is casting a new light on life in Roman times.
Some 150 yards upstream from London Bridge is the site of Winchester Palace, the home of the mediaeval bishops of London. Urban development in the area has led to a series of rescue digs which have uncovered what appears to be a luxurious riverside villa. The objects found in the ruins include some quite expensive Roman glassware, the bones of swan and deer - which even in those days only graced the more exclusive tables - and decorative marble panelling from Greece, Turkey and north Africa.
Perhaps most evocative of the luxury enjoyed by the inhabitants of this villa is an amphora in a pseudo-Koan style, on which was painted the manufacturer's name: Lucius Tettius Africanus of Antipolis (modern Antibes). The amphora still contained the remains of Spanish mackeral!
However the most astonishing discovery was yet to come. As the archaeologists cleared the area they began work on the soil and rubble that had been dumped in a later period in order to reclaim the land along the river bank. Much of this rubble had, presumably, come from the now ruined villa, for in four separate places the excavators discovered piles consisting of large pieces of plaster that had once adorned the walls of the villa and which could be dated to around 75 AD.
When the archaeologists examined these pieces of plaster, however, they discovered that they were painted on one side - and that enough of them remained to more or less reconstruct the walls. Several years of painstaking work with the 11,000 fragments has resulted in the recreation of the middle zone of a wall which has panels of red and yellow paint, decorated with flowers, mythical figures and candelabra. The closest parallel to this new discovery is a large room found beneath Cologne cathedral!
Even more impressive was another pile of discarded plaster found burying the bath house associated with the villa, for that has been reconstructed to make a panel 6' high and nearly 9' wide. The picture shows a pillared portico depicted in rather shallow 3D and giving onto a golden house or shrine with two doors, outside which stands a winged figure who may represent cupid.
The choice of presiding deity may be significant, for even ordinary Roman bath houses were frequented by ladies of easy virtue and the number of objects - brooches, inscribed tiles and the very style of the building - that have a military connection point to this being a military establishment, so negotiable love was probably a regular feature of this bath house.
© Kendall K. Down 2007
