A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



nobles and upper classes of the native population, with but a slight 

 infusion of Italian immigrants. The common assertion that they were 

 Roman officers or officials may be set aside as rarely, if ever, correct. 

 The wealth of these landowners must have been almost solely agricultural ; 

 their lands were probably for the most part sheep runs and corn land and 

 supplied the cloth and wheat which are mentioned by ancient writers as 

 exported from Britain during the later Imperial period. The peasantry 

 who worked on these estates or were otherwise occupied in the country 

 lived in rude hamlets formed of huts or pit dwellings with few circum- 

 stances of luxury or even comfort. But even their material civilization 

 was Roman. Here, as among the upper classes, the Late Celtic art 

 yielded to the strength of Italian influences. 



In both town and villa a remarkable feature is presented by the 

 houses. While thoroughly Roman in their fittings, they were in 



SI BUT 



Fic. 2. Plans of Colrtyard and Corridor Houses at Silchester (scale I : 720). 



(The left-hand block shows a courtyard house with a corridor house adjacent ; the right-hand figure 

 a small corridor house by itself.) 



respect of ground plan and therefore of general arrangement by no means 

 Roman. They do not in the least resemble the houses of ancient Rome 

 and Pompeii or the country houses which have been dug up in Italy. 

 They belong instead to types which occur only in Britain and northern 

 Gaul and by no means improbably represent Celtic fashions, altered by 

 Roman contact but substantially native. A common type is that known 

 as the Corridor type (fig. 2), which shows a straight row or range of 

 rooms with a corridor running alongside of them and generally with 

 some slight enlargement at one end or the other. Another more elabo- 

 rate type shows three such rows set round a large unroofed rectangular 

 courtyard. Very similar to this last is a type in which the buildings round 

 the courtyard are not continuous, but stand isolated each in the middle of 

 one of the three sides ; in such cases the blocks may consist of corridor 

 houses, of barns, outhouses and farm buildings of various plans (fig. 3). 

 There appears to be no great difference between town and country in 

 the distribution of these types, but the stateliest country villas seem to 



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