ROMANO-BRITISH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



exhibit especially the second type, and the third type, if it is to be called 

 a separate type, occurs only in the country. In size the houses vary as 

 widely as houses in all ages. The corridor houses are as a rule the 

 smallest, some of them measuring little more than 40 x 60 feet in 

 length and breadth, while in the more imposing courtyard houses the 

 yards alone are sometimes three times that area. 



One feature, not a prominent one, remains to be noticed — trade and 

 industry. We should perhaps place first the agricultural industry, which 

 produced wheat and wool. Both were exported in the fourth century, 

 and the export of wheat to the mouth of the Rhine is mentioned by an 

 ancient writer as considerable. Unfortunately the details of this agri- 

 culture are almost unknown : perhaps we shall be able to estimate it 



« • 



p m 10 >o *o 





Fig. 3. \'lLLA, CONSISTING OF CoRRIDOR HoUSE AND TWO BLOCKS OF FaRM BulLDlNGS ROUND 



A Rectangular Courtyard (Brading, Isle of Wight). Room vi. is the Corridor. 



better when the Romano-British ' villas ' have been better explored. 

 Rather more traces have survived of the lead mining and iron mining 

 which, at least during the first two centuries of our era, was carried on 

 with some vigour in half a dozen districts — lead on Mendip, in Shrop- 

 shire, Flintshire and Derbyshire ; iron in the Weald and the Forest of 

 Dean, and occasionally to a less extent elsewhere, as perhaps in part 

 of Northamptonshire. Other minerals were less important. The gold 

 mentioned by Tacitus proved very scanty, and the far-famed Cornish tin 

 seems (according to present evidence) to have been worked comparatively 

 little and late in the Roman occupation. The chief commercial town 

 was, from the earliest times, Londinium (London). It was never, so far 

 as we know, raised to municipal rank, but was nevertheless a place of 



X63 



