A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Northampton and west of Kettering. We may distinguish in particular 

 a group of ' villas ' near the thickly occupied town and ' villa ' district 

 of Castor, another small group near Thrapston, and a third between 

 Northampton and Watling Street, Very few of these remains have 

 been excavated even in part ; of many we know too little to be sure 

 of their exact character. But it is worth while to attempt, what has 

 never been attempted before, to tabulate the principal recorded finds. 

 Thus only can the reader form some faint idea of this vanished rural 

 civilization, which consisted of ' country houses,* perhaps also (as at 

 Peterborough and Duston) of villages, and also of insignificant 

 dwellings. The total number of sites is not inconsiderable when 

 compared with the numbers of other counties. Some of the houses 

 seem to have been large and luxurious, though none can match the 

 splendid mansions found in Gloucestershire or Hampshire and west 

 Sussex. Of the plans of the houses we know sadly little. Two or 

 three were ' courtyard ' houses, and no doubt the normal types prevailed. 

 One feature of some interest is presented by the mosaics. Not a few 

 noteworthy mosaic floors have been from time to time discovered, but 

 not a single one contains any figure of man or god or animal. The 

 scenes usual elsewhere — Orpheus with his lute, Hercules and Antseus, 

 Bacchus, the Four Seasons and the like — do not appear in Northampton- 

 shire. There the mosaic designs are purely geometrical, and even con- 

 ventional foliage is rarer than we might expect. Instead we meet a 

 somewhat unusual feature. The geometrical designs are not infrequently 

 outlines, sketched by thin rows of red or blue tesserae on grounds of grey 

 or straw colour. A different artistic tradition prevailed in our county 

 from that which we find on the shores of the Severn or along the 

 English Channel. Roman Britain was not a mere uniform land, crushed 

 into monotony as part of a great empire. It, like other provinces, had 

 its little local fashions. 



(1) Peterborough. Roman remains have been found here in some 

 quantity during the last twenty or twenty-five years, on the north and 

 north-west of the town, near the Westwood and Spital bridges over the 

 Midland and Great Northern united railway lines. These remains 

 include forty or more skeletons, Samian and other pottery, coins, 

 brooches, rings, a curious little equestrian statuette in bronze, tiles, an 

 iron hinge and bolt, animals' bones, and so forth. The coins comprise 

 three British, a Republican denarius, a 'second brass ' of Augustus, and 

 many others earlier than a.d. 230 and some of later dates.' Some wells 

 or pits, and what may have been a ditch or earthwork, were also noted. 

 Coins, mostly of the fourth century, have been found in various other 

 parts of the town. Probably there was on the north of the town some 

 village or other habitation, of which the cemetery, many domestic 



* Mr. Bodger has shown me also two Egyptian coins of pre-Roman date, one of Ptolemy Phila- 

 delphus (B.C. 285-247) and one of Ptolemy Euergetes II. (146-1 17), found in Peterborough in 1871. 

 Whether these were lost by a Roman collector or a modern, or reached our shores by some early trader, 

 is not easy to decide. 



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