ROMANO-BRITISH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



With it were found coins of Agrippa (' second brass,') Vespasian and 

 others — nearly all fourth century — some other pavements of inferior 

 character, two cisterns or cesspools, and other smaller objects. The 

 ' villa ' was obviously a comfortable one.* 



(8) Great Weldon. Here was a fine ' villa,' placed on gently 

 rising ground to the north of the Willow Brook, in Chapelfield — not an 

 uncommon name for sites containing Roman or other ancient founda- 

 tions. It was detected and partially uncovered in the spring of 1738. 

 The building excavated measured 45 by 96 feet and comprised a corridor 

 10 feet wide, which formed the entire eastern (or rather south-eastern) 

 face of the building, and six rooms, which opened westwards out of the 

 corridor (fig. 22). The foundations of the building were of local Stanion 

 stone ; the walls were thought to have been constructed in wood. 

 Higher up the slope more foundations were noticed, and it is plain that 

 the excavated portion was but a fragment of a large house. Four mosaics 

 — all imperfectly preserved — were found and copied. They all formed 

 centre panels for floors of plain tessera and were all geometrical in 

 design. Two of them were long ornamental centre strips, each 5 feet 

 wide, in the corridor. One of these, at the north end of the corridor, 

 was a purely geometrical design in blue, white (or yellow) and grey ; 

 the other, at the south end, had a conventional foliated pattern outlined 

 in blue and red on brown and yellow grounds. A third pavement in 

 one of the northern rooms showed a design which was outlined in red on 

 the outside and in blue in the centre on a ground of grey. The fourth, 

 in the southernmost room, had an intricate pattern of knots, Asiatic 

 shields, squares and diamonds, in red, white and blue. The coins found 

 on the spot range from about a.d. 260-353 ; most of them are Con- 

 stantinian, and we may suppose that the villa was occupied, at any rate, 

 during the first half of the fourth century.^ 



(9) Ashley, 4 miles east of Market Harborough, close to the 

 Welland, which is the Leicestershire boundary. Here pavements, 

 pottery, coins and other objects were found in a field called Alderstone 

 when the Rugby and Stamford railway was constructed.' The site is 

 hardly a mile from Medbourne in Leicestershire, where mosaics and 

 other evidences of permanent occupation have several times been noted. 

 A Roman road can be traced from Leicester to Medbourne, but its 

 continuation into Northamptonshire is uncertain. 



* For the finds of 1736 see ^Northampton Mcnui-y, March 23, 1 737 ; Daily Gazetteer, April I, 1737 ; 

 Gentleman's Magazine, 1737, p. 256 ; Stukeley's Letters, iii. 33, 49 and Carausius, i. 170 ; Gough, jfJJ. 

 to Camden, ii. 286 ; Gibson's Castor, p. 173; Vetusta Monumenta, i. pi. 48 ; Artis, pi. Ix. For the finds 

 of 1798 see Gibson's Castor, p. 173, with a plate topsyturvy ; Artis, pi. lix. ; Wm. Fowler's Tessellated 

 Pavements ; the Wollaston drawings in the South Kensington Museum. Part of the pavement found 

 in 1736 was taken to Dene House (Stukeley, Diaries, iii. 67). 



* Stukeley, Letters, iii. 40, i9i — Relliguiir Galeance in Nichols' Bibl. Topogr. Brit. ii. 460 ; hence 

 Gibson's Castor, p. 172 ; Gough, Jdd. to Camden, ii. 284, etc. Apian was made by Lens and engraved 

 by Cole at the time of finding ; coloured copies of this are in the library of the Society of Antiquaries 

 and in the Bodleian (Gough Collection). It was enlarged by Lysons (i. 3, pi. vii.), but his colouring 

 is apparently inexact. The rather different plan given by Gibson and Gough is from a rough inaccurate 

 sketch by Stukeley, of which I have a MS. copy. 



' F. Whellan, Hist, of Northamptonshire (cd. 2, 1874), p. 781. The site was knowrn earlier as a 

 Roman site (see Nichols' Leicestershire, i. p. cliv.). 



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