A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



country people ' fairy pavements," which had been found about a mile from the village, in a 

 field from which stones and bricks were occasionally removed for agricultural purposes. 

 Observing that several bricks from this spot were Roman, he determined on its exploration. 

 At the beginning of the excavations walls were disclosed about a foot below the surface, and 

 then several rooms of a villa of the corridor type, the entrance to which seems to have been 

 by a corridor, 54 ft. long and 8 ft. wide, on the east side (see plan, fig. 13, A). Remains of a 



fine tessellated pavement were 

 unearthed in the centre room, 

 and fragments of wall-plaster 

 painted in stripes of purple, 

 red, yellow, green, and other 

 colours were found here and 

 in five smaller rooms (plan, B), 

 in which were also ashes and 

 traces of fire. The floors 

 in these latter were of opus 

 Signinum (lime, clay, and 

 pounded tile). In the corridor 

 were the remains of another 

 tessellated pavement, most of 

 which had been destroyed by 



FIG. 13. PLAN OF ROMAN VILLA AT MANSFIELD WOODHOUSE 



a limekiln of recent date. It consisted of a border 



of tesserae of light stone colour surrounding squares or 



grey tesserae, all alike being nearly one inch square. 



Here again the walls were painted. At the south end 



of this corridor was a hypocaust (E), and adjoining 



it a small room with a doorway leading into another 



24 ft. square, supposed to have been the kitchen. The 



top of a lamp, and part of a colander were found here, 



and there were marks of fire on the floor. The end 



walls of the hypocaust and of the room at the north 



end of the corridor were 5 ft., the outer walls 2 ft., the 



party-walls I ^ ft. thick. Fourteen feet from the north- 



west corner of the villa was found a small building with 



flat stone paving. The pavement in the centre room 



(fig. 12), described by a contemporary writer as 'the 



most curious and beautiful of the sort ever beheld in 



this part of the kingdom,' appears to have been covered 



over by a building erected by Mr. Knight ; but in 



1797 this had become ruinous, and the pavement in 



a neglected condition [Arch, viii, 363 flF., plates 226 ; 



Gent. Mag. 1786, ii, 616 ; Rom. Brit. Rem. i, 259; 



Thoroton (ed. Throsby, Hist, of Notts.), ii, 319 ; 



Morgan, Rom. Brit. Mosaic Pavements, 121 ; Nott. 



Daily Guardian, 23 Feb. 1877 ; Arch. Journ. xliii, 



28 ff". (abstract of Rooke's account) ; Ordnance Survey, 



25-in. xxii, 8, marked as 'site of VILLA ROMANA']. 



In the following autumn Major Rooke discovered 



another building which he calls the villa rustica, or 



part of the house appropriated to the use of servants, the first being in his opinion the villa 



urbana, or master's residence. However this may be, there is no doubt that the second dwell- 



ing (see plan, fig. 13, B) was closely connected with the first ; for though no actual junction 



was discovered, it was only 10 yds. distant from its north-east end, from which it stood in 



a diagonal line. The wall of the west front, near the so-called villa urbana, was 40 ft. 



long, the side walls each 142 ft. The space inclosed was occupied by two groups of rooms 



at the east and west ends, with a court between. Of the seven rooms at the west end 



two (M and N on plan) had painted walls, but no tessellated pavements were found, and 



3 



