A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



or abroad. A certain amount of interest lies in the fact of the unusual 

 number of differently coloured marble tesserae worked up, for the employ- 

 ment of marble is quite exceptional in Romano-British mosaics. 47 



In 16678, near the ' Water House,' being the corner house, where the 

 street grows narrower, next to the west end of ' The Friars ' (the site of 'John- 

 son's Buildings'), 12 ft. below the surface, was discovered a floor of lime 

 mortar 6 in. or 7 in. thick, 16 ft. long and about 14 ft. wide, and some 

 remains of the walls of a house. On the north side of this room, about 4 yds. 

 apart, stood what Nichols calls 'two chimnies, as high as to the mantel tree'; 

 which may be traces of a hypocaust. Throsby mentions ' a tesselated floor, 

 a hypocaust and painted walls 'found in 1667, which were probably the 



same.* 8 



Under the south side of the room below some gravel a vast quantity of 

 oyster-shells was disinterred, and in the cellar of the same house, underneath 

 gravel ijft. deep, was a large foundation of a wall of forest stone laid dry, 

 without mortar. On the west side of the street 1 2 ft. deep in loose earth 

 many shoe-soles of large size and a quantity of refuse leather were found.* 9 



Nichols, in his History and Antiquities of Leicestershire, gives an account 

 of two fine tesselated pavements and a fragment of a third, found in 1754 

 in ' the Black Friars about 35 yards from the river Soar,' under a stable, the 

 property of Roger Ruding, who wrote an account of the discoveries to the 

 Society of Antiquaries in 1766, and further declared that 'the Pavements 

 had been entirely destroyed, and all the Materials taken away, so that no 

 remains of them were left.' 60 These three pavements were all of the class 

 mentioned in the note on that found on the site of the High Cross coffee- 

 house in 1901. In the minutes of the Society of Antiquaries under date 

 17 November, 1766, is the following note, which explains these floors and 

 their disposition with sufficient accuracy. The note says that the first pave- 

 ment (plate IV) was found in 1754. 



The most elegant square of this pavement consists of a corded line enclosing an area of 

 curved and regular figures somewhat resembling crossed S.S. with a true-lovers' knot in the 

 centre of them. The second pavement consists of a corded line enclosing an area divided 

 into double Frets, with Five small Squares in the Quincunx border containing each a true- 

 lovers' knot within them. The third pavement consists wholly of plain circles intersecting 

 each other, with small squares lozenge fashion in the centre. The colours of the first two 

 are composed of a deep mazareene blue (probably a slaty blue nearly black), red, yellow, 

 and white ; of the other of white, slate colour, and a muddy red (plate V). 



Each pavement was 9 ft. square and there were some traces of others in con- 

 tinuation. They appeared to be laid in line with each other, and probably 

 formed the floor of the principal corridor of some important mansion. In 

 1885 a large piece of pavement was discovered near the river in Black- 

 friars Street, which probably belonged to the same house and is thought 

 to be a part of the building of which 61 a tesselated pavement was dis- 

 covered in 1830 at the corner where Friars' Causeway formerly met Jewry 



" Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 53 ; Phil. Trans. (1711), xxvii, 325 ; Soc. Antiq. MS. Min. (1782), xviii, 271. 

 * Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, 1 1 ; Throsby, Hist. Leu. 19 ; Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 61. 

 9 Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 61 ; Thompson, Hist. Leic. 448 ; Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, n. 

 40 Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, II, 12 ; MS. Mins. Soc. Antiq. vii, 163 ; viii, 170 ; x, 196 ; Arch. Iv, 247, 

 note a ; Thompson, Hist. Leic. 445. 



" Leic. Arch. Soc. vi, 208 ; Ante. Arch. Soc. xviii, lix. 



194 



