A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



Nichols mentioned some tesselated pavements found at Vauxhall Wharf 

 in 1747, ' in a bathing-room near the river, which now rises over and damages 

 them.' " 



In 1839 the traces of a small pavement about u ft. square were dis- 

 covered in Vine Street at a depth of 6 ft. 6 in. below the level of the street. 

 A drawing of it was presented to the museum by Mr. J. Horsepool. The 

 pavement consisted of a central circular panel with semicircular ones joining 

 it on each side, with a quarter of a circle filling each corner, the dividing 

 lines being the usual braidwork bands. In each angle panel was a vase, and 

 three heart-shaped leaves filled each of the semicircular ones. The central 

 arrangement was lost. The colours were the usual black, red and yellows, all 

 on a white ground. Other pavements very like this have been found else- 

 where. For example, one was found at Lincoln, another at Silchester. The 

 design, however, is cheap and poor, and the execution distinctly bad (plate V). 



The remains of a large villa were discovered at Danett's Hall in 1782, 

 in a field called the Cherry Orchard, about three-quarters of a mile west of 

 the old town, on the opposite side of the Soar. It was probably connected 

 with the town by a lane called Watt's Causeway, now King Richard's Road, 

 the site of the villa being 25 ft. from the road, opposite the Newfound 

 Pool Inn. It was re-opened in 1851, and again in 1868. According to 

 Nichols's account the cherry-trees which gave the site its name were planted 

 early in the eighteenth century. In 1782, when digging up one of the 

 trees, part of the floor of a corridor was discovered, and a continuation of it 

 in a northerly direction was traced. In 1851, and again in 1868, the Literary 

 and Philosophical Society of Leicester, conjointly with the Architectural and 

 Archaeological Society, undertook further explorations, before the site was 

 built over and all traces of the original building destroyed. A plan of the villa 

 was made and preserved in the Leicester Museum, which indicates the disposi- 

 tion and colouring of the floors, as well as the supposed lines of the walls." It 

 seems to have been a house of the courtyard type, a series of rooms placed 

 round an open court, and connected by corridors looking into the open 

 space. The fragments discovered in 1851 were the floor of a room about 

 1 5 ft. square, the tesserae being of red brick and a greyish drab stone, each 

 about i in. square. The pattern consisted of interlaced circles of red on the 

 grey ground. To the north of this another room was found, measuring 

 28 ft. by 1 8 ft. 



A semi-circular pattern was disclosed at the western end of this room, executed in very 

 small tessellae of four colours : blue, red, brown-pink (or yellow), and white ; representing 

 in the centre a shell pattern, in the two divisions of which, next the line of the diameter of 

 the semicircle, are dolphins swimming towards the centre. The shell pattern is bounded 

 by the guilloche ornament, outside of which is a Vandyke of black and white, surrounded 

 by strips of grey and red tessellae about I in. square. 



A fragment of a guilloche border at the eastern end of the room marked the 

 extent of this apartment. (This pattern is No. V in the Leicester Museum.) 

 On the south-western side of this pavement a pedestal and short column of 



** Hist. Lett, i, 1 1 ; Throsby, Hist. Leu. 19 ; Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 62. 



* Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, pi. ix ; Gent. Mag. Oct. 1786 ; Journ. Brit. Arch. Ante, vi, 439, 442 ; Assoc. 

 Arch. Sat. ix, pp. cxviii, 2 ; Proc. Sot. Antiy. iv, 183, 185 ; Leic. Arch. Sot. iii, 387. 



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