ROMANO-BRITISH BERKSHIRE 



the skeletons. The two vessels are preserved in the Reading Museum [Proc. Soc. Antiq. 

 (ser. 2), ix. 356 ; Newbury Dist. Field Club Trans, iv. 187 ; Berks, Bucks and Oxon Arch. 

 Journ. April 1896, p. 22 ; Desc. Cat. Reading Mus. pt. I, 49]. 



FINCHAMPSTEAD. Roman milestone said to have been discovered in 1841 in a field called ' Six 

 Acres ' on Webb's Farm [W. Lyon, Chronicles of Finchampstead, 5-7 ; Kempthorne, The 

 Devil's Highway, 12]. Traces of a camp on the hill on which the church stands. In 

 another field a quantity of Roman bricks and pottery [Proc. Soc. Antiq. (ser. i) iv. 283]. 

 The Reading Museum exhibits a Roman colander and vase from this parish. 



FRILFORD. This is a hamlet of Marcham, a village 3 miles west of Abingdon. Roman remains 

 had already been discovered here when, in 1884, Mr. Aldworth, a large landowner in the 

 district, who had for some years been struck by the quantity of tiles and potsherds on 

 the surface of a field bordering the road from Frilford to Kingston Bagpuize, requested 

 Dr. A. J. Evans and Professor Moseley to examine the ground. Excavations were begun 

 with the result that the whole ground plan of a small house of the corridor type and an 

 adjacent building or bathhouse were laid bare [Arch. Journ. liv. 340-354]. The foundations 



GROUND PLAN OF ROMAN BUILDINGS 

 EXCAVATED AT FRILFORD (BERKS). 



T : ...r 



of the first formed a small parallelogram, 69! feet by 40 feet, with a projecting hypocaust 

 chamber in the south-east corner. There were twelve rooms varying in size the largest 

 (N) 29 feet by 9 feet, the smallest (K) 6J feet by 9 feet the walls were 2 feet thick and of 

 rubble masonry. Most of the rooms were paved with concrete. In the hypocaust 

 chamber (O) were found traces of a tessellated pavement, unfortunately broken up by 

 the plough, which consisted of small cubes of white stone and terra-cotta. Most of the 

 mural painting, too, was discovered here and showed a considerable variety of colours. 

 The pilae of the hypocaust were not, as is usually the case, of tiles, but of roughly-split 

 slabs of the oolite of the country. The rooms E, F, G, probably had windows looking 

 into the covered corridor A. 



The foundations of the second building were found at a distance of 88 feet from 

 the north-east corner of this house. Only two chambers (P, Q) could be traced, one 

 of which (P) seems to have been a hot-water reservoir ; the floor and walls were coated 

 with brickdust cement over an inch in thickness. On moving the floor a rounded cavity 

 like a well was discovered on its eastern side about 4^ feet deep and formed of large oolite 



207 



