132 ox KUilAX KEMA1>55 AT SOUTH SHIELDS, 



each side of the pavement was floored with concrete. The 

 chamher at the end of the pavement is sunk fully four feet below 

 the level of the hall. A flight of five stone steps in perfect pre- 

 servation leads down into it. Its walls are four feet thick, com- 

 posed of stones of great size, which evidently belonged to another 

 building before they were used to construct this massive room. 

 They are most curiously marked, and many have cramp holes, 

 which once were filled with lead, — not, in my opinion, since they 

 formed parts of the present building, though others I know have 

 expressed a different opinion, — and one appears certainly to have 

 pre^dously been a massive door jamb. (Plate VII.) 



Besides the stairs this chamber had a window looking on to 

 the pavement of the great hall, with jambs deeply splayed, and 

 holes in the sill for three upright iron bars. The floor of this 

 chamber is paved with large flags, and in it is a rectangular, 

 oblong, bath or cistern or impluvium, the sides and floor of which 

 are also composed of slabs. In this chamber was found a vast 

 mass of stones and rubbish, and among other interesting relics 

 the capitals of some pilasters, the base of a pillar with many step 

 like mouldings,* and great part of a human skeleton. On each 

 side of the chamber are the red concrete floors of rooms on a level 

 with the floor of the great hall, but parted from it by a sub- 

 stantial wall, and heated apparently by flues, several of which 

 were opened by the explorers ; and indications seem to warrant 

 the conclusion that this great block of buildings extended to a 

 distance of about twenty -two feet beyond the sunken chamber 

 towards the north, and abutted throughout its length upon the 

 main street which ran direct from the western to the eastern 

 gate. The eastern wall of the block abutted in like manner on 

 the main street, which ran from the southern to the northern 

 gate, and the breadth of which is known from the excavations to 

 have been fifteen feet from the wall of these important buildings 

 to the extremities of the buttresses of another important edifice 

 on tlic other side. 



The Station of South Shields was a large one, and evidently a 



• It luu l>ccii nuiTKOAU'd tliat thiii niiiy have l>ccn the bnitc of an iiltar, an altar with a 

 b«M Ttry •Imllar to thl* li.ivlng Wen fuund many ycors ago at Elcnborough. 



