A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



that the space over the corridor, which was 1 2 ft. wide including the 

 thickness of the inner wall, would accommodate three or four rows of seats 

 and there would be room for sixteen rows of seats between the corridor and 

 the orchestra, making a total of twenty rows.'" This he reckoned would 

 require an elevation of about 25 ft., and allowing the orchestra to be 10 ft. 

 below the level of the corridor the highest seat over it must have been 

 15 ft. above such level. This would give a building of some height as 

 might be expected from the thickness of the outer wall, which was 5 ft. 9 in. 

 The inner wall of the corridor was 3 ft. 6 in. and the other walls varied 

 from 2 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft. All the walls inside the theatre were plastered and 

 painted chiefly in red and blue verditer ; the prevailing patterns ran in 

 broad lines, some of which were imitation of porphyry and formed compart- 

 ments or panels. The walls were of the usual Roman construction of flint 

 rubble with bonding courses of tiles and tile quoins. Pink mortar was 

 partly used. The Roman theatres were roofless and there would probably 

 be a difficulty in covering the large space of the Verulamium theatre with 

 the materials available without some system of columns, of which there 

 appears to be no evidence. The drain from the orchestra also supports the 

 view that the building had no roof The discovery of many fragments of 

 roofing tiles may, however, suggest that the stage and rooms attached were 

 roofed. The front of the theatre facing the road was discovered in the 

 following year" (1850), and two fragments of a column of Oolite stone, 

 24^ in. diameter, are suggestive of a portico with a colonnade usually found 

 with Roman theatres. Some slabs of white marble yf in. thick were found. 



A portion of the foundations of another important building was at the 

 same time found on the opposite side of the road. The fragment excavated, 

 which is too slight to suggest its purpose, is shown to the north-east of the 

 theatre in the accompanying plan. 



The only objects found during the excavation were a brass brooch 

 with apparently an enamelled centre, some fragments of green glass and 

 many potsherds, including two fragments of Samian ware bearing the makers' 

 names ' Donat ' and ' Sev.' One hundred and seventy-one coins were picked 

 up ranging from Tiberius (a.d. 14-37) ^° Arcadius (a.d. 383-408), which 

 covered the whole period of the Roman occupation. 



Dr. Stukeley marks on his plan of Verulamium made in 172 1 vestiges 

 of a large building on the opposite side of the street bordering the south- 

 east side of the forum. He also marks various other vestigia, as he calls 

 them, and pavements. 



Mr. J. W. Grover made some excavations in 1869, but he seems 

 only to have dug trenches here and there without attempting to trace out 

 the plan of any building which his trenches happened to cross, hence his 

 excavations and the very meagre record of them are almost valueless except 

 for the section of the river wall and the positions of the roads, which his 

 trenches showed. The Rev. B. Hutchinson, the late vicar of St. Michael's, 

 excavated three rooms of a house on the east side of Blue House Hill, one 

 of which had a tessellated pavement.'* In building St. Michael's schools in 

 1853 a Roman wall and a coarse tessellated pavement 21 ft. by 10 ft. were 



" These with the orchestra would accommodate probably abont 2,000 persons. 



'■ J cum. Brit. Arch. Assoc, vi, 91. '« S/. AWdtis Arch Soc. Trans. 1893-4., p. 60. 



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