A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



country people ' fairy pavements,' which had been found about a mile from the village, in a 

 field from which stones and bricks were occasionally removed for agricultural purposes. 

 Observing that several bricks from this spot were Roman, he determined on its exploration. 

 At the beginning of the excavations walls were disclosed about a foot below the surface, and 

 then several rooms of a villa of the corridor type, the entrance to which seems to have been 

 by a corridor, 54 ft. long and 8 ft. wide, on the east side (see plan, fig. 13, a). Remains of a 



fine tessellated pavement were 

 unearthed in the centre room, 

 and fragments of wall-plaster 

 painted in stripes of purple, 

 red, yellow, green, and other 

 colours were found here and 

 in five smaller rooms (plan, b), 

 in which were also ashes and 

 traces of fire. The floors 

 in these latter were of opus 

 Signinum (lime, clay, and 

 pounded tile). In the corridor 

 were the remains of another 

 tessellated pavement, most of 

 which had been destroyed by 



JlCDCt 



Fig. 13. — Plan of Roman Villa at Mansfield Woodhousb 



a limekiln of recent date. It consisted of a border 

 of tesserae of light stone colour surrounding squares or 

 grey tesserae, all alike being nearly one inch square. 

 Here again the walls were painted. At the south end 

 of this corridor was a hypocaust (e), and adjoining 

 it a small room with a doorway leading into another 

 24 ft. square, supposed to have been the kitchen. The 

 top of a lamp, and part of a colander were foimd here, 

 and there were marks of fire on the floor. The end 

 walls of the hypocaust and of the room at the north 

 end of the corridor were 5 ft., the outer walls 2^ ft., the 

 party-walls i^ft. thick. Fourteen feet from the north- 

 west corner of the villa was found a small building with 

 flat stone paving. The pavement in the centre room 

 (fig. 12), described by a contemporary writer as 'the 

 most curious and beautiful of the sort ever beheld in 

 this part of the kingdom,' appears to have been covered 

 over by a building erected by Mr. Knight ; but in 

 1797 this had become ruinous, and the pavement in 

 a neglected condition \^Arch. viii, 363 fF., plates 22-6 • 

 Gent. Mag. 1786, ii, 616; Rom. Brit. Rem. i, 259; 

 Thoroton (ed. Throsby, Hist, of Notts.), ii, 319 • 

 Morgan, Rom. Brit. Mosaic Pavements, 121 ; Nott. 

 Daily Guardian, 23 Feb. 1877 ; Arch. Journ. xliiij 

 28 ff. (abstract of Rooke's account) ; Ordnance Survey, 

 25-in. xxii, 8, marked as 'site of villa romana']! 

 In the following autumn Major Rooke discovered 

 another building which he calls the villa rustica or 



^Inl Lr'nJ^r^T'"*''* V^^ "'' 5 ^'^'"'^' '^^ ^''' ^^'"g '" ^'^^ oP-'nio" the villa 

 "ntZe n an fi^T ^f "''• , ?""" '^'' ^^ ^'' '^"' '^ "° ^°^^' '^'-t the second dwell- 

 Kvered\ t,^T JT"''*'!^''*^ '^' ^''' ' ^"^ '^^^^^ "^ actual junction 



. tront, near the so-called villa urbana, was 40 ft, 

 space inclosed was occupied by two groups of rooms 



li^o'L^n ^rilZ^iT""- \ T'^^^T'-- Of the seven rooms af thJ west end 

 two (M and N on plan) had pamted walls, but no tessellated pavements were found, and 



30 



was 



a diagonal line. The wall of the west 

 long, the side walls each 142 ft. The 

 at the east and west ends, with 



