244 



The Roman Villa at Box. 



From the thickness of the foundations generally and the abun- 

 dance of building stone in the neighbourhood it would appear that 

 all the walls were built throughout of stone. 



The plaster of the walls was apparently coloured and painted 

 generally, and of this a great number of fragments were found, 

 which, when first exposed, were very brilliant. 



The plaster was formed of a yellowish oolitic gravel having 

 pebbles of considerable size, and it is difficult to see how it was 

 brought up to the smooth surface prepared for the paint. The 

 thickness was often as much as 2 inches. 



From the fragments it appeared that the general scheme of 

 decoration was of large panels of colour bordered and framed with 

 lines of red, green, and white. The chief interest lay in the 

 wonderful variety of imitations of marble, with which the panels 

 of many of the rooms must have been filled. This was produced 

 solely by splashings of different colours from a brush, and not by 

 any attempt at veining or marbling. 



The roofs were covered with two sorts of tiles. The one, of 

 which great quantities were found, being of thick Pennant 1 stones 

 of elongated hexagonal form, of two sizes, with a pin-hole at one 

 angle by which they were suspended. The other, of which a 

 number of fragments were found, being the ordinary red flat 

 flanged tegulce with half -tube shaped imbrices that protected the 

 turned- ap flanges. 



Of the flat building bricks 2 only a very few examples were 

 found in the recent excavations, and none in situ except round the 

 stoke holes of the hypocausts. But in the hypocausts opened in 

 1881 "the pilae were built of the usual 8 inch square tiles." 



The tesserae ranged in size from 1J inches to ^ inch square, 

 and the materials from which they were made varied with the 

 importance of the chambers. 



The best rooms had pavements of small tesserae, the ground 



1 These Pennant tiles doubtless came from the neighbourhood of Bristol. 

 - Those found measured 10 \ x 10| X 1^, or 13 x \\\ X \\. Fragments 

 only of others larger still and 2in. thick were found. 



