60 



Roman Villa at North Wraxhall. 



Tho fivo small rooms which occupy the western extremity of this 

 range of building are its most interesting portion. They all pos- 

 sessed hypocausts or hot air flues beneath their floors, and together 

 evidently formed a suite of hot Bath-rooms or Therm®. The 

 rooms at the other, or eastern end of the range, were not provided 

 with any such apparatus, although from the superior character of 

 their masonry and the remains of tessellated pavements found in 

 them they would seem to have been some of the principal chambers 

 of the house. The intermediate part of the building was composed 

 of a long corridor on the south side, and on the north of a series 

 of rooms of different sizes ; some, which might have been small 

 open courts, containing smaller chambers within them. 



The walls of the whole building are of good masonry, formed of 

 the oolitic limestone dug on the spot, for the most part well 

 squared and faced with the chisel. They are from two to three 

 feet in thickness. The portion of wall remaining measures gene- 

 rally from two to four feet in height above the floors, even in the 

 case of those rooms whose floors are " suspended " over hypocausts. 

 And the quantity of loose stone and rubbish tying on either side 

 seems to shew that the stone walls of the building were everywhere 

 carried up several feet above their present level, that is, to the 

 height of one story at least. 



When discovered the suspended floors of the bath-room suite 

 were not all entire ; and there were appearances as if parts of them 

 had been rudely relaid after having been once broken up and the 

 hypocaust beneath filled with rubbish. But in some of the rooms, 

 particularly the two smaller ones A and B, the floors were entire, 

 and" the hypocausts beneath empty and uninjured. The pillars 

 supporting these floors were (as is usually the case in such build- 

 ings) entirely composed of burnt tiles mostly about eight inches 

 square, with a layer of mortar between them, the upper and under- 

 most tiles, however, being larger, some even as much as eighteen 

 inches square. All were of superior well kneaded and baked clay. 



These supports were not quite symmetrically arranged, and 

 being wider at top than at bottom, gave the form of rude 

 arches to the intervals between them, of about eighteen inches or 



