84 On Horn an Remains found at Holbury, near Dean. 



In vol. ii. of the Archaeological Journal, published in 1846, it is 

 stated, on the authority of the late Mr. Hatcher, of Salisbury, that 

 the site of an unexplored Roman villa exists in Clarendon Wood, 

 about three miles from Salisbury, and that numerous coins have 

 been there discovered. Mr. Hatcher was too accurate an observer 

 to have made a statement in print which was without foundation. 

 It is fair however to say that Sir Frederick Bathurst, the owner of 

 Clarendon, has no knowledge of the circumstance, although he has 

 in his possession a considerable number of Roman coins which have 

 been found upon his property. 



At West Dean, four miles further on, a tesselated pavement was 

 discovered as early as 1741, and brought under the notice of the 

 Society of Antiquaries. A description of it is given by Sir Richard 

 Colt Hoare in his History of Wilts. The central portion of it was 

 extracted entire, and conveyed to London, where it was made a 

 public exhibition, at an inn at Charing Cross. I have been unsuc- 

 cessful in my endeavours to ascertain its subsequent fate, or to 

 obtain a drawing of its design, which however is represented to 

 have been a circle, composed of 28 intersecting circles, or segments 

 of circles, of black and white tesserae, half-an-inch square, surround- 

 ing a four-leaved white flower. In 1846, the Railway, then in 

 process of construction, passed over the site, when the foundations 

 of a very extensive villa were disclosed, and further portions of pave- 

 ments were necessarily destroyed. They seem to have been composed 

 of tesserae of various sizes, from an inch to a quarter of an inch 

 square. A great quantity of these are still lying, untouched since 

 that time, in a builder's yard close by, but they are so detached and 

 broken up that they convey no notion whatever of the patterns of 

 which they formed part. The specimens I have obtained are set in 

 a coarse concrete of broken brick and mortar ; the larger tesserae are 

 all of stone, about an inch square ; the smaller and finer ones formed 

 squares or diamonds of red and white, each composed of four tesserae. 

 Mr. Baring Wall, M.P., the then owner of the soil, caused further 

 excavations to be made in a field adjoining the Railway Station, and 

 disclosed the foundations of rooms and corridors, a ground plan of 

 which, together with drawings of portions of the pavements, as then 



