244 Collections for a History of West Dean. 



For more than a century after the first discovery, and notwith- 

 standing that the ploughshare was continually bringing further 

 fragments to the surface, and that a portion of the pavement already 

 mentioned remained exposed as the floor of a builder's shed, no 

 further examination seems to have been made until 1 845, when the 

 railway, then in course of construction, passed over the spot, and 

 destroyed the remains which had been uncovered. It was at that 

 time that Charles Baring- Wall, of Norman Court, Esq., the lord of 

 the manor, authorized Mr. Henry Hatcher, of Salisbury, to make 

 further excavations, which resulted in the discovery of several more 

 corridors and chambers, 1 with imperfect pavements of much elegance 

 of design, in a field called Hollyflower, at that time the property 

 of the lord of the manor, but now part of the rector's glebe, and 

 closely adjoining the present railway station. 



The position and extent of the floors and foundations then dis- 

 closed, marked a to h in the accompanying ground-plan, taken in 

 connection with the others subsequently uncovered by myself, and 

 with the ascertained fact that further portions extended southwards 

 under and beyond the malthouse, windmill, and adjacent dwelling- 

 house, indicate the existence of an unusually extensive and important 

 villa, or, more probably, perhaps, of a village, or group of Eoman 

 houses, upon this site. 



The portions excavated under the direction of Mr. Baring- Wall, 

 and examined by Mr. Hatcher comprised the two long corridors a 

 and B, which extended northwards from the malthouse and ad- 

 joining garden, in which the original discovery was made in 1741j 

 and enclosed between them the chambers c and d, the latter 25ft. 

 by 21ft., and the cross passage e, beyond which was the large 

 apartment F, which, with its furnace-room G on the west, seemed 

 to terminate the building towards the north. The walls were 2ift. 

 in thickness, constructed of flints, set in mortar. The corridor b 

 was paved in long bands with a coarse mosaic of red and white 

 tessera?, a tiled step at its northern extremity 4in. or 5in. high and 

 22in. broad, leading to the small chamber h, similarly paved, but 



1 A somewhat incorrect ground-plan of these will be found in the volume of 

 the " Proceedings of the Archaeological Association at Winchester, in 1846," p. 243. 



