Picturesque English Cottages and Their Doorway Gardens 
1 Professor Anderson’s “ Scotland in Pagan Times,” 
p. i 80. 
ROMAN DWELLING NEAR WEST GATE OF SILCHESTER 
REMAINS OF A ROMAN HOUSE AT SILCHESTER 
the windows are placed in vertical ranges so 
close to each other as to be separated only 
by their upper and lower lintels. 1 The most 
famous of these prehistoric buildings is the 
brock on a small island called Mousa, in 
Shetland, which approaches very closely to 
that of the Martello towers which stud some 
parts of the southern shores, and were built 
when Napoleon threatened to conquer Eng¬ 
land. This Mousa brock is still thirty-seven 
feet high, and is referred to in the Orkney 
Saga as having been abandoned in about the 
year 900 A. 1 ). 
The tradition of the hemispherical neo¬ 
lithic hut was carried on in the Celtic bee¬ 
hive dwellings of Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, 
Ireland, and Gaul ; whilst the plan may be 
regarded as the prototype of the cir¬ 
cular fortress, such as Chun Castle, the 
brocks of Scotland, and indeed much 
of the military architecture in England. 
The bronze-age dwellings, on the 
other hand, whose torms have been 
preserved by hut-urns, display a tend¬ 
ency to squareness and angularity, 
which is chiefly due to the employ¬ 
ment of timber in their construction. 
The influence of the use of metal was 
shown, even in that early age, in the 
form of the domestic dwelling. The 
possession of bronze tools made it 
possible to work timber into the 
requisite forms of beams and rafters, 
and flat walls and gabled roofs took 
the place of rounded walls constructed 
of interwoven branches and wicker¬ 
work of the earlier period. Our 
modern houses may be regarded as 
the direct descendants, with various 
modifications, improvements and de¬ 
velopments, of the bronze-age hut. J 
The circular hut is therefore the old¬ 
est form of human habitation. There 
are still some of this type in Africa, 
and evidences of their existence are 
found in many lands. The hut of 
the charcoal burner in England is 
round, built after the neolithic fash¬ 
ion, and the circular plan has had a 
vast influence on the architecture of 
subsequent ages. 
Our knowledge of Roman building has 
been enormously increased in recent years 
by the excavations carried on at Silchester, 
H ampshire, by the Society of Antiquaries. 
There we see the adaptation of the Roman 
ideas of domestic comfort to the needs of 
a northern climate. In Italy and the 
south of Europe light and heat are enemies 
to be guarded against; here, cold and damp. 
Hence the type of house in Roman Britain 
is totally different from that of the domestic 
buildings existing at the same period in more 
genial climates. There were two classes of 
houses built by the Romans. One consisted 
of a row of chambers with a corridor in 
2 Mr. George Clinch on Discoveries at Waddon, Surrey—Trans¬ 
actions of the Croydon Natural History Society. 
26 
