Godalming Museum Education Service Museum Box
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GODALMING MUSEUM EDUCATION SERVICE MUSEUM BOX ROMAN BUILDINGS TEACHER’S NOTES THIS BOX IS ONE OF THREE RELATING TO THE ROMAN PERIOD. THE OTHER BOXES IN THE SERIES ARE: LIFE IN ROMAN TIMES ROMAN MOSAICS INTRODUCTION This box is intended to show some of the features of buildings in Britain dating from the Roman and Romano-British periods (say from the mid- 1st to the mid-5th centuries AD). It contains a number of genuine artefacts which must be handled with care and some only when using the cotton gloves provided. Two models are included, one showing the structure of a Roman tiled roof and the other of a hypocaust under-floor heating system. A set of photographs, which should be self-explanatory, show these models at different stages as they are put together. Providing reasonable care is taken, these models could be assembled by the students themselves and used as the basis for their own drawings and writing. Pamphlets on Fishbourne Roman Palace and the villa at Bignor have been supplied for two reasons. Firstly they are major Roman sites in the South of England which children may have visited with their school or with their parents and, if so, to which they are likely to be able to relate. Secondly illustrations in these pamphlets can be related to the two models mentioned above. CONTENTS OF THE BOX As you unpack this box, please note carefully how the contents have been stored so that they can be returned safely to their places after use. A. Cotton gloves. B. A tessera from a mosaic pavement (discovered in Binscombe, Surrey). C. Roman nail ( from the Rockbourne villa in the New Forest). D. Fragment of painted wall plaster (also from the Rockbourne villa). E. Roof timbers for the model Roman roof. F. The ‘side walls’ for the model Roman roof. G. Guide to Fishbourne Roman palace. H. Guide to Bignor Roman villa. J. Photographs of the models at different stages of construction. K. Bricks for the model hypocaust. L. Tegulae for the model roof. M. Imbrices for the model roof. N. Fragment of a Roman imbrex . O. Fragment of a Roman tegula. P. Fragment of a Roman brick. Q. Photograph of the remains of a hypocaust at Bath. These Teaching Notes. DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTENTS GENERAL Even before the Roman invasion, trade between Britain and the Continent was starting to exert a Romanizing effect on this island. The Roman occupation accelerated this and initially brought a period of some prosperity. There was a considerable change in building practice as buildings became more elaborate. Brick and tile were introduced. Buildings, often half timbered, were constructed on stone foundations of which traces may remain even today. Prestige buildings might be built entirely of brick and stone. As a consequence there are many more artefactual remains, some of which are included in this box, from buildings of this period than from earlier structures. These artefacts are described under four headings: floors, walls, roofs and other items. Nevertheless Britain was always on the edge of the Roman Empire, was conquered after its foundation and abandoned before its fall. Thus even the major Roman buildings of which relics have survived in Britain cannot match those found on the Continent. FLOORS The floors of Roman buildings could be made in a number of ways of which the mosaic pavement was only one. The ROMAN MOSAICS box, which is a companion to this one, is devoted entirely to mosaics and other Roman flooring techniques. Mosaics were formed from small, roughly cubical, pieces (tesserae - singular tessera) of stone or brick set into mortar. Item B is a tessera found at Binscombe and is included here to make the link between the ROMAN BUILDINGS and ROMAN MOSAICS boxes. It comes from a fairly unsophisticated floor made from large, coarse tesserae cut from the local ironstone (carstone). If it is inspected carefully the side of the tessera which was uppermost can be identified from its smooth worn appearance. It is for this reason that item B should be handled only when wearing cotton gloves. Grease from the hand could cause this feature to be lost. A feature of most high-status Roman villas was the Bath House, rather like a Turkish Bath or Middle-Eastern Hammam of today. Part or all of the mosaic floors of the tepidarium (warm room) and the caldarium (hot room) were supported on pillars leaving a hollow space below. The hot air from a furnace could circulate through this across under the floor before rising through flues built into the walls, so heating the rooms to the required temperature. The under-floor chamber was known as a hypocaust and is illustrated well on pages 18 & 19 of the pamphlet on Bignor Roman Villa. This form of heating could also be used in principal reception rooms as is illustrated on page 3 of the same pamphlet. Item Q shows the brick pillars and flues of a hypocaust at Bath very clearly. Item Q has been laminated to help it withstand handling. Bricks for constructing hypocaust pillars were generally about 22 cm square with larger bricks of about 30, 45, or even 60 cm square being used for the tops and bottoms. Item P could be part of one of these bricks (not the 60 cm brick - that was about 8 cm thick) or it might have been part of a wall brick (see below). The model hypocaust is therefore approximately 1/10th scale. The model shows just a few pillars adjacent to a wall. This wall might continue upwards as the side wall of the room. Alternatively it might be thought of as a subterranean retaining wall in a situation where the hypocaust only extends over the centre of the room. In that circumstance the floor, with its mosaic surface, would continue over the wall. This situation can be glimpsed in the illustration on page 3 of the Bignor Roman Villa pamphlet and is shown diagramatically on page 33 of the Fishbourne Roman Palace pamphlet (room 1 in the late 3rd century) where the central hypocaust, the passage from the exterior furnace into the hypocaust and the four passages leading to the wall flues in the four corners of the room are clearly shown. If desired, the model, when erected, could be ‘finished off’ with a ‘mosaic pavement’ covering the four upper capping bricks. A piece of card decorated with dots made with a felt-tipped pen to imitate the tesserae would serve for this. WALLS The Romans made bricks in a wide variety of sizes, ordinary small ones were about 12x6x3cm, but for wall courses bricks 45x30cm approximately were used. That is why the wall bricks in the hypocaust model are the shape and size that they are. Item P could as well be part of a wall brick as a brick from a hypocaust. Internally masonry walls could be plastered and painted - in flat colour, with panels of different colours or even with frescoed pictures. Item D is a fragment of this painted plaster from Rockbourne Villa in the New Forest. This is a delicate and virtually irreplaceable item. It should only be handled by the member of staff and then only using the cotton gloves. Please replace it in the box painted side uppermost. ROOFS A variety of roofing materials and styles were employed, but a common form of tiled roof involved tiles of two shapes. One was a large flat rectangular tile (the tegula - plural tegulae) with two raised edges. The other was the curved imbrex (plural imbrices) which was used to bridge over the gap between adjacent tegulae. These are exhibited in model form in Items L and M. The model tiles are rather crude, with the imbrices somewhat out of scale to the tegulae, but they will serve to show the form of construction. The wooden tile pegs have been permanently glued in position to simplify the assembly of the model. The procedure for assembling the model roof using Items E, F, L & M can be followed from the photographs (Item J). The slope of the roof in the model has been chosen so that the imbrices will rest, held by friction, on the tegulae. Nevertheless it is advisible to set the model up on a table in such a way that, if it is jogged, imbrices that slide off will not fall a distance onto a hard surface and get broken. The only other point to bear in mind when setting up the model is to bring the two ‘walls’ (Item F) together side-by-side at the outset to ensure that they are the right way round, with the notches to carry the roof timbers (the batons on which the tegulae rest) in register with one another. Of course, in a full sized roof, rafters would be inserted at intervals to support the weight of the tiles resting on the batons and the imbrices would be permanently fixed in place with mortar. Reference may be made to the diagrams on page 20 of the pamphlet on Fishbourne Roman Palace, which show clearly a roof of this type. Item N is a fragment of a real imbrex and Item O of a tegula. Tegulae were about 45x30cm and the fragment in this box comes from the lower right hand corner. Compare this with the model tegulae. Note that in the models the raised edge has been cut away to allow the tegulae to overlap and make a watertight roof. Now look at the underside of the fragment. This has been bevelled to achieve the same purpose.