NOTICE OF A ROMAN VILLA RECENTLY DISCOVERED AT WHEATLEY, NEAR OXFORD.
General View.
Indications of a Roman villa having been recently discovered in a field called Castle-hill, between Wheatley and Cuddesden, near Oxford, Dr. Bromet proceeded thither on the 31 st of October, accompanied by Mr. J. H. Parker and Mr. W. Sanders, (master of the Wheatley National School,) with Mr. Orlando Jewitt as their draughtsman, and some labourers belonging to Mr. Orpwood, tenant of the field, who had laudably interested himself in saving from destruction those parts of it most worthy of preservation.
Having first laid bare some rough walling 2 ft. thick, which enclosed a quadrangular space measuring internally 14 ft. by 12, they by careful digging exposed the inner face of the western wall, where, at a depth of 2 ft. from the surface, they arrived at an ovolo base moulding, and a plaster floor 212 to 3 in. thick, composed of lime, sand, and broken brick. It was situated over the entrance to a furnace from the prefurnium described hereafter. On clearing away the earth in the north-east angle, they found that this plaster floor had been laid on solid flat tiles 2 ft. square by 212 in. thick, the whole being supported by uniform and regularly disposed pillars, about 1 ft. 10 in. high, built up of flat tiles 7 in. square by 114 thick, set in beds of mortar 34 of an inch thick—the lowest or plinth tiles being about 11 in. square, and laid on a natural
