The fire-place which was used for heating this hypocaust is an opening from the prefurnium through the western wall, about 3 ft. high, built of brick, and covered with large 2 ft. square tiles like those before noticed, placed on different levels, the highest being outermost. Under this cover were found coarse ashes and many bits of charred wood.
Adjoining to the south-eastern part of the calidarium (the chamber above the hypocaust), but lower than its floor, is a rectangular enclosure, 8 ft. by 4, which was no doubt a bath, its waste-water gutter still remaining in the eastern wall. This gutter was formed of two concave tiles, one within the other, set firmly in cement, so as to render it efficient.
About 116 ft. further north[1], they uncovered the south-western angle of another portion of the villa; but nothing was found there except a few fragments of fine pottery, and the foundations of other walls.
Several tiles of various forms were likewise found, though few were sufficiently in situ to shew what their destination had been. Those of concave form are probably remains of a roof, and a few blackened with smoke are portions of wall-flues. Some of these, and other flat tiles, have on one side (as if drawn with a comb-like instrument) various patterns scrawled in straight and curved lines intersecting one another; these lines, though not inelegant, were probably intended to make the mortar more adhesive to them. Remains of instruments and nails of iron, and several bones of oxen, deer, sheep, and hogs, were also found with the shells of common garden-snails, helix aspersa, which were probably eaten, like the helix pomatia; and oyster-shells like those found at many Roman stations in the centre of England, e.g., in a Roman camp near Northampton, and a Roman station at Aldworth, near Wallingford.
The excavations were continued by the Bishop of Oxford, with Dr. Buckland and Mr. Parker, on a subsequent day, when a cistern or boiler (measuring 412 ft. by 212) was found over the south-west angle of the hypocaust. This boiler or cistern had the lower part of its floor and some height of the sides perfect, with the same moulding at the angle
- ↑ In the space between the hypocaust and another room, since discovered, 29 ft. north of it, another stratum of "sooty matter" was found at the same depth as in the hypocaust, resting upon the "natural sand bed," whence we infer that the villa was destroyed by fire.
