A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE
Nichols mentioned some tesselated pavements found at Vauxhall Wharf in 1747, 'in a bathing-room near the river, which now rises over and damages them.' "
In 1839 the traces of a small pavement about 11 ft. square were discovered in Vine Street at a depth of 6 ft. 6 in. below the level of the street. A drawing of it was presented to the museum by Mr. J. Horsepool. The pavement consisted of a central circular panel with semicircular ones joining it on each side, with a quarter of a circle filling each corner, the dividing lines being the usual braidwork bands. In each angle panel was a vase, and three heart-shaped leaves filled each of the semicircular ones. The central arrangement was lost. The colours were the usual black, red and yellows, all on a white ground. Other pavements very like this have been found elsewhere. For example, one was found at Lincoln, another at Silchester. The design, however, is cheap and poor, and the execution distinctly bad (plate V).
The remains of a large villa were discovered at Danett's Hall in 1782, in a field called the Cherry Orchard, about three-quarters of a mile west of the old town, on the opposite side of the Soar. It was probably connected with the town by a lane called Watt's Causeway, now King Richard's Road, the site of the villa being 25 ft. from the road, opposite the Newfound Pool Inn. It was re-opened in 1851, and again in 1868. According to Nichols's account the cherry-trees which gave the site its name were planted early in the eighteenth century. In 1782, when digging up one of the trees, part of the floor of a corridor was discovered, and a continuation of it in a northerly direction was traced. In 1851, and again in 1868, the Literary and Philosophical Society of Leicester, conjointly with the Architectural and Archaeological Society, undertook further explorations, before the site was built over and all traces of the original building destroyed. A plan of the villa was made and preserved in the Leicester Museum, which indicates the disposition and colouring of the floors, as well as the supposed lines of the walls." It seems to have been a house of the courtyard type, a series of rooms placed round an open court, and connected by corridors looking into the open space. The fragments discovered in 1851 were the floor of a room about 15 ft. square, the tesserae being of red brick and a greyish drab stone, each about 1 in. square. The pattern consisted of interlaced circles of red on the grey ground. To the north of this another room was found, measuring 28 ft. by 18 ft.
A semi-circular pattern was disclosed at the western end of this room, executed in very small tessellae of four colours: blue, red, brown-pink (or yellow), and white; representing in the centre a shell pattern, in the two divisions of which, next the line of the diameter of the semicircle, are dolphins swimming towards the centre. The shell pattern is bounded by the guilloche ornament, outside of which is a vandyke of black and white, surrounded by strips of grey and red tessellae about 1 in. square.
A fragment of a guilloche border at the eastern end of the room marked the extent of this apartment. (This pattern is No. V in the Leicester Museum.) On the south-western side of this pavement a pedestal and short column of
- Hist. Lett, i, 1 1 ; Throsby, Hist. Leu. 19 ; Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 62.
- Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, pi. ix ; Gent. Mag. Oct. 1786 ; Journ. Brit. Arch. Ante, vi, 439, 442 ; Assoc.
Arch. Sat. ix, pp. cxviii, 2 ; Proc. Sot. Antiy. iv, 183, 185 ; Leic. Arch. Sot. iii, 387. 196
