13

The great forum (c. ad 110–25)

Hadrian and the forum

In the summer of ad 122, the emperor Hadrian visited Britain on his extended travels through the empire. ¹ London is likely to have been his first port of call, and his arrival a splendid occasion marked by sacrifices, processions and games. The emperor was attended by a large entourage that included his new provincial governor, Platorius Nepos, and a detachment of the Praetorian Guard. The imperial party also included the empress Sabina and historian Suetonius, and would have been entertained in the London residences of the governor and procurator.

Roger Tomlin has cautiously suggested that this may have been the occasion when London was awarded the honorary status of colonia. ² He bases this on a reconstruction of an inscription on a Purbeck marble slab found at the Huggin Hill baths in 1989. Only a few letters survived and various readings are possible, but one word appears to have ended with the letters NIA, for which colonia is a credible reconstruction. The style of lettering suggest an imperial dedication under Trajan, Hadrian, or Antoninus Pius. Hadrian might well have elevated London, tidying-up an anomalous institutional arrangement, but the evidence is too slight for certainty. Since the inscription was found at a site where the main phases of architectural renovation are Trajanic, it may well date from this earlier time.

Whatever London’s formal status, it gained a grand new civic centre in the early second century (Fig. 13.1). The monumental walls of London’s vast forum were carefully recorded in the late nineteenth-century rebuilding of Leadenhall Market, supplemented by more recent discoveries around Gracechurch Street and during the construction of Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s building. ³ These studies suggest that work started on the new complex whilst its smaller Flavian predecessor remained standing. Massive new ranges were set around the earlier structure, which was later demolished to make space for a new central courtyard. When complete the new complex extended over an area of 2.75 hectares, making it five times the size of its predecessor. It extended to the line of pre-existing streets to south, west, and east, filling a double-width block equivalent to 600 Roman feet. The earlier streets were re-laid and a new one built along the north side. In the process, the street to the east was widened from around 5 metres to 9 metres across, sufficient to allow waggons to pass in both directions and leave space for others to halt for loading and unloading. ⁴ The main entrance remained at the south, where the road rising from London Bridge crested Cornhill.

Fig. 13.1 The early second-century forum (after Marsden 1987, Brigham 1991a, and Dunwoodie 2004). Although Trajanic in original conception, the ranges of rooms to the north of the basilica were not completed until the Hadrianic period. Drawn by Justin Russell.

The principal basilica lay to the rear of the complex, and its remains have been traced from St Michael’s Alley in the west to Lime Street in the east. Brick and ragstone walls, up to 1.5 metres thick, were set over 2.5-metre-deep foundations of concreted ragstone, and the ground level was raised by 1 metre. When complete this block measured 167 metres long by 52.5 metres across, making it longer than St Paul’s Cathedral and the largest building of its type in the north-west provinces. The central range is often described as a nave running the length of the building, as one might expect to find in a basilica. This would, however, have resulted in a peculiarly elongated space. Foundations recorded in 1881 by Henry Hodge at 3 Gracechurch Street suggest that it might instead have been divided into two separate halls, each about 13.7 metres wide and 43.3 metres long, facing each other across a 6-metre-wide entry chamber. Although unusual, this arrangement finds parallel in the Flavian forum at Silchester. ⁵

Drawing on the evidence of the building’s proportions Trevor Brigham has suggested that the central range may have been 25 metres high and lit from clerestory windows. Aisles were built to either side. The north aisle was added in a secondary phase of construction, after which the nave’s north wall was replaced by an arcade of brick piers. This was mirrored by another arcaded opening onto the southern aisle. A further range of rooms was then added along the outside of the northern aisle. Painted walls and cemented floors in the middle of this range are presumed to have decorated high-status offices. A final range to the north included a portico along most of the length of the basilica, with smaller shops and stores (tabernae) reached independently from the road beyond. Large external buttresses added strength and emphasis to the building, recalling the smaller buttresses around the Flavian forum. The building carried a red tile roof. Some of the imbrices and tegulae in the most common fabric were stamped PPBRLON, as were some wall bricks, suggesting that these were obtained from brickworks controlled by the procurator. Mortar surfaces throughout the principal parts of the building may have supported timber floors.

An apse at the east end of the central range was separated from the nave by a double antechamber. The walls of the eastern antechamber, next to the apse, were painted in red panels with floral designs and included at least one robed figure. It is possible that the apse was clad with marble veneer, a panel of which was found at Whittington Avenue. ⁶ The importance of this part of the building is suggested by the fact that it was left standing when the rest of the basilica was demolished in late antiquity (below p. 356). The antechamber and apse may have provided a setting for a tribunal, the raised platform where magistrates sat in judgement, in an arrangement consistent with Vitruvian prescriptions. ⁷ It is alternatively possible that the apse housed a cult shrine. The demolition of London’s Flavian forum involved the destruction of the small classical temple to its west, but it is improbable that the gods who had inhabited this space would have been forcibly removed. Since there was no separate temple, they are likely to have been rehoused in shrines and cult spaces within the new basilica. These may have included Rome’s traditional Capitoline gods, the imperial numen and cult, the deified ancestors and predecessors from whom the emperor claimed power and other divine patrons linked to the imperial family and Roman state.

A second apse may have been located at the west end of the basilica, beneath the church of St Michael Cornhill, mirroring arrangements to the east and finding parallel in the design of the Hadrianic forum at Silchester. ⁸ The room at the centre of the northern range, now beneath the church of St Peter Cornhill, might also have housed a shrine since this was the location favoured for the shrines of military principia. ⁹ In sum and assuming some symmetry to the building layout, we can speculatively identify three parts of the basilica as having special importance: apses at the eastern and western ends of the ‘naves’, and an axially central room to their north. The building may also have housed a council chamber, or curia, where magistrates and governing officials could meet. Council chambers were an important part of earlier Roman fora, and according to Vitruvius their design had to match the importance of the community. ¹⁰ In London, however, real power lay within the offices commanded by governor and procurator.

Basilicas were assembly halls for legal, political, and business affairs. ¹¹ It is likely that government departments were housed within offices on the north side of the central range: perhaps including libraries, archives and counting rooms associated with the census and treasury. These were places where taxes could be assessed and bullion banked within the secure masonry walls. Scribes, notaries and legal clerks may have occupied adjacent spaces, from which they could attend public courts within the basilica. The most important proceedings would have been presided over by the governor, and his court would have filled the larger halls within the nave. A prison, and places for attendant officers, may have been found nearby. Despite our assumptions about the uses to which the building was put, we are unable to positively identify any of these activities from archaeological evidence, and it may be misleading to expect to find clear functional demarcation. Chambers may have been used flexibly depending on the needs of the government of the day: changing seasonally and from one administration to the next. Some parts of the basilica were little used, as illustrated by the fact that a badly damaged floor in one room was left unrepaired. ¹²

Whilst the basilica dominated the new forum, two-thirds of its space was given over to the central courtyard and enclosing ranges. This courtyard measured about 116 by 84.4 metres, making it almost as large as Trafalgar Square. The principal gateway would have been to the south, facing the road to London Bridge, and there may have been side entrances through the western and eastern ranges. These were easily secured, allowing close traffic control for the purposes of security and taxation. The imperial fora offered a different kind of space to the open city centres of the Roman republic: controlled, exclusive and segregated. ¹³

The ranges that enclosed the forum courtyard were set behind a vast 9-metre-wide portico, with a further portico attached to the outside of the complex facing out to the surrounding streets. These ranges probably included secure storage and workshop facilities for renting-out to business, with activities spilling out from shops into the covered portico. Parallels can be drawn with the roofed markets known as qaysariyya in Islamic cities. ¹⁴ Vitruvian description also placed bankers’ shops (argentariae tabernae) within such places, where the money-lenders described in the Bloomberg writing-tablets are likely to have conducted business. ¹⁵ An instructive parallel can be drawn with the tabernae set around Trajan’s forum in Rome. Drawing on a reference in the Fragmenta Vaticana these are thought to have included ground floor offices for the treasury supervised by imperial officials (Caesariani), with upper rooms occupied by officials associated with the grain dole (annona). ¹⁶ At Ostia the prefect of the annona commanded an office surrounded by the offices of private merchants. ¹⁷ Other parts of the forum might have included facilities for public distributions made on state occasions: according to a later source the future emperor Commodus enjoyed sitting in Trajan’s basilica to dispense food and cash subsidies (congiarium) in person. ¹⁸

The forum was the public focus of an imperial ideology built around the unifying figure of the emperor, whose power was sanctioned and favoured by the gods. Statues reinforced this message, converting an abstract concept of imperial rule into a direct relationship between ruler and ruled. ¹⁹ As a bishop in Galatia was later to observe, ‘the emperor’s image has to be put up in every place in which the governor governs, in order that his acts have authority’. ²⁰ Statues were probably set over the piers and bases in the southern wing of the forum, some reusing stumps from walls and column bases of the Flavian forum, and in the portico on the south side of the basilica. ²¹ These were busy locations close to the main entrance, creating focal spots for those meeting here. Fifteen fragments of bronze statues have been recovered from Roman London, representing at least five large figures, and many more will have been melted down over the ages. ²² Their distribution suggests that some stood within temple complexes on the borders of the city, at Gresham Street and Tabard Square. Two of these pieces, however, seem likely to have come from the forum. The most important is the life-size bronze head of the emperor Hadrian recovered from the Thames below London Bridge in 1834, and now in the British Museum. This had been hacked from the body of the imperial statue, and may have been thrown into the river in an act of ritual abuse and expurgation similar to those vested in mortal remains (p. 110). The emperor is portrayed at the age of about 30, clearly recognizable from his incipient beard and distinctive features. The statue was intended to be viewed from in front and probably stood within an apsidal niche in the new forum. It was perhaps commissioned from a London workshop to coincide with the imperial visit of ad 122. The other bronze likely to derive from a statue in the forum was a life-size left hand found at 83–7 Gracechurch Street in 1867.

The open square provided a setting for both markets and ceremonial activities, such as the annual swearing of oaths of loyalty to the emperor. ²³ Altars may have been placed here, and the piazza appears to have been dominated by a large ornamental pool. This was provisionally identified from observations made in a telecommunications tunnel dug along Gracechurch Street in 1977, where the side walls of a sunken mortar and clay lined feature 7.43 metres wide was recorded. ²⁴ The length of this feature wasn’t established, but it would have been at least 14 metres long if set centrally and symmetrically within the courtyard. Although some reconstructions present this as a covered wing bisecting the forum courtyard, Peter Marsden remains convinced that the features he observed formed a pool. The new forum was undoubtedly supplied with running water. A wooden supply-pipe, identified by a row of iron interconnecting collars, was built alongside a new road built along the north side of the forum. A large drain on the north-east side of the courtyard relied on a running water to be flushed, and indicates the likely presence of a public latrine. The water supply might also have allowed for one or more fountains, providing drinking water at the entrance to the basilica where a limestone gutter was observed. Whilst popular reconstructions imagine the forum as crowded with market-day stalls, it is equally possible that it was sometimes laid out as a garden. A grey soil intervened between phases of hard-surfacing, and the space presents similarities with Rome’s forum of Vespasian (Templum Pacis) with its decorative water features and plantings. ²⁵

Dating the forum

Sufficient Flavian material has been found beneath the main body of the forum to show that it couldn’t have been built much before ad 100, although parts of the building site could have been cleared in the 90s. ²⁶ A coin of Domitian (c. ad 85) left in one of the buildings demolished to make way for the new basilica provides a terminus post quem. ²⁷ Work is likely to have started during Trajan’s reign, although a slightly earlier date remains possible. It is tempting to suggest that the harbour improvements of c. ad 102 onwards, described in the previous chapter, anticipated the need to deliver vast quantities of building materials by river. It is also worth noting that the construction of water features in and around the forum required the services of hydraulic engineers, and the evidence from Gresham Street shows that such engineers were busy in London c. ad 104 (p. 152). There are also similarities in the ceramic building materials supplied to the forum and those used in the supposedly Trajanic baths at Huggin Hill, including the use of Procuratorial tiles stamped with the same die types. ²⁸ This suggests that work had started on building the baths and forum at about the same time, drawing on the same procurement chain. These various points of reference allow it to be suggested that work started on building the new forum soon after ad 102, perhaps in a programme of public investment planned after Trajan’s Dacian victory that year. This would make London’s forum a close contemporary of Trajan’s forum in Rome, where building work began in earnest in ad 106/107. ²⁹ Trajan’s forum was dominated by the massive Basilica Ulpia, measuring 176 by 59 metres, which presents superficial similarities of scale and form with London’s early second-century basilica.

Despite the ambitious plans made around the beginning of the century, the northern ranges of London’s basilica were not finished until sometime later. The layout leaves no doubt that these rooms formed part of the original plan, but structural details indicate that the builders had curtailed their ambition. These parts of the complex were no earlier than Hadrianic, as demonstrated by the presence of black-burnished pottery in construction deposits. These building ranges were subsequently damaged by fire in the second century: in Chapter 19, it is argued that this was the Hadrianic fire of the mid-120s. This places the completion of the basilica within the same decade as Hadrian’s visit to Britain in ad 122. It would be consistent with Hadrian’s role as a benefactor of cities for his visit to have been the spur for a programme of public construction, involving the completion of a forum started almost 20 years earlier under his adoptive father Trajan. ³⁰ Hadrian had, after all, played a similar role in the completion of Trajan’s forum and temple in Rome. Although the scale of London’s new forum seems excessive for the needs of the city, it is a mistake to think of its architecture in purely functional terms. The building carried ideological and political symbolism, serving as a simulacra of the fora of imperial Rome and built to commensurate scale. ³¹

The completion of London’s forum may have encouraged competitive improvements to other Romano-British civic centres, with the masonry fora at Silchester, Caerwent, and Leicester, all likely to be Hadrianic in date. ³² Tom Blagg has shown that the decorative stonework used in these second-century buildings finds no parallel in military architecture, implying that the stonemasons were recruited from civilian projects. ³³ Although the Roman army provided labour for some projects financed by Hadrian, it seems more likely that London’s forum was a civilian construction, perhaps subsidised by the procurator whose office managed the tileries that supplied the building works. ³⁴

Before the Hadrianic fire

The quays built upriver from London Bridge at Regis House after ad 102 were replaced shortly prior to the destructions of the Hadrianic fire. ³⁵ This new waterfront, recorded by Gerald Dunning near Regis House, was more substantial than the Trajanic waterfront, using crossed beams similar to those of the Neronian quays rather than a simpler timber revetment. Here, and along most of the waterfront, the embankment was advanced into the river beneath the line now taken by Thames Street where it remains largely inaccessible to archaeological study. ³⁶ We lack close dendrochronological dating, but at Miles Lane a group of timbers felled between ad 114 and ad 142 were associated with a revetment of this phase. ³⁷ Pottery from reclamation dumps suggests an early Hadrianic date. The working surfaces associated with the new quays were lower than before suggesting a significant fall in the levels reached by the high tide, and it has been suggested that the quays were extended further into the river to find deeper water. ³⁸ The monumental nature of the new waterfront might suggest an official involvement in the exercise, perhaps prompted by the need to import large quantities of building material to complete the construction of the forum and contemporary building projects.

Before the fire, London was a busy and crowded city, benefitting from investment in the port and public facilities inspired by the policies of particular regimes seeking to secure allegiances, underwrite dynastic claims and further military campaigns (Fig. 13.2). This is likely to have applied whether or not the building works were funded by the administration or drew on other sources of patronage. Whilst early investment was chiefly directed towards developing London’s port and infrastructure of supply, the interests of the urban population were addressed in the construction of Neronian baths. From the Flavian period, this also included an architecture of games and public festivities following the promotion of the imperial cult, and might have involved subsidized grain supply and distributions of bread.

Fig. 13.2 A proposed reconstruction of London c. ad 120. Drawn by Justin Russell.

These facilities supported the presence of a large urban population within the 80-year-old city. Several town houses destroyed in the Hadrianic fire were expensively decorated in a confident display of social status. Examples include a large early second-century courtyard building with masonry footings at Clements Lane, and an earth-walled building at 10 Gresham Street where a mosaic-floored reception-room was set behind a corridor, perhaps a peristyle veranda, overlooking a yard or garden. ³⁹ This was an unusually crowded city, with remarkably little open space. At Watling Court, for instance, half a dozen high status buildings were divided by narrow alleyways but contained no gardens or yards. ⁴⁰ In one of these buildings a mosaic appeared to have collapsed from an upper room: only in densely populated towns was space at such a premium that reception rooms were placed in upper floors. Despite the city crowds, open space wasn’t far distant. An owl pellet, containing the bones of a mole and three voles, was incorporated within early second-century repairs of a floor within the forum basilica. The bird had roosted in the roof, indicating both the presence of nearby open country and the underuse of the forum facilities. ⁴¹