21
Ostentatious town houses
London continued to command a wholly disproportionate measure of Britain’s wealth after Hadrianic restoration, but this was now more evident in private than public architecture. The Procurator’s office may have been less directly involved in supporting public works, and probably ceased to produce stamped tiles after the Hadrianic fire. 1 Powerful Londoner’s spent on large town houses furnished with expensively decorated dining rooms, peristyles and heated baths in establishments built with masonry walls, mosaics, marble veneers and glazed windows. 2 Houses displaying such features first appeared in London shortly prior to the Hadrianic fire but were only commonplace from c. ad 140 (Fig. 21.1). 3 An early example was found down a ventilation shaft excavated for the Dockland Light Railway in Lothbury, where a masonry walled building heated by a hypocaust and furnished with tessellated floors was dated c. ad 140 by associated pottery. 4 Grand Antonine houses were found throughout town, clustered around the forum and approach roads to its north and east. They were generally larger than their predecessors and laid out over several ranges. Few have been studied in their entirety, but an almost complete ground plan can be reconstructed from foundations at Plantation Place. This house was built shortly after c. ad 150, as indicated by colour-coated Gallic wares associated with its construction, and contained at least seventeen rooms at ground-floor level arranged over three principal wings enclosing a courtyard or garden (Fig. 21.2).
Fig. 21.1 A proposed reconstruction of London c. ad 160, illustrating also the locations of the best-appointed Antonine town houses as marked chiefly by the use of mosaic pavements. Drawn by Justin Russell.
Fig. 21.2 A reconstructed plan of the mid-second-century town house with masonry wall foundations found in excavations at Plantation Place (FER97: after Dunwoodie et al. 2015). Drawn by Justin Russell.
Carefully worked mosaic floors decorated reception rooms in several Antonine houses. 5 These followed an imaginative range of designs including nine-panelled schemes of a type fashionable in contemporary homes in Colchester and Verulamium. One showed a peacock facing a cantharus, alluding to the Bacchic philosophies popular at this time. A few of the best houses also boasted private bathhouses. At Pudding Lane, a masonry building erected after the Hadrianic fire contained a small bath-block with a mosaic-lined apsidal plunge-bath and a latrine set over a tile-lined drain; a similar plunge-bath was found at Crosby Square. 6
Despite the popularity of concrete architecture, some houses continued to rely on earlier traditions of timber-framing and earth walling. This should not be mistaken for an architecture of poverty. A timber-framed building at Drapers’ Gardens, of the mid-150s, incorporated ranges of rooms set behind a peristyle or corridor overlooking a courtyard and benefitted from the unusual luxury of a piped water-supply (Fig. 21.3). 7 At Milk Street an earth-walled reception room at the back of an Antonine building contained a handsome polychrome mosaic decorated with the two-handled mixing vessel, or cantharus, that symbolized the mixing of wine and water at dinner parties and in Bacchic ritual. 8
Fig. 21.3 A reconstruction of the timber-framed town house, built c. ad 128, excavated at Drapers’ Gardens (DGT06: after Ridgeway 2009 and Hawkins forthcoming). The opus signinum (cement) floor may mark the main reception room set towards the rear of a separate wing of the property. Drawn by Justin Russell.
London’s elite residences shared features with town houses in contemporary Romano-British cities. At Verulamium the earliest private hypocaust and mosaic floors also date from the early second century, where larger houses extended over 12 rooms or more. 9 This period witnessed the elaboration of a distinct provincial domestic architecture, creatively drawing on empire-wide fashion to use peristyles and porticoes to direct guests towards grand dining rooms. London may have been where some of these ideas first gained currency in Britain. The introduction of new building technologies possibly benefitted from an influx of craftsmen brought to work on Hadrianic public buildings, spurred by a community of wealthy patrons keen to use private houses to vaunt sophisticated taste. These changes might witness the emergence of a local curial class, as suggested for other Romano-British towns. 10 But this confident expression of propertied wealth might equally have followed the social elevation of people ‘in trade’: the merchants and middlemen on whom the Roman administration of London had long relied.
Whatever their origin, London was home to a community willing to invest in fashionable town houses. They did so by adopting ideas of Hellenistic origin: evident in the Bacchic iconography of the mosaics, and in lifestyles served by private heated rooms and peristyles. 11 These manifested a new cultural outlook, consciously or otherwise taking inspiration from the Greek world by way of the philosophical fashion known as the Second Sophistic. This movement had a fundamental influence on the art and architecture of late Hadrianic and Antonine aristocratic society. 12 Sheltered colonnades and ambulatories enclosing gardens were valued as places for discussing literary and philosophical concerns, borrowing from the Greek gymnasium to demonstrate an educated and performative paideia. 13 These houses alluded to a Platonic spatial dialectic inspired by the Greek symposion, contrasting the rational discourse of the ambulatio with the more irrational arguments of the wine-lubricated dinner party. 14 London followed wider imperial fashion in adopting architectures influenced by such conceits, perhaps ultimately inspired by Hadrian’s palace at Tivoli. 15
Southwark was also dominated by high-status houses and palaces. The luxurious riverside complex at Winchester Palace on the south bank was extensively rebuilt (Fig. 21.4). 16 New rooms were decorated with polychrome mosaics and exotic marble veneers from Tunisia, Asia Minor, Phrygia and the Aegean. In one, a richly painted lunette showed a winged Cupid within an elaborate architectural fantasy. The workmanship was equal to the finest paintings of Italy and Gaul, employing precious pigments such as red cinnabar and gold leaf. 17 The complex included a bathhouse built using types of tiles normally associated with military sites. 18 Some bearing the stamp of the Classis Britannica and others with the stamp of the procurator were reused in later rebuilding (below p. 317). Classis tiles have occasionally been found elsewhere in Southwark and in the Cripplegate fort, and were probably imported to London from the Weald for use in select Antonine building projects. Fragments of rectangular marble panels inscribed with the names of a detachment of soldiers were later reused in the furnace pit of the baths caldarium (Fig. 21.5). 19 They listed seven or eight members from at least four cohorts of a legionary detachment. If all ten cohorts had been represented the dedication would have acknowledged some seventy to eighty men. Many carried the nomen Aur(elius), indicating that the inscription was not earlier than the reign of Antoninus Pius, and the style of lettering probably excludes a Severan or later date. It is therefore likely that the inscription was erected when the complex was rebuilt c. ad 150. We don’t know if the men formed a vexillation involved in the building works or were beneficiarii assembled into a guild. In either case, their association with this building suggests it to have been an important locus in the exercise of imperial and military authority. The structural remains present the aspect of a palatial suburban villa, consistent with the suggestion that it may have been an official residence. 20 The combination of building materials stamped by the offices of both the procurator and the fleet echoes the fact that M. Maenius Agrippa held both commands. We can speculate that this equestrian procurator based his command here, taking control over the Roman fleet to manage coastal traffic and maintain the infrastructure on which it relied. 21
Fig. 21.4 The bathhouse and high-status building excavated at Winchester palace (WP83, Buildings 12–14) towards the end of the second century (after Yule 2005). Drawn by Justin Russell.
Fig. 21.5 Reconstruction of the marble inscription found in excavations at Winchester Palace listing soldiers (drawn by Sue Hurman and reproduced by kind permission of Museum of London Archaeology).
The supposed mansio at 15–23 Southwark Street was also refurbished with a new bath suite, mosaics, Purbeck and Aegean marble wall veneers, and an inlay of igneous gabbro-diorite imported from Egypt. 22 A masonry hexagonal apse was added to the rear of this building in the late second century, whilst the addition of rooms over the earlier courtyard and portico suggests change in the way the building was used. 23 It offered high-status reception facilities, but no longer needed covered porticoes.
New styles of domestic architecture reached beyond London into the surrounding countryside. Sites along the north-bank of the river, including Thorney Island in Westminster and perhaps St Bride’s, were rebuilt in stone as luxurious suburban villas. 24 At Beddington in Surrey a late second-century winged-corridor masonry villa with heated rooms was built over the site of an Iron Age enclosure, and at Keston in Kent new timber buildings incorporating painted walls were built in the mid- to late second century. 25 Contemporary building works were in progress at other villas bordering the London basin in north-west Kent and Surrey. 26 The preferences that had marked London out as culturally distinct to the self-governing urban communities of southern Britain are increasingly difficult to identify, and the town became more socially and economically integrated with its rural hinterland. This is evident in the supply and use of pottery, where the repertoire of vessels used within London’s hinterland showed a convergence of tastes with those of the city. 27 There are different reasons why this may have been the case. It is possible that the demands of taxation encouraged engagement with the cash-economy, promoting the integration of regional markets. It is also possible that more land around London came to be owned by wealthy Londoners, transferring wealth obtained from trade into country estates, and exporting urban tastes and patterns of consumption. This might in turn have created new opportunities for local landed interests to engage with their urban counterparts, both socially and economically.
Changing traffic
Whatever the spur to these building activities, London remained an important port. Parts of unwanted cargoes of Gaulish and German Samian, broken in transit or from redundant stock, were dumped on the Thames foreshore between London Bridge and the Tower. 28 Gwladys Monteil has identified several discrete groups amongst this material, dating from the late Hadrianic to late Severan periods. One was dominated by fire-damaged vessels, perhaps from a warehouse fire of c. ad 155 or slightly later. Shippers of these imported tablewares continued their operations in a dedicated part of the port for the best part of a century. A 40-metre-long quay built at Sugar Quay in the caisson style, with oak timbers laid in regular courses forming a series of twin boxes, incorporated a timber pile felled after ad 133 in its foundations. Timber baulks in this construction carried circular lettered stamps suggestive of administered supply. The quays were poorly located for shipments destined for the forum or carriage along Watling Street, and more convenient for estuarine and coastal traffic. This shift in London’s centre of gravity is reflected in the distribution of the wealthier town houses, many of which are found east of the forum. This area may have become more fashionable as merchants and administrators established residences near their place of business.
Luxurious living sustained a local demand for imported goods, and London remained an important hub in the onward supply of continental imports and regional produce for the army. Hadrianic changes had, however, reconfigured this traffic. The development of east coast supply routes diminished the volumes of goods that needed to be transferred from ship to road, with consequences for traffic flows through London. London had formerly served as the principal entrepôt for traffic between Britain and the continent, but the rise of alternative centres gave it a less central role in such traffic. 29 This may have influenced the decision to reduce the width of the main road to Colchester. Formerly a three-lane highway this was reduced to a dual carriageway in the mid- to late second century. 30 The forum, in particular, became less important in handling operations. This may explain subsequent phases of neglect in parts of the complex and account for declining volumes of broken amphorae noted within London’s pottery assemblages. 31 In Neronian levels, amphoras make up about 40 per cent (by weight) of all pottery found, but by the middle of the second century this had fallen to 20 per cent.
Goods continued to flow through Southwark. A wonderfully preserved half-cellared warehouse was found at Courage Brewery on the western side of the main island. 32 It was built with pre-fabricated wooden frames formed from timbers felled in the winter of ad 152/3. A ramped entrance and solid oak floor suggest that it was designed to store barrels arriving down-river. In following years an extensive inter-tidal area on the east side of Southwark was reclaimed from the river using rubbish and gravel dumps. These were taken out to the line of a deeper river channel, the Guy’s channel, which was canalized by revetments of horizontal oak planks retained by uprights felled ad 161. 33 Timber-lined vats provided wet storage in the open areas behind this new waterfront, but much of the newly reclaimed area remained under-developed. The main purpose of the engineering was perhaps to improve navigation along the river channel rather than win new land.
The amphitheatre was also refurbished around this time. New floors to its eastern entrance are dendrochronologically dated after c. ad 145, and alterations to the arena floor and drainage used timbers felled after ad 149 with one dated no later than ad 158. 34 The troops stationed in the Cripplegate fort may have kept the arena busy. This garrison may also account for the presence of a group of unusual coin issues, dated ad 154, found in river spoil at Billingsgate. Guy de la Bédoyère has suggested that this was a consignment of coinage shipped from Rome for official disbursement in London. 35 These findings indicate that London remained busy in the 150s, perhaps providing logistical support for campaigns resulting in the victories implied by coins showing a ‘dejected Britannia’ ad 154–5. 36
Housing the gods
The new elite architectures established a landscape of masonry town houses studded across the city. This was soon mirrored by developments in temple design, as the gods were rehoused in masonry monuments. 37 In much the same way that the architects of town houses exploited construction skills brought to London for the Hadrianic public works, so the patrons of London’s temples may have benefitted from the availability of artisans formerly engaged in house-building. Some of London’s grandest new buildings occupied a terrace overlooking the Thames in the south-west of the city. Two successive public building complexes have been identified west of the redundant bathhouse at Huggin Hill. Dumps of marble veneers at Peter’s Hill included richer materials than were associated with the baths and probably came from a different monumental building. 38 This is likely to have been built in the first or second centuries since it included material, such as Italian Carrara, that was rarely used afterwards. Parts of a monumental complex were explored in excavations at the Salvation Army Headquarters, near the approaches to the Millenium Bridge. 39 Although most of the remains date to later rebuilding, the complex included a masonry apse facing onto the river built using a foundation pile felled ad 165. 40 The structures are likely to have formed the river façade of an important temple precinct, later extended to include ambulatories and exedra housing statues and altars (below p. 302). Unpublished research by David Bentley, drawing on the alignments of various finds of monumental masonry, speculatively concluded that the precinct could have housed a large classical temple similar in size and layout to the temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath. 41 Altars erected in third-century restoration indicate the presence of temples dedicated to both Jupiter and Isis (below p. 303). Jupiter was the supreme protector of Rome and frequently named on votive altars. 42 By the second century the deity was synonymous with Roman imperial law and political order, and London’s temple to Jupiter would have been an important point of reference within the urban landscape.
Two parallel walls, a little under 10 metres apart, along Knightrider Street have long puzzled archaeologists but might have formed the boundary of a monumental precinct. 43 The northern wall was at least 115 metres long and enclosed an open-space. It was cut into a pit with late first-century pottery and pottery of the third-fourth centuries was dumped to its side. Extensive gravel surfaces and several quarry pits have been noted on sites to the north, and a 21-metre-long masonry wall set perpendicular to Knightrider Street was seen at Sermon Lane. It has been suggested that this was a circus where chariot races were held, although the evidence is uncertain. A circus was, however, built at Colchester in the second century and it is not unlikely that London followed suit. 44
Another temple may have been built on the western bank of the river Fleet in the late second or third centuries, overlooking the bridge towards Newgate. Nothing of the superstructure survived, and its identification relies on fragmentary traces of the wall-robbing trenches found at Old Bailey. These might describe a central octagonal cella, 16 metres in diameter, surrounded by a 3.75-metre-wide portico or ambulatory with concrete (opus signinum) floors. 45 Building debris indicates that the roof was tiled and some walls painted red with a border of white and green. A pit next to the outer wall contained a human skull. The interpretation of the building as a Romano-Celtic temple remains uncertain, although Ralph Merrifield drew attention to parallels with an octagonal temple of Apollo Cunomaglus built at Nettleton in Wiltshire. 46 With a total area of 520 square metres this would be the largest Romano-Celtic temple found in Britain.
Masonry temples were added to the religious sanctuary south of the amphitheatre, filling out the area east of the temple described in Chapter 12. One was found at 54–66 Gresham Street in 2007, where the distinctive features of a Romano-Celtic temple followed the same cardinal orientation as the other temples south-east of the amphitheatre. 47 It consisted of a small rectangular cella, 4.5 metres square, rising above a 1.4-metre-wide surrounding portico. A solid foundation of mortared flint cobbles in the southern half of the building may have supported a cult statue or altar. Interim reports suggest that this was built in the late second or early third century. A similarly aligned rectangular masonry building was found at Ironmonger Lane by Adrian Oswald in 1949. 48 The near-square chamber was about 6.5 metres across internally, and its construction dated by a large dump of finds dated 140–60 found in the 1995 reinvestigation of the site. 49 The room’s mosaic floor was decorated with flowers and eight-lozenge stars arranged within a hexagonal compartments in a design that finds parallel in late second-century Silchester. 50 The south-east corner of another masonry building on the ‘temple orientation’ was found at 13–14 King Street in 1955. 51 No dating evidence was recovered, but a tessellated floor laid nearby after the Hadrianic fire may have been part of the same building. 52 The large Neronian pool to the south may have been backfilled in the expansion of the temple precinct, with fills dated by c. ad 120–60 ceramics. 53 A further temple may also have been located 150 metres west of the Gresham Street pond, indicated by monumental foundations and an altar found at Goldsmiths’ Hall in 1830. 54
Tiberinius Celerianus
Excavations at Tabard Square in 2002 and 2003 revealed another large temple precinct on the southern margins of town, between Watling Street and the southernmost channel of the Thames, and built over buildings whose demolition is pottery dated c. ad 125–65. 55 A small shrine might have been located amongst these earlier buildings, but the main focus of votive deposition had lain on the other side of Watling Street. 56 This activity declined significantly c. ad 140–250, coinciding with the establishment of the Tabard Square precinct.
The temple temenos consisted of near-square trapezoidal gravel-surfaced enclosure, about 92 metres across at its widest point, defined by open ditches (Fig. 21.6). A small square masonry building was placed outside a riverside entrance, perhaps marking a station for worshipers entering the sacred area. 57 The precinct was dominated by two square Romano-Celtic temples about 40 metres apart. The northern temple consisted of a small square cella, 4.85 metres square, with a surrounding portico or ambulatory. Its interior was decorated with painted red panels enhanced by a candelabra motif, and the lower portions of the external walls were painted dark red. The southern temple was of similar design but perhaps slightly larger. Each temple may have been flanked by a column, represented by a robbed-out masonry foundation. Ephemeral timber structures towards the centre of the precinct were associated with ovens and hearths, perhaps used in banqueting ceremonies. The buried remains of a few cremated sheep were perhaps the residue of foundation rituals rather than more routine sacrifice. The enclosure ditch contained votive deposits and ritually sacrificed vessels amongst finds assemblages dated ad 140–60. These included a tin-alloy canister containing a greasy white preparation, still showing finger marks left from its last use. 58 This might have been a medicinal preparation used at a place of healing, or a cosmetic treatment for lightening skin tone in religious processions where whitened faces identified men performing female roles.
Fig. 21.6 The Roman temples at Tabard Square in the late second century (LLS02: after Killock et al. 2015). Drawn by Justin Russell.
The most important find from the Tabard Square excavations was a dedication inscribed onto a small marble slab buried in a fourth-century shaft at the heart of the complex. 59 The lettering, which retained red pigment, followed second-century style. The circumstances of burial suggest that the inscription held particular importance to the sanctuary, and may have been an original temple dedication. The bottom lines of the inscription have been lost but the rest is clearly legible and translated by Roger Tomlin as reading: ‘To the Divinities (Numina) of the Emperors (and) to the god Mars Camulus. Tiberinius Celerianus, citizen of the Bellovaci, moritix, of Londoners. The first…’ (Fig. 21.7). The formulaic reference to the Divinities of the Emperors (NVM.AVGG) indicates that the dedication was made during a joint reign, as when Marcus Aurelius was co-emperor with Julius Verus (ad 161–9) or Commodus (ad 177–80). The earlier of these dates is a better match for the finds from the temenos ditch.
Fig. 21.7 The dedication to the god Mars Camulus (DEOMARTICAMVLO) made by Tiberinius Celerianus (TIBERINIVSCELERIANVS) found buried face-down in a shaft dug within the temple precinct at Tabard Square (drawn by Dr Roger Tomlin and reproduced with his kind permission).
Tiberinius Celerianus is likely to have been the patron responsible for the endowment. He was a Roman citizen, as evidenced by his duo nomina, who identified himself as a citizen of the Bellovaci. This was a territory in Belgic Gaul centred on the modern city of Beauvais. He was also described as a Moritix ‘of the Londoners’ (Londiniensi). Moritix was a Celtic compound word formed from mori, meaning sea, and (s)teigh, to stride or mount, that must have meant ‘seafarer’. 60 It is attested in two other inscriptions: an altar was dedicated to Apollo at Cologne by a negotiator Britannicianus moritex, and a sarcophagus from York commemorated an individual responsible for the imperial cult from Bourges in northern Gaul. 61 Both individuals were probably freedmen. Moritix appears to have been a term applied to Gauls engaged in seaborne trade between Britain and the Continent, but we do not know if it described a profession or was an official title. These are not mutually exclusive, and Tiberinius Celerianus may have been the foremost member of a guild (collegium) of shippers from coastal Gaul operating in London. 62 If a ship-owner, he would have ranked amongst the wealthiest members of society, and been closely tied to the administration if not directly employed as a state official. This gave him sufficient status to rank amongst London’s most important patrons. 63 A series of altars and shrines found at Domburg and Colijnsplaat, in the Rhine delta, testify to the activities of a kindred merchant community. These dedications were made by negotiatores who specialized in trade with Britain, and in products from the coastal regions where they operated. 64 Although London is not mentioned in these inscriptions, it was the principal British port within this network. Collegia were vital social institutions in cities where power resided with a diaspora community. On occasion these guilds were agents of the administration, collecting taxes and distributing liturgies. They established networks of patronage directed through organized worship: building temples and sponsoring festivals. 65 It has consequently been suggested that the Tabard Square temples belonged to a private guild. 66
This begs the question of whether London’s conspicuous Antonine investment in houses and temples should be credited to wealthy merchants, or to land-owning aristocrats setting-up in town and importing architectural tastes from country villas. 67 We have already seen that few amongst London’s high society arrived from the immediate countryside, where few villas were to be found, although a case can be made for seeing the hand of immigrants from other Romano-British communities in the architecture. Some details are similar to those found in neighbouring cities at Silchester, Colchester, Verulamium, and Canterbury. The needs of political representation at the provincial council, embassy to the governor, and financial and legal engagement with London-based businessmen may have attracted a community of Romano-British aristocrats to the city. London remained under the political sway of the institutions developed by the provincial administration, but others may have been drawn to invest in city property.
Camulus, to whom Tiberinius Celerianus made his dedication, was a god of the Remi from northern Gaul (around Reims) identified with Mars. Mars was not just a god of war but also a guardian of place, and his Tabard Square temple was ideally located to protect London. 68 It would have been an important landmark for those approaching London from the south, by river or road, and visible from the temple on Greenwich hill. These routes connected Southwark with the important sanctuary at Springhead, where the area around the sacred spring was transformed into a larger complex in the mid- to late second century. 69 Travellers looked to the gods for good fortune when setting forth or when giving thanks for safe arrival, giving life to these roadside and gateway sanctuaries. Parallels can be drawn with temples at the south-eastern approaches to Silchester, where the masonry architecture is also likely to date to the second century, and in the temple enclosure at Balkerne Lane in Colchester. 70 These precincts, home to several gods in inter-related worship, commanded gateways into town in an architecture of contrast that set extra-mural sanctuaries in opposition to a central forum. 71 A dialogue between suburban sanctuary and urban core is likely to have been recognized in religious processions that traversed the city. These are likely to have been regular events. In Ephesos the parade from the extra-mural sanctuary to the theatre and back, took place fortnightly. 72 A papyrus found at Duro-Europus dated ad 225–7, lists the frequent festivals, sacrifices and parades conducted by an auxiliary garrison stationed on the eastern frontier for the imperial cult, military celebrations, and in the worship of the gods of Rome. Most of these religious holidays involved public distributions of free meat and wine after the sacrifices. 73
In order to attend games at the amphitheatre, the priests and worshippers of Mars Camulus would have paraded through town accompanied by pipes, cymbals, bells and rattles. 74 The life-size moulded pipeclay theatre-masks, such as the Bacchic mask depicting Silenus found at Green Dragon Court and others from the Bank of England, were made for these religious processions. 75 The porticoes, temples and baths of Antonine London formed a ceremonial backdrop for the festivities. Celebrants leaving the Tabard square temples would have made their way along Watling Street through Southwark, perhaps pausing at a precinct on the north island where Faunus and Isis were worshipped. 76 A shrine to Neptune on London Bridge might have been the next station before reaching the forum and a shrine to the imperial cult. The onward route to the amphitheatre crossed the Walbrook, from which offerings to the river could be made. 77 From here the road headed up to the temples of the northern precinct and the amphitheatre itself. Processions following this route would have united London’s different districts in shared celebration. The entire journey could be made on foot in under an hour, but would have taken much of the day if sacrifices and offerings were made at each shrine along the way.
Funerary architecture
Funeral processions headed in the opposite direction, leaving the city to attend burials in roadside cemeteries. Here too, a monumental landscape emerged in the middle of the second century, drawing on the masonry construction techniques introduced to public and domestic architecture. Some of the better tombs were set alongside the southern approach to London. Mausolea within walled cemeteries were found flanking Roman Watling Street at Great Dover Street, nearly 0.5 kilometres south of the Tabard Square temples (Fig. 21.8). 78 These combined to form a monumental street of tombs (Gräberstrasse). 79 Associated ceramics indicate that this cemetery was established no later than the middle of the second century. A square masonry building, some 8 metres across, may have been a temple or mausoleum. It included a well or soakaway, and the base of a possible altar between the inner and outer walls of the building. A cremation pit, or bustum, was found 30 metres away. This contained a woman’s cremated remains along with exotic foods, including figs, almonds, dates and the remains of chickens and other birds. The organic remains included Mediterranean stone pine: a symbol of immortal life and source of aromatic smoke. Molten glass within the incinerated remains may have derived from an ungentuaria. These testify to the feasts and funerary rituals undertaken once the body reached the graveyard. Offerings made after the pyre debris had been gathered together included at least nine pottery tazze and eight pottery lamps. Three of these lamps showed the Egyptian jackal-headed Anubis who controlled entry to the underworld and was sometimes associated with oriental cults such as that of Isis. The lamps also included the depiction of a fallen gladiator, which encouraged speculation that this might have been the burial of a female gladiator. Lamps and tazze were commonly used in funerary ritual, giving light and hope to the dead on their perilous journey to the underworld, and since gladiatorial combat originated in the celebration of funerary games this was an entirely appropriate topic for a burial assemblage. Other structures were added north of the temple or mausoleum over the following decades. These included two walled cemeteries, each built around a centrally located base for a tomb or statue and flanked by a buttressed mausoleum. An upright amphora in the southern walled cemetery was perhaps a receptacle for libations. Rubble within the cemetery included a carved stone pine and moulded cornice, likely to have derived from a funerary monument, and the carved head of a river god likely to have come from a funerary sculpture. Further burials took place outside these walled graveyards.
Fig. 21.8 The roadside cemetery and mausolea found at Great Dover Street to the south of the Southwark settlement (GDV96: after Mackinder 2000). Drawn by Justin Russell.
Funerary monuments lined Watling Street for at least 1 kilometre out of town, reaching at least as far as 82–96 Old Kent Road where the foundations of a second-century mausoleum have been recorded. 80 Carved stone fragments derived from these monuments, including elements found at Tabard square, include pine-cone finials of a type used to symbolize immortality and usually confined to military sites. These might have marked the burials of officers serving in London or imperial officials with similar tastes. 81
The presence of important Neronian funerary monuments on the east side of town, such as the tomb of Classicianus (above p. 105) which probably remained standing until fourth-century demolition, attracted other tombs. A masonry structure with a marble veneer at Tenter Street is likely to have been a mausoleum, and at least four masonry monuments were recorded in the Mansell Street cemetery. 82 A stone mausoleum and a round or octagonal building have also been found at Prescot Street near Aldgate. 83
Marking boundaries
Processional routes through London may have attracted other types of monumental architecture. A substantial concrete foundation 6 metres square and 1.1 metres high, perhaps the base for a column or statue or alternatively some form of ceremonial gateway, was set next to the main west road inside the line of the later town wall. 84 Roadside buildings were demolished to make way for this monument, c. ad 160. On the north side of the road a smaller contemporary foundation could have supported columns, perhaps a portico. Another massive roadside foundation, at least 2.7 metres across, of uncertain purpose was found c. 8 metres west of the later city wall outside Ludgate. 85
City gates may have been built as ceremonial arches before the early third-century town wall was built, to mark the sacred and political borders of the city. 86 The gate at Newgate was set on a higher plinth than the town wall, suggesting that it started life as a freestanding structure (Fig. 21.9). 87 It comprised a double portal, each carriageway about 5 metres wide, flanked by two square towers housing ‘guardrooms’ from which customs and tolls might be managed. A flint and brickearth foundation seen during tunnelling next to Bishopsgate might have supported a similar monument on the northern boundary of the Roman city. 88 Parallels can perhaps be drawn with Trier’s Porta Nigra, built in ad 170.
Fig. 21.9 The town gate at Newgate Street (after Norman and Reader 1912 and Pitt 2006b). This illustrates three separate phases of monumental construction: a possible ceremonial archway or roadside monument, the Roman town gate at Newgate, and the third-century masonry town wall that was added to either side. Drawn by Fiona Griffin.
The presence of these ceremonial gateways suggests that the later city wall followed an established boundary. This was probably marked by a small ditch: excavations at Dukes Place found traces of a shallow feature with second-century fills that anticipated the line of the city wall, with other pre-wall ditches identified at Aldersgate and London Wall. 89 The earlier town boundary, perhaps represented by the ditch at Baltic Exchange, may have continued to mark London’s formal limits into the Hadrianic period. 90 The abiding significance of this feature is indicated by the fact that crania were deposited within its upper fills in the early second century. An Antonine coin is also supposed to have been found with the remains of a cremation cemetery inside the line of the later wall at Camomile Street, near Bishopsgate, in 1707. 91 These finds imply that the town boundary had not advanced to its later line before the Antonine period. A parallel can be drawn with the situation at Verulamium, where the Flavian town boundary was marked by an earthwork feature known as the ‘1955 ditch’ which was allowed to silt up by c. 140. Verulamium’s city boundary was subsequently marked by an earthwork known as the ‘Fosse’, which appears to have been raised before a fire dated c. ad 155. 92 A similar chronology of urban expansion would fit the evidence from London. Hadrianic expansion might have encouraged an Antonine redrawing of the city limits when the legal boundary was probably marked by little more than a low bank and ditch. This was followed by the construction of ceremonial arches at the entrances into the city later in the century. It was at this time that the city reached its greatest extent, covering an area of c. 168 hectares (133 hectares north of the river and 35 hectares in Southwark), and may have been home to a population of around 30,000 if not slightly more. 93
After a century of near-continuous growth London was a city of visible consequence, vastly larger than any other Romano-British town and boasting numerous temples, baths and palaces. The Roman city may never have been more populous than it was when Tiberinius Celerianus prepared to dedicate his new temple to Mars Camulus on the borders of Southwark. Indeed, it was more than a thousand years before London outgrew the limits reached at this time.