Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/486

 32G COLLECTIONS ILLUSTRATIVE OF These two last mentioned were drawn and published in the second volume of the Reliquice Britannico-Romanse, by Samuel Lysons, the author of the magnificent work, w^iich made its appearance in 1797, chiefly devoted to the noble villa dis- covered at Woodchester, and the representations of the numerous gorgeous pavements that adorned its apartments. Dyer Street, by whatever name the Romans called it, was evidently a Patrician quarter ; the houses of Plebeians were not adorned with such expensive decorations. It does not appear whether any of the pavements discovered subsequently to 1700 were laid on suspensuraj, or on the solid ground. At the north end of the town, outside the limits of the ancient walls, a mosaic pavement of great beauty was discovered in the year 1826 at the Barton farm, the pro- perty of Earl Bathurst, and adjoining his park ; a building was erected over it for its better preservation, but no pre- cautions appear to have been taken for keeping the spot well drained, so that now it is constantly receiving injury from damp and water ; it is desirable that a drain should be constructed, and the building rendered more capable of admitting a sufficiency of light and air. The design is of considerable merit, and represents Orpheus in a centre me- dalhon, charming with his lyre the beasts which surround him in a circle, resembhng, in some degree, the centre of the largest pavement at Woodchester. In August last, during the excavations made for a main sewer through Dyer Street, the workmen struck upon the foundation walls of the building, which had been enriched with the newly found pavements. The attention of the Institute was called to the circumstance by the Vicar of Ciren- cester, and on his invitation, hospitably followed up by that of Earl Bathurst, Mr. Lane the secretary, visited Cirencester twice, and with his assistance and instruction as to the most effective method of raising the pavement from under the street, the one first found, was divided into portions coincident with the geometrical arrangement of the pattern, with the thick terrass, or bed of concrete attached, so as to enable them to be relaid exactly in the original form. The operations, though tedious, perfectly answered the end in view. The whole having been thus, by degrees, successfully removed, the search was continued to the south-west, in the direction beyond the partition wall of the large room, and the labours