Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/48

30 and widened to its outlet to little purpose. It seems likely that, after having been carried a few yards beyond the walls, the water dispersed itself underground.

"The material and the mode of construction are the same in this as in the examples before alluded to. The bulk of nearly all the walls is brick, but the south-western extremity of the building has nothing of the kind; and flint, with here and there an admixture of block-chalk and clunch, has been employed. The walls were not all carried up at one and the same time, those of stone, at the south-west extremity, having been inserted between cross walls, or added in extension of others of finished brick-work. There was no tie between the materials thus brought together; the junctions noticed were effected by sound workmanship, and were not concealed from view on the exterior. In connexion with this part of the subject, it may be well to remark that the quoins of several of the apertures and other portions of the walls were composed of large flanged tiles of a tapering form, and notched to fit together as a covering or coping. The abundance of this kind of material employed in the manner shown (see the accompanying illustrations), and also promiscuously in different parts of the building, besides the quantity mingled with the heaps of rubbish, cannot escape observation; neither may the fact that the flue-bricks, another description of material at hand for common purposes, were employed in the absence of plain tile-bricks; and in one of the drains, the inlet from the room was formed of a brick of this kind, as the most ready means of contracting the aperture. With these exceptions, there is nothing to remark with respect to the construction of the walls, or of the materials of which they are composed, that has not been noticed and described as occurring in other similar remains.

"The hypocaust was placed in the centre of the building; the baths occupied that portion of the north-east wing contiguous thereto; the remainder of this wing, with the entire length and breadth of the other member of the house over the hypocaust, furnace, and other underground spaces, having been occupied by the lodging-rooms.

"The level of the floors was not the same throughout; those over the hypocaust beyond the baths, embracing the greater portion of the interior, agree in this respect, as appears by the tessellated pavement, and the corresponding height of