Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/34

20 , consists of alternate layers or bands of pebbles, or small stones imbedded in mortar, and tiles or flat stones. "These bands consisted of three or four courses of tiles or stones laid through the wall, and were placed at two or three feet from each other, the intermediate spaces being raised with a sort of cement composed of mortar and pebbles or sometimes rag-stones, or such materials as the country affords." In this manner are built the Mint wall at Lincoln, the Jewry wall at Leicester, and the walls at Verulam (St. Albans), Porchester, Richborough, York, Pevensey, Chesterford, Colchester, Wroxeter, Silchester, &c.

The other variety consists of walls formed of square stones or ashlar, as the Roman wall in Northumberland. These are sometimes very large, as at the north gate (or Newport gate), Lincoln. Smaller kinds of ashlar, of almost cubical blocks, occur at the multangular tower and other buildings at York. The mortar used in all these walls is in general mixed with pounded brick.

It will not be necessary here to go into a description of all these buildings, but a few of the most remarkable may be mentioned; one of the most curious and interesting of these is the, though it has undergone much alteration, particularly in the fifteenth century. "Wherever the outer casing is worn away, or has been removed by violence, the walls exhibit the usual mode of Roman building with the material of the districts; in this case with tufa or stalactite, brought perhaps from the opposite coast of France, and flint, with layers of large flat Roman bricks, some of them two feet long, each layer two courses deep, placed regularly and horizontally in the walls at equal intervals, or nearly so. No less than eight of these layers of brickwork are visible on the south-east side; other layers are apparently concealed by the external and subsequent casing of flint and stone, and where the casing of flint is perfect, quoins of stone appear at the angles. This tower is externally octagonal in form; internally the space enclosed forms a square. The doorway, recently blocked up, is on the south side, and the arch, turned and faced with a single row of large Roman bricks, springs from a kind of rude impost moulding, somewhat resembling that of the Roman gateway at Lincoln; but this is not now visible. In the interior, the constructive features of the original Roman work were, before the entrance was closed up, far more visible and perfect than on the exterior, and the facing of the bricks was quite smooth; yet the effect of the alterations is here also plainly apparent, and the original windows, the arches of which are turned with Roman brick, have been filled up with flint masonry. Both the external as well as the internal facings of the entrance doorway on the south side were, a few years back, when the interior could be readily examined, far from perfect. Over this doorway were two windows, one above the other, each arched with brickwork. On the east side of the tower is a rather lofty arch faced with stone, the soffit of which, however, appears to have been turned with brick; this probably communicated with some building adjoining. Over this arch is a window now blocked up."

, in Kent, is one of the most important of the Roman remains in England. It is a large parallelogram, including within it an area of five acres. The walls to the height of six feet are more than eleven feet thick, and above that ten feet eight inches; and the masonry is thus described by the Rev. C. H. Hartshorne:—"At Richborough, commencing at the ground, there are on the north side, where the masonry is displayed in its most perfect state, first of all, four courses of flint in their natural



form, then three courses dressed; to these succeed two courses of bonding tile, and then they rise above each other in the following order: seven courses of ashlar and two of tile; seven courses of ashlar and two of tile; seven courses of ashlar and two of tile; again, seven courses of ashlar and two of tile; eight courses of ashlar and two of tile; nine courses of ashlar. The extreme height of this wall is twenty-three feet two inches, and its thickness ten feet eight inches."

One of the most perfect and interesting of Roman remains is the archway at Lincoln, known as "" and styled by Dr. Stukely "the noblest remnant of this sort in Britain." It was the north gate of the Roman city of Lindum, and from it a military way, called the Ermine Street, leading to Winteringham on the Humber, may now be traced, and it still forms the principal entrance into the city from the north. It is supposed to have had a large central arch, and two smaller ones at the sides, that on the west having been destroyed, the larger being about fifteen feet, and the lesser ones seven feet in width. It is built of squared stone, out as far as the top of the arch, of remarkably large size. It is without ornament of any kind, but is said by Rickman to have had architrave and impost mouldings. That of the architrave, if it ever existed, has entirely disappeared; but there is, or was lately, a small portion of the impost moulding remaining, on the west side of the large arch. The masonry, which exhibits none of the usual bands of tiles so frequent in other buildings, will be best understood by the engraving on page 22, which gives every stone in its proper place.

There is another piece of Roman work in the neighbourhood of Newport Gate, which is a piece of wall built with ashlar and bonding courses of tile. It is known as the Mint Wall.



But perhaps the most interesting of all the Roman remains in Britain is the, which reaches across the narrow part of the island in Northumberland and