Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/257

 ROMANO-BRITISH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE repeated assertion that the church is itself a Roman building is quite wrong.' (16) Near Daventry, at the north end of Borough Hill, a mile east of the town. Here the remains of a Roman villa have been found inside the great prehistoric earthworks, and a portion has been excavated, first by George Baker in 1823 and subsequently by Beriah Botfield in 1852. A block of buildings 70 feet wide by 145 feet long has been uncovered (fig. 23). This seems to have contained the baths of the villa ; foundations were noticed to branch off from it, for the most part in a westerly direction, and it is obvious, as indeed the character of the plan suggests, that we have only a portion of a larger whole. At least two of the rooms had mosaics. One mosaic discovered and removed in 1823 from room k had a design 9 feet square, consisting of a central circle fitted into two interlacing squares and framed in a larger square, the ornament in each case being guilloche. The other, in room J, had an outer border of Vitruvian scroll and an inner one of guilloche ; the centre was destroyed. The minor objects found were of considerable interest — painted wall plaster ; Samian, Castor and other wares ; pewter and iron articles, including some curious keys ; fragments of local marble ; window glass and glass vessels, and so forth. The coins found were few and late.* About a mile south of this, and just under the south end of Borough Hill, is a spot which has borne the name of Burnt Walls for at least six centuries. Here, along the north side of the Weedon and Daventry road, the surface shows signs of extensive disturbance, and Morton records the occurrence of foundations and ruined walls, while Baker states that Roman bricks and tiles have been found south of the road, and a building close by on the site of the now vanished Daventry Wood. Excavations on the north side of the road, made in 1900, Fic. 23. Borough Hill, Daventry. A well ; B I hot baths ; c E i o T furnaces (o unfinished) ; F I j N T hypocausts ; ) K mosaic floors ; M N E p Q R plain tessel- lated floors ; L s opus signinum floors ; K T painted stucco walls. ' Sir Hy. Dryden, Aisociated Anhit. Soc. Reports, xx. 345, xxii. 78 (compare xix. 40S) ; Sir Hy. Dryden's MSB. in Northampton Museum ; fragments of pottery in the same museum : Gentleman s Magazine (1841), i. 305 ; Murray's GuiJe to Northants, p. 181 ; for the church see Micklethwaite, Archtrological Journal, liii. 300. A carved eagle built into the church has been called Roman (Archir- ologia, xliii. 1 19), but is apparently of later date. ' George Baker, i. 345 ; Botfield, Archaolo^a, xxxv. 383 ; C. Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, i. 1 1 3 (iUustr. of pavement k), iii. 208 ; remains in Northampton Museum and British Museum. 195