The history and antiquities of London, Westminster, Southwark, and other parts adjacent ... Continued to the present time / by Thomas Wright.
- Thomas Allen
- Date:
- 1839
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The history and antiquities of London, Westminster, Southwark, and other parts adjacent ... Continued to the present time / by Thomas Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.
39/504 page 25
![[ts breadth was ten feet, and its length upwards of sixty: the colours of the tesserae were red, black, and yellow; scarcely any of them exceeded an inch in thickness. Four feet below the pavement, in a stratum of clay, various urns were discovered of different forms and sizes; the largest sufficiently capacious to hold three gallons; the least more than a quart. These contained ashes and burnt human bones; and along with them were found, a simpulum and patera of pure red clay, a lachrymatory of blue glass, several beads, copper rings, a fibula, and a coin, the obverse inscribed Antoninvs Avg. Imp. xvi. On the reverse, a woman sitting, holding in her right hand a palm, in her left a spear.* When the foundations of the new Church of St. Martin in the Fields were dug in 1722, a Roman brick arch was found, with several ducts, fourteen feet under ground; and Gibbs, the archi- tect, said, that buffaloes heads were also dug up there. Sir Hans Sloane, likewise, had a glass vase, bell-shaped, that was found in a stone coffin, among ashes, in digging the foundations of the portico.t About the same period, at Mary-le-bone, a large brass Roman key with many Roman coins, was discovered.J On the rebuilding of Bishopsgate Church about the year 1725, several urns, paterae, and other remains of Roman antiquities, were discovered, together with a coin of Antoninus Pius, and a vault arched with equilateral Roman bricks, fourteen feet deep, and within it two skeletons. Dr. Stukeley, also, saw there, in 1726, a Roman grave, constructed with large tiles, twenty-one inches long, which kept the earth from the body.§ In 1730, on digging the foundation for the Church of St. Mar} Woolnoth, Lombard Street, an earthen lamp was discovered, whereon was the following inscription: I ATTLlei F and numerous fragments of vessels, a tesselated pavement, bones of animals, remains of an aqueduct, and a well ; the latter is now in use. These remains induced Dr. Harwood to imagine, that here, not only a considerable pottery, but a temple of Concord, must have stood Such vast quantities of broken pottery abound- ed, that many cart loads were carried away with the rubbish to mend the roads about St. George’s Fields.]] In June, 1774, in laying the foundations of a sugar-house in * Letter to Sir Christ. Wren, p. § Gough’s Cam. vol. ii. p. 9.S. Edit. 12—14. 1806; from A. S. Min. Gough’s Camden, vol. ii. p. 93 [j Hughson’s London, i. p. 84. from Minutes of the Antiq. Society.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29310775_0039.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
