Londinium : architecture and the crafts / by W. R. Lethaby.

  • William Lethaby
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Londinium : architecture and the crafts / by W. R. Lethaby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/256 (page 18)
    Fig. 4. has been found at the Baths of Silchester, Wroxeter and Bath. These were all constructed in a most interesting and suggestive way of voussoirs made as hollow boxes in the tile material. Similar box voussoirs have been dis¬ covered at Chedworth and else¬ where. I have found two such box voussoirs in the Rochester Museum, each about 9 in. by 6 in. on the face and 5 in. on the soffit (Fig. 4). The surfaces are roughly scored across with parallel lines form¬ ing an X. These two tiles together show an obvious curvature; they came from a villa at Darenth. In the Guildhall Museum I have also found a box voussoir which is almost identical with those at Rochester. It is thus described: “ 74> Flue (?) tile, red brick, the front decorated with incised cross lines ; in the centre both front and back is a circular perforation : 9^ in. long, 6f in. high, 6i in. wide.” The longest dimension is not in the direction of the tube, and the height is greater at one end than the other, so that the wedge form is quite apparent. The small holes in both the larger sides were doubtless to give better hold to the mortar in which they were set (Fig. 5). Roach Smith recorded what must have been broken parts of similar voussoirs as found in Thames Street in 1848 (Journ. Brit. Archceol. Assoc., vol. iv.), but here they seem to have been used as waste material Fig. 5.