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Show 200 13URIAL OF THE REMAINS CHAP. IV. 337 A.D. was found. My son William visited the place before the excavations were completed; and he informs me that most of the floors were at first covered with much rubbish and fallen stones, having their interstices cOinplete]y filled up with mould, abounding, as the workmen said, with worms, above which there was mould without any stones. The whole mass was in most places from 3 to above 4 ft. in thickness. In one very large room the overlying earth was only 2 ft. 6 in. thick ; and after this had been removed, so many castings were thrown up between the tiles that the surface had to be almost daily swept. Most of the floors were fairly level. The tops of the brokendown walls were covered in some places by only 4 or 5 inches of soil, so that they were occasionally struck by the plough, but in other places they were covered by from 13 to 18 inches of soil. It is not probable that these walls could have been undermined by worms and subsided, as they rested on a foundation of very hard red sand,. into which worms could hardly burrow. The mortar, however, bet ween the stones of the walls of CHAP. IV. OF ANCIEN'r BUILDINGS. 201 a hypocaust was found by my son to have been penetrated by many worm-burrows. The remains of this villa stand on land which slopes at an angle of about 3° ; and the land appears to have been long cultivated. Therefore no doubt a considerable quantity of fine earth has been washed down from the upper parts of the field, and has largely aided in the burial of these remains. Silc!tester, Ilampshire.-The ruins of this small Roman town have been better preserved than any other remains of the kind in England. A broken wall, in ~ost parts from 15 to 18 feet in height and about li mile in compass, now surrounds a space of about 100 acres of cultivated land, on which a farm-house and a church stand.* Formerly, when the weather was dry, the lines of the buried walls could be traced by the appearance of the crops; and recently very extensive excavations have been undertaken by the Duke of Wellington, under the superintendence of the late Rev. J. G. Joyce, by which means many large buildings have been ~ 'l'hese details are taken from the 'Ponny Encycloprodia,' art1cle, Hampshire. |
