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Excavations on the site of the Baths Basilica at Wroxeter 1966-1974: An Intrim Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Philip Barker
Affiliation:
4 St. George's Square, Worcester

Extract

The complex of the public baths at Wroxeter (that part of the site at present open to the public) was entered from a great basilican hall through doors in the Old Work, the standing north wall of the frigidarium of the baths (A on FIG. 1). Earlier excavations, beginning with Thomas Wright's in 1859 and extending at intervals up to the present day, have shown that the basilica was an aisled hall (B) 73 m (240 ft.) long and 20 m (65 ft.) broad with a portico (C) extending the whole length of its northern side. At its east end was an annexe with a small additional room in one corner. At the west end (D) Thomas Wright found evidence of an entrance ‘with a considerable amount of architectural ornamentation’. The south aisle and the nave were paved with tiles arranged in a herring-bone pattern, but the north aisle was divided into compartments with mosaic floors, some of which were removed in the nineteenth century. North of the portico ran a street which bounded the baths insula.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 6 , November 1975 , pp. 106 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Philip Barker 1975. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 In particular, the frigidarium, in which grain was found by Thomas Wright in the nineteenth century.

2 Atkinson, D., Report on excavations at Wroxeter (the Roman City of Viroconium)… 1923–1927 (Oxford, 1942), 108–13.Google Scholar

3 JRS lviii (1968), 206–7Google Scholar; Antiq. Journ. xlviii (1968), 296300.Google Scholar

4 This is the date suggested by Kenyon, Dame Kathleen in ‘Excavations at Viroconium 1936–37’, Archaeologia lxxxviii (1940), 175227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Britannia ii (1971), 261, fig. 8.Google Scholar