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A Third-century Maritime Establishment at Cold Knap, Barry, South Glamorgan*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Extract
In 1960 during construction work for the Water's Edge Hotel, Cold Knap, Barry, the remains of a Roman building were revealed. It was not possible to excavate, but one of the authors (HJT) was able to carry out a watching brief during the demolition. From the remains visible at the time, it was believed to be a free-standing building of approximately square plan, and, since human remains had been recorded from close at hand in 1866, it was tentatively identified as a mausoleum.
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- Copyright © Edith Evans, G. Dowdell and H. J. Thomas 1985. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
1 RCAHM Glamorgan vol. 1 part 2, 120Google Scholar; JRS li (1961), 158.Google Scholar
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10 It is difficult to be sure which tile deposits show signs of this activity as much of the tile was discarded before it had been examined for reworking, but likely contexts are 167, 168, 194, 203, 268.
11 We are indebted to P. M. Barford for some of the suggestions in this section.
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16 Mr S. Luen of Barry has described how, as a boy c. 1900, he watched labourers descend the rock flats when the tide was out, break off the stone with iron bars and wedges and pile it in a great cairn with a pole stuck in the top as a sea marker. A sloop would come in with the tide and drop anchor; the assembled stones would be thrown in the hold at low tide and the sloop be floated off with the next high tide. See also Glam. Record Office, Fonmon MSS1/183 ‘Lease of limestones and building stones 1774’, and NLW MS 13 115B pp. 312–14.
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22 Thresholds are rare in Britain, but such arrangements are well-known in places with better preserved Roman remains e.g. Pompeii.
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39 For the purpose of the reconstruction drawing (FIG. 6), the column diameter has been taken as 0·375 m (with 3·75 mm/I½ʺ layer of rendering) and the height as 7 diameters of the full-length columns. The miniature columns (in FIG. 8) have been shown with a height of 4 · 5 diameters loc. cit., 140–2.
40 Traditional post-medieval rubble construction in this area allows 2ʹ for load-bearing walls and 1½ʹ for non-load-bearing walls (pers. com. A. Tomlinson).
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43 Rickman, G., Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (Cambridge, 1971). The only warehouse with rooms of similar proportions to the Cold Knap building is the Horrea Epagathiana et Epaphroditiana at Ostia (op. cit., 30–8; esp. 37). The doorways are rather narrow for a warehouse but comparable examples are known op. cit., 79.Google Scholar
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