Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Artificial illumination is one of the most taken-for-granted features of modern life but in antiquity the availability and use of lamps was much more restricted. In Roman Britain, lighting equipment was rare and the use of ceramic lamps appears to have been largely limited to military sites and large urban centres. The so-called ‘lamp factory’ in Colchester is not the only site in Roman Britain to have revealed evidence for lamp production but it is probably the most outstanding. The extensive evidence for Roman lamp production near modern West Stockwell Street in Colchester takes the form of excavated structures as well as of a large and closely dated assemblage of lamps and moulds.