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The Newton-St.-Loe Pavement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

G. R. Stanton
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Extract

The mosaic pavement illustrated on plates VII VIII and IX was found in a Roman villa at Newton-St.-Loe, near Bath, in 1837–38. It was taken up and relaid at Keynsham Railway Station; in 1851 it was taken up again for the Bristol Museum, but when the Bristol Institution moved into a new museum in 1871 the pavement remained stored away, and was never shown again. Several removals and neglect reduced it to a mere pile of fragments, so that the late Professor F. J. Haverfield, writing about 1906, said that it had perished. In 1930–32 it was, however, brought to light. Plates VIII and IX show pieces assembled on a floor awaiting restoration. The site of the villa, which is of an ordinary corridor type (fig. 4), is just outside, and to the west of, Bath, within a few yards to the east of the bridge carrying the main road to Bristol across the Great Western Railway. Most of it was cut away by the railway, but the site of the outbuilding is said to be marked by the broken surface of the south slope of the railway cutting. There are as yet no modern structures at the place. The pavement has frequently been wrongly called after Keynsham or Saltford.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , 1936 , pp. 43 - 46
Copyright
Copyright ©G. R. Stanton 1936. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Vict. Co. Hist. Somerset i, 1906, 302Google Scholar.

2 Thanks to a letter from Marsh to which Mr. J. E. Pritchard, F.S.A. kindly drew my attention, the tracing, together with plans and drawings, were finally discovered to be still in the possession of T. E. M. Marsh's family. Marsh had kept his tracing for over 60 years, hoping that it might be of use in restoring the pavement. This unpublished letter of the year 1900, from Marsh, gives an account of the removal of the pavement to Keynsham in 1838. It states that two pavements were preserved by the use of frames and plaster-of-Paris filling to hold up the tesserae while the bed was being undercut. The Orpheus was relaid at Keynsham, the other remained in frames: both were afterwards taken over by R. Etheridge, a geologist, for the Bristol Museum, where he was from 1851–57. Marsh says:— ‘I have never heard … how he proceeded to take up the floor that had been relaid … some years ago I sought for these relicts … but could learn nothing of them.’ Fragments of a second pavement from Room J (fig. 4) are also in the Bristol Museum and the Bath Institute; in the centre of it there has been a swastika-knot and a lattice of interlacing circles.

The villa and pavement are described or noticed in the following publications: Nichols, W. Luke, Horae Romanae (Bath, 1838Google Scholar), a brief account, of little value, with no plates; anonymous (attributed to W. L. Nichols), A Description of the Roman Villa, etc., at Newton-St-Loe, Twerton, near Bath (Bath and London, 1839Google Scholar), a brief note with a coloured plate of several pavements by T. Jones; lithograph by G. Dinham (also attributed to W. L. Nichols); Great Western Railway Guides (London, J. Wyld, 1839), p. 204Google Scholar, misleading plans of the villa; Memoirs of Bristol at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeol. Inst., 1851 (1853), p. lxviGoogle Scholar and Arch. Journ. viii (1851), 326Google Scholar, 14 portions of pavement (presumably the Orpheus) being shown at Bristol by the G.W.R. in that year; Scarth, H. M., Aquae Solis or Roman Bath (1864), pl. xlviiGoogle Scholar, giving an outline of the Orpheus pavement, and Somerset Arch. and N. H. Soc. Proc. xxii (1876), i, 37, 64Google Scholar, and Arch. Journ. xxxvi (1879), 329Google Scholar, where he complains that the pavement had never been set up; Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. ix (1854), 74Google Scholar; Bath Field Club x (1905), 316Google Scholar; a small coloured drawing by Aldridge is in the Institute at Bath.

3 Inventaire des mosaiques de la Gaule et de l' Afrique (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris, 1909)Google Scholar, I, nos. 55, 181, 201, 219, 233, 242, 1032, 1122, 1386, 1387, 1403, 1611. Reinach RPGR (1922), pp. 199, 403 f., and Roscher, Lexikon der griechischen u. römischen Mythologie iiiGoogle Scholar, col. 1189.

4 Lyons, S., Reliquiae Britannico-Romanae ii (1817)Google Scholar, pl. xx (coloured); Archaeologia xviii, 1815–1817Google Scholar, pl. vii (outline); Bristol and Glos. Archaeol. Soc. Trans. xlviii (1926), 78Google Scholar, pl. ii.

5 Drawing by R. Bradley in British Museum; Vetusta Monumenta ii (1788)Google Scholar, pl. xliv, showing a fragment, the elephant; S. Lysons, Roman Antiquities at Woodchester (1797), pls. vii–x (coloured); Gloucestershire Antiquities (1799), pl. xix, a sketch by E. Browne about 1712, and Rel. Brit-Rom., ii, 1817Google Scholar, pls. xxiii, xxvi, xxvii; Playne, C., Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. v (1880–1881)Google Scholar, pls. xvii–xxiv (coloured); Morgan, Romano-British Mosaics (1886), p. 74Google Scholar and coloured plate; Baddeley, W. St. Clair, Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. xlviii (1926), 75Google Scholar, pl. i, iii–x.

6 Buckman, J. and Newmarch, C. H., Remains of Roman Art, Corinium (1850), pl. vii (coloured)Google Scholar; Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. xxv (1869), 102, 104Google Scholar with five coloured plates; Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. xxxiii (1910), 68Google Scholar, plate.

7 Beecham, , History of Cirencester (1886), p. 267Google Scholar, with plate from a drawing in the possession of C. Bowly; Gents. Mag., 1849, ii, 358Google Scholar; Arch. lxix, p. 174, no. 6.

8 Price, J. E. and Price, F. G. Hilton, ‘Roman Buildings at Morton, near Brading, I.W.’, in Trans. Royal Inst. Brit. Architects, 1880–81, pl. ixGoogle Scholar.

9 Fowler, W., Engravings of the Principal Mosaic Pavements (1804, etc.), no. 20 (coloured)Google Scholar; Lysons, S., Rel. Brit.-Rom. i (1813)Google Scholar, pl. ix; Hoare, R. Colt, Ancient Wilts ii, The Roman Aera, p. 117Google Scholar.

10 Drawing by W. Fowler in Lincoln Museum; W. Fowler, Mosaic Pavements (1804. etc.), no. 2 (coloured); Lysons, S., Rel. Brit.-Rom. i (1813)Google Scholar, pl. iii; Hinks, R., Cat. Gk. & Rom. Paintings and Mosaics in British Museum (1933), figs. 112–115Google Scholar.

11 Drawing by W. Fowler in Lincoln Museum; W. Fowler, Mosaic Pavements (1804), no. 1 (coloured); Vetusta Monumenta, ii (1789)Google Scholar, pl. ix.

12 Coloured plate, drawn by Jno. Hill, lithographed by Bedford (Bristol, n.d.); Haverfield, F. J. in VCH Somerset, i (1906), 317Google Scholar, fig. 77; this pavement has now perished, see Archaeologia lx (1930), 60Google Scholar.

13 Lysons, S., Archaeologia ix, 319 and xviii, 112Google ScholarBristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. xlviii (1926), 79Google Scholar; Morgan, , Rom.-Brit. Mosaics. p. 33Google Scholar, adds Chedworth, possibly in error.