Wroxeter: Ashes Under Uricon; a Cultural and Social History of the Roman City 9781803272498, 9781803272504, 180327249X

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright information
Contents
List of Figures
Figure 1: The author, photographed in the office at Wroxeter by Graham Webster’s wife, Diana Bonakis Webster, in 1987 at the start of the writing up process.
Figure 2: A visit by Eaton Constantine school to Wroxeter in July 1959. The custodian, Alf Crow, is explaining the site. For most of these children, this may well have been their first, and last, experience of the site. Image © Shropshire Archives (SA) 31
Figure 3: Wroxeter and its landscape viewed by air from the north. The arc of the northern rampart is apparent, as are the consolidated ruins at the centre of the site. The village is centre right. The River Severn is prominent, and the now demolished pin
Figure 4: Thomas Wright in a studio portrait by Ernest Edwards of Baker Street, London, 1866.
Figure 5: Illustrated London News engraving of the excavations in April 1859; the original would have been monochrome. Author’s photo, 2019.
Figure 6: Donald Atkinson, by L. Haffer, 1946. Courtesy of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Photo by the author, October 2021.
Figure 7: The western part of the Forum Inscription as first uncovered, shattered on the street below the entrance. After Atkinson 1942, pl.44B.
Figure 8: The Wroxeter Forum Inscription, as displayed at Rowley’s House, Shrewsbury in the 1990s following its restoration. The paler areas are plaster – about 75% of the original inscription survives – but the restored letters can be confidently provide
Figure 9: Details of some of the letters in the inscription showing original tooling marks and stylistic details. Author’s photos, August 2020.
Figure 10: David Kyndersley’s and Lida Lopez Cardoza’s artistic response to the Wroxeter Inscription. Author’s photo 2013.
Figure 11: Eric Gill’s Golden Cockerel font, 1929, based on the lettering in Wroxeter’s forum inscription. Image courtesy of Mike Ashworth.
Figure 12: Graham Webster, in around 1948 when he was appointed as Curator at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. Photo courtesy of Diana Bonakis Webster.
Figure 13: Mike Corbishley (l) and Phil Barker (r) celebrating the end of the baths basilica excavation in August 1985. Author’s photo.
Figure 14: The baths basilica excavation July 1971 – ploughsoil is being removed by a trowelling line of diggers to reveal the underlying surface. Note that the fields beyond the site are still under cultivation. Photo by Phil Barker.
Figure 15: The Wrekin from near Cressage in a watercolour by Tom Prytherch, 1902. Image © Raby Estates 2020.
Figure 16: A map of the post-Roman kingdoms of England and Wales in the seventh – ninth century. Not all of these polities were extant at the same time. After Hill 1981, fig. 41 and Ray & Bapty 2016, fig. 1.1. Drawing by Sophie Lamb.
Figure 17: Offa’s Dyke on Llanfair hill, north of Knighton. Author’s photo, December 1994.
Figure 18: The Pillar of Eliseg, near Llangollen, a ninth century monument commemorating the kings of Powys. Photo by Theo Bumpus, August 2020.
Figure 19: The Wem Hoard, a recent discovery of hacksilver including many coins (right) some of which have been cut into halves and quarters. It dates to the latter half of the fifth century. Author’s photo, November 2018.
Figure 20: Regularly sized platforms on the south aisle which indicate timber buildings put up in the shell of the basilica. Photo Philip Barker, August 1974.
Figure 21: The tombstone of Cunorix, an Irishman buried at Wroxeter around AD500. The inscription is cut into a broken Roman tombstone. Author’s photo, August 2011.
Figure 22: Lead pans for boiling brine to extract salt. Found at Shavington, Cheshire the inscriptions commemorate late Roman clerics presumably based at either Chester or Wroxeter. After Penney and Shotter 1996 and 2000.
Figure 23: A plan of the baths at Wroxeter with a plot showing the approximate location of burials mentioned by Thomas Wright. These cluster around the frigidarium, which may have become a chapel in the immediate post-Roman period. After Ellis 2000 with a
Figure 24: The post-Roman British defended coastal site at Degannwy, by Llandudno. This lay roughly on the border between Powys and Gwynedd. Its small size, and defensive qualities offer a stark contrast to the defensive situation at a place like Wroxeter
Figure 25: The proposed reconstruction of Wroxeter’s territory in the Roman period, fossilised in the medieval diocesan boundary between Hereford and Lichfield. After Barker et al. 1997, fig.327.
Figure 26: A.E. Housman, by Francis Dodd. Image © National Portrait Gallery, London, 1926 NPG 3075.
Figure 27: The wooded scarp of Wenlock Edge, looking west. Author’s photo, August 1993.
Figure 28: J.P. Bushe-Fox, Inspector of Ancient Monuments and an important innovator in Romano-British studies. Image courtesy of English Heritage Trust.
Figure 29: Sir Henry de Vere Vane, 9th Baron Barnard (‘Statesmen No.704’). Chromolithograph by George S. Fothergill, as depicted in Vanity Fair on 15th December 1898. Image © National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG D44939.
Figure 30: Visitors to the excavations at Wroxeter being shown finds, perhaps by one of Bushe-Fox’s student diggers. Photo courtesy of English Heritage Trust; Accession number 88038026.
Figure 31: ‘The City in the Corn’ as photographed by Henry Lang Jones in 1913; an atmospheric frontispiece to Songs of a Buried City.
Figure 32: Wilfred Owen in 1912, the same year that Bushe-Fox’s excavations at Wroxeter started. Wilfred Owen Literary Estate.
Figure 34: Bushe-Fox’s excavation of the Temple, Site V, in 1913 (see Figure 103). All those visible are probably labourers rather than student excavators. After Bushe-Fox 1914, pl.IV, 1.
Figure 35: A 1952 watercolour by Edwin H. Judd of the fonts from Shrewsbury Abbey and Wroxeter. The latter is certainly from a large Roman column base. Image © Shrewsbury Museum Service SHYMS: FA.1994.09.
Figure 36: Mary Webb, in around 1920. After Coles, 1977 frontispiece.
Figure 37: The display of micaceous sandstone tiles outside the site museum at Wroxeter. Photographed on 25th June 1914 by Arthur Whinfield, President of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society from 1916. Image © Worcester Archives 832 BA 16072 2310.
Figure 38: The Wroxeter Mirror – one of the most beautiful, and least-known, finds from Roman Britain. Author’s photo, October 2010.
Figure 39: Mytton’s rather schematic view of the Old Work’s north side, 1721. The wall depicted to the left is the wall opposite (south of) the Old Work. Image © Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham (XMYT The Mytton Pape
Figure 40: The south façade of Attingham Hall. Author’s photo, August 1985.
Figure 41: Attingham Hall as viewed from under William Hayward’s bridge over the river Tern, which was in place by 1780. Author’s photo, May 2021.
Figure 42: A page in Repton’s Red Book for Attingham Park showing the suggested spire added to St Andrews, Wroxeter. The Tern bridge and river is also prominent in the image. Attingham Collection. © National Trust.
Figure 43: Cronk Hill, designed by John Nash in c.1802. Now restored to its original stone-coloured finish. Author’s photo, July 2020.
Figure 44: Thomas Girtin’s watercolour of the Old Work at Wroxeter, 1798. Private collection.
Figure 45: Pearson’s 1807 engraving of the Old Work, based on Girtin’s view. Author’s photo.
Figure 46: Revd. William’s watercolour of the north side of the Old Work, 1788. Image © SA 6001/372/1/68.
Figure 47: Revd. William’s watercolour of the south side of the Old Work, 1788. Image © SA 6001/372/1/67.
Figure 48: David Parkes’ engraving of the south side of the Old Work with fanciful background. After Urban 1813. Author’s photo.
Figure 49: Hartshorne’s engraving of the Old Work, as published in Salopia Antiqua, 1841. Author’s photo.
Figure 50: The Old Work viewed from the north-east. From this position the roof of The Cottage can be seen framed in the doorway, as is still the case today. Image © West Northamptonshire and Northampton Archives, HaC vol XXIV, Hartshorne p.95, 1838.
Figure 51: Hartshorne’s atmospheric view of the south side of the Old Work from a point diagonally opposite that in Figure 50. Note the build up on this side of the Old Work, not otherwise visible in any other view. It suggests there was a substantial amo
Figure 52: The Old Work as depicted in the frontispiece for Wright’s Uriconium (1872). It is very clear from the sheer detail in this image that this engraving is copied from a photograph taken during the excavation, as confirmed by the spoil heaps in the
Figure 53: Tom Prytherch painting outside Topsy Cottage. A posed image since this is a postcard, as shown by the label. Probably ca. 1910. Private collection.
Figure 54: ‘Wroxeter from Severn Fields’, a watercolour by Tom Prytherch painted in 1920. The blue building is Tom’s studio. The Cottage, the house tenanted by the Everalls from 1888, is centre left. Private Collection.
Figure 55: Tom Prytherch in his studio. Behind his head, partly obscured by other pictures, is one of his large oil paintings of the ruins at Wroxeter. Private collection.
Figure 56: The alabaster tombs of, on the left, Sir Thomas Bromley and his wife, and right Sir Richard Newport and his wife, St Andrew’s Wroxeter. Painted by Tom Prytherch for the 9th Lord Barnard. Image ©Raby Estates 2020.
Figure 57: ‘The Old Work and Ruins’ by Tom Prytherch, ca. 1908. Photograph by the author courtesy of English Heritage Trust Acc. No. 88070008.
Figure 58: A postcard version of ‘The Old Work and Ruins’ with added details. It is not known where the original now is or even if it still exists. The signature and date (1908) are in the right-hand corner. Image © SA PH/W38/3/13.
Figure 59: ‘The Fall of Uriconium’ by Tom Prytherch, date unknown. Photograph by the author courtesy of English Heritage Trust Acc. No. 88070007.
Figure 60: Wroxeter Churchyard Gates and Topsy Cottage. A clear inspiration for the gateway seen in the Fall of Uriconium. Watercolour dated 1900 by Tom Prytherch. Private Collection.
Figure 61: Alfred Hulme’s ‘Fugitives sheltering in the Hypocaust’, 1909. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: FA.1991.197.
Figure 62: A late 19th century photograph of the room where the old man in the hypocaust and his two companions were found. This image shows how accurate Hulme’s painting was in relation to the site. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/7.
Figure 63: Forestier’s view of the forum entrance from the Illustrated London News, 1925. Author’s photo.
Figure 64: The view of the bustling street between the Forum and public baths by Forestier published in the Illustrated London News, 1925. Author’s photo.
Figure 65: Ivan Lapper’s reconstruction of the whole of Wroxeter Roman City, viewed as from the north. Comparing the two images will show the addition of a cattle market (the rectangular area on the left) and the area of pitting (brown patch with smoke on
Figure 66: Three versions of the interior of the baths basilica dating from the 1990s to 2012. The largely monochrome version is the first. This was corrected by the red version, which more accurately displays the mosaics, but compresses the height of the
Figure 67: The panel interpreting the hot rooms of the baths from the viewing platform showing how the panels aid understanding of the ruins in the background. Details, such as the ceiling decoration, are based on discoveries made on site. Author’s image,
Figure 68: One of the landscape panels, this one looking to the south-west. Painting by Ivan Lapper, as displayed on site. Author’s image, August 2003.
Figure 69: Ivan Lapper’s view of the Forum – as colourful a scene as that by Forestier. Image © Historic England Archive (IC118/013).
Figure 70: Alan Sorrell’s 1973 reconstruction of the baths complex. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2013.00123.
Figure 71: Alan Sorrell’s view of Wroxeter. This view to the south-west echoes that of Corbet Anderson more than a century before. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2013.00124.
Figure 72: The reconstructed town house at Wroxeter, based on Bushe-Fox’s Site VI. It has proved popular with the general public, despite its design flaws and academic inaccuracies. Author’s photo May 2012.
Figure 73: An iconic cover of the first edition of Dawn Wind, by Charles Keeping, 1961. Wikipedia Commons.
Figure 74: A collapsing farm building at Muckley Cross, between Much Wenlock and Morville in Shropshire. It is plain that the building will eventually form a heap which will then become a grass-covered mound. Author’s photo, February 2012.
Figure 75: The ‘worm stone’ at Down House, Kent, Darwin’s home but also his laboratory. Author’s photo, April 2011.
Figure 76: Charles Roach Smith, the London chemist who was one of the leading archaeologists of his day. Author’s image.
Figure 77: A medallion struck in honour of Charles Roach Smith’s efforts to preserve the Roman town wall of Dax in France. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2022.00009.
Figure 78: Francis Bedford’s 1859 photograph of the western hypocaust, as reconstructed by Henry Johnson following its unfortunate encounter with the Cannock Miners. Image source Wikipedia Commons.
Figure 79: The pen and watercolour drawing made by George Maw in April / May 1859 of the remnants of the mosaics in the north aisle of the baths basilica and the herringbone tile floor in the baths. Image © Shropshire Museums Service SHYMS: 2022.00005.
Figure 80: A fragment of a floor laid out using mosaic tiles from Maw’s factory at Benthall, Shropshire. This is clearly following the suggested layout in Maw’s catalogue (right). Photos courtesy of and © Hans van Lemmen.
Figure 81: F.W. Fairholt’s etching of a visit to Wroxeter in 1859. An attentive gentleman points to where the Old Man was found while a labourer carries on in the background. Author’s image.
Figure 82: John Groom’s 1862 photo of the Bell Tent set up as a refreshment point among the spoil heaps. The house behind is 1 & 2 The Ruins, then a freshly built pair of tenant’s houses. Next to it are the Wroxeter farm buildings. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/39
Figure 83: The enameller’s workshop as recorded in a stereophotograph in 1859. The column and furnace mentioned are evident, as is one of the spoil heaps. The table is the square block of masonry. It is actually the foundation for a support for the vaulte
Figure 84: John Corbet Anderson’s view of the south Shropshire Hills from the highest point of the town, north of the Old Work (visible to the right). Caer Caradoc is the right of the two conical hills, the other being the Lawley. Long Mynd is on the righ
Figure 85: The base of the tombstone found in 1861, as drawn by Hillary Davies, the talented illustrator who recorded many of the finds from Wright’s excavations. Image © SA: PR/2/551.
Figure 86: The largest of the spoil heaps at Wroxeter. The wall in the foreground is that of the macellum while behind it is the Old Work, with the Wrekin visible behind the tree. This photograph is a rare record of the mound. Photo perhaps by Francis Hav
Figure 87: Melancholic views of the site in the early 20th century. It is not surprising people wrote gloomy poems about the site. One view is from the museum entrance. The random stones are part of the site lapidarium – stray architectural elements encou
Figure 88: A late 19th century view taken from a position similar to that adopted by Francis Bedford in 1859 (see Figure 78). Note the deterioration of the walls and hypocaust in just a few decades. Image © SA: PH/W/38/3/22.
Figure 89: Percy W. Taylor’s previously unpublished 1931 plan of the baths site at Wroxeter. Intended for the new site guide by John Morris it was not used in that publication. The mounds are prominent, and their height can be judged by the profiles below
Figure 90: The forum excavations in 1924, around the time Henry Morton visited. The view is dominated by the tipped light-railway hopper showing a mechanised approach to getting the spoil off the site. Workmen can be seen in the trench beyond the railway
Figure 91: One of the Aerofilms views of the site in 1929. The heaps are prominent on the site while in the foreground are some visitors and the pale stones of the now relocated site lapidarium. In front of them lies the newly exposed forum colonnade. A s
Figure 92: Francis Jackson (right) with his friend Charles Vernon Everall, Wroxeter’s tenant farmer, and ‘Catch of the Season’, a salmon caught in the Severn below the house in the 1920s. The building is the still-extant summer house outside the Cottage a
Figure 93: Kathleen Kenyon at Wroxeter in July 1937. She is probably consulting the map to decide where to place the sections she dug across the defences. If so, she is very likely standing close to the junction of the Norton Road and the Horseshoe Lane,
Figure 94: An aerial photograph of Wroxeter showing the ruins with, in the foreground, the cropmarks of a Roman town house, site of Kenyon and Webster’s excavations in 1952 and ‘53. The white rectangles are the concrete bases of World War 2 huts. Image ©
Figure 95: The iron column needlessly supporting the Old Work at the turn of the 20th century. Image © SA, Mallinson 607 PH/W/38/3/31. For the ugly concrete post doing the same job, see Figure 98.
Figure 96: Graham Webster, surveying in obviously inclement summer weather in September 1952. His Vespa is nowhere in sight. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook).
Figure 97: The Priory schoolchildren at Wroxeter, 1952. Top: a posed photo taken for the Shrewsbury Chronicle showing the Priory boys surveying. Gareth Wyn Jones is second from the right. Middle: The human pyramid – Peter Reynolds is bottom row, centre. B
Figure 98: The Manchester Guardian photographer’s view of the freshly consolidated ruins at Wroxeter in September 1952. The impact of the Ministry of Works is already apparent. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook).
Figure 99: The Wyatts excavating at Wroxeter. Their digging attire is notably formal, even for the time. The Priory schoolboy behind them gives a more accurate idea of what the new generation of diggers usually wore. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapboo
Figure 100: A view of the custodian’s house (with the chimney), the site museum behind it, and the entrance booth taken in the late 1950s, as indicated by the freshly consolidated ruins to the right and the poplars by the colonnade which have rapidly grow
Figure 101: Philip Barker (second from right) with University of Birmingham Extra Mural colleague Stan Stanford (extreme left) and Shropshire associates, including Ernie Jenks (extreme right). Taken during the Smethcott Castle excavation, 1956-8. Image co
Figure 102: Arnold Baker, standing beside his RAF surplus DH82a Tiger Moth and Series 1 Land Rover in the 1950s. Photographer and date unknown; image from Baker 1992.
Figure 103: A classic Arnold Baker oblique, taken in 1975 (SJ563083-201). The house on the left is The Cottage while the baths site is just visible in the top right corner. The triangular field filled with cropmarks are the buildings excavated 1912-14 by
Figure 104: A photo by Jim Pickering of the excavations underway in 1964. The box-trenches dug by Graham Webster are evident, as are the partly consolidated ruins of the site with the Old Work under scaffold. The modern huts on the left are those provided
Figure 105: A view of diggers on Graham’s site at Wroxeter in 1964 or 5. Among them must be prisoners from HMP Drake Hall, hence the presence of a Warder (centre). Photograph by Sheila Broomfield in Author’s collection.
Figure 106: The University of Birmingham brochure produced to commemorate the opening of the Sir Charles Foyle Centre at Wroxeter, and the Field Studies Centre at Preston Montford, Shrewsbury. Author’s collection.
Figure 107: A view by Charles Daniels, one of Graham Webster’s supervisors, of the trying conditions of the 1966 excavation in the piscina area. Note the propped-up walls and shoring holding back the spoil. Charles Daniels archive.
Figure 108: A photograph by Charles Daniels of the main praefurnium of the baths as first uncovered in 1967, and its consolidated state today. While the work is radical in its impact, it was also necessary in that the poor state of the masonry in the uppe
Figure 109: The traditional group photo of the excavation team for the Baths Basilica site in 1984 with, in the left centre, Prince Edward (above the X). To his left is his tutor, Dr Kate Pretty, Deputy Director of the site. Many of the others present ret
Figure 110: The Macellum excavation in 1975. The custodian’s house, site museum and poplars have gone. The team are focused on the remains in the herringbone-tiled courtyard. The two men at the back, in hats, are Tim Strickland, Graham’s senior site super
Figure 111: The plan for a new Wroxeter, as envisaged in the 1976 DoE feasability study. It was never agreed or implemented and will never be realised in this format. Note the new (and improbable) line for the B4380 Shrewsbury to Ironbridge road curving a
Figure 112: Mal, one of the Directly Employed Labour force, constructing one of the missing walls of the macellum on a foundation of crushed stone in May 1989. The stone has been retrieved from the site stone heap kept for just this purpose. Author’s phot
Figure 113: The spectacular steel-and-glass baths cover building at Xanten, Germany. A replica in modern materials of the Roman town bathhouse whose plan is very similar to that at Wroxeter. This image captures the building before the museum was added to
Figure 114: The work of the Wroxeter Hinterland project, clockwise from top left. Volunteers carrying out the resistivity survey; Bessie White (my mum), Jenny Smith, and Jon Guite potwashing in the kitchen of No.2 The Ruins; Corvedale Schoolchildren field
Figure 115: Cropmarks of the roads at Wroxeter appearing in the field south of the baths in a drought year. These marks are in the same location seen by Bushe-Fox in 1912. The grass in shallow soil above the road surface has dried out quicker than the gra
Figure 116: The full-face portrait coin of Carausius as illustrated in Corbet Anderson’s book on Uriconium in 1867. Author’s image.
Figure 117: The north wall of Wroxeter St Andrews. The large stones in the centre of the wall form the surviving wall of an Anglo-Saxon church. A small rounded-headed blocked window can also be made out between the two larger (and clearly later) windows.
Figure 118: The stone screen erected from Roman fragments in garden of The Grange probably sometime in the late 19th century. Author’s photo, August 2010.
Figure 119: A massive piece of Roman masonry in the wall of the drive way of The Grange, next to St Andrews. Its upper surface is composed of in situ facing stones which will have been the face of the wall. The thickness of this piece is thus around a met
Figure 120: Wroxeter farm shippen yard wall, inside the building. The course of massive masonry lies at exterior ground level so the wall depth below gives the amount of soil removed to create the yard. Virtually all of this stone is Roman. After White an
Figure 121: One of the square stone bases imaginatively repurposed as a plant holder by Stanier. It was found when excavating the shippen yard of Wroxeter farm in 1854. Author’s photo, June 1995.
Figure 122: John Lyster’s drawing of the bath house found, and dismantled for its stone, in 1701. The first record of a Roman building in Wroxeter. After Lyster, 1706.
Figure 123: Thomas Telford’s handsome isometric perspective engraving of the bath house uncovered at Wroxeter. After Rickman, 1838, pl.10.
Figure 124: A hand-coloured lithograph of the mosaic found in the garden of a villager in Wroxeter in 1827. There is a letter from Thomas Wright pasted onto it to confirm its authenticity as a record of the mosaic. (Photo courtesy of Debbie Klemperer, for
Figure 125: The tombstone of Tirintinus, as once displayed in the Rowley’s House Museum, Shrewsbury (now in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery). Author’s photo, March 1993.
Figure 126: Three Wroxeter tombstones as depicted in the original publication by John Ward. That in the middle is of Placida and Deuccus. Author’s image.
Figure 127: Alan Duncan’s imaginative reconstruction of Agricola leaving Wroxeter’s fortress at the head of the 20th Legion on his campaign in Wales, AD 78. Image © Shropshire Museum Service.
Figure 128: C. Flavell Hayward’s entry into the Wroxeter visitor book. Image © SA 6001/186 f.60r.
Figure 129: The cover of the music for Flavell Hayward and Elgar’s ‘A War Song’ (1903). Wikipedia commons.
Figure 130: Ellen, Lady Berwick, with her husband, Richard, 7th Lord Berwick and a shooting party which may have included the Head Gardener, George Pearson, who recorded his visit to Wroxeter in the visitor book in 1884. Unknown photographer, 1880s. Atti
Figure 131: The author leading a guided tour of Wroxeter to a part of the site not normally open to the public. It has been a long-term aim to open up more of the site to the general public. August 2019.
Figure 132: The consolidated and rebuilt walls of a Roman building at Reinheim, Saarland. If you look carefully at the wall in the centre you can see that the lower part is the original wall. The rest has been built up to stabilise it and make sense of th
Figure 133: Two of Atkinson’s workmen digging the forum. In the background is the fence of 1 & 2 The Ruins, and to the left, the sheep fold behind the farm buildings (Image © SA PH/W/38/3/51). The image indicates that the ruins are relatively shallowly bu
Figure 134: The display inside Shrewsbury Tourist Information Centre. Plenty of lovely images of Shropshire, but none of them of Wroxeter. Author’s photos, December 2021, with the consent of staff.
Figure 135: Goss Crested Ware souvenir of Wroxeter. The crest is of Shrewsbury – the Three Loggerheads over a ribbon with Floreat Salopia. Height of vessel 69mm. Image © Shropshire Museum Service, SHRMS: 2018.00170.
Figure 136: The orientation display panel in the reception area of Attingham Park. Wroxeter Roman City is visible in the bottom right corner – the purple line of the estate boundary goes across the northwest corner of the monument. Author’s photo, June 20
Figure 137: The Grassy Town forlorn, and its rent and mournful wall … with acknowledgement to the shade of Mary Webb. Author’s photo, July 2020.
My Wroxeter
Introduction
Archaeologists and their stories
Poetic visions
Wroxeter depicted
Writing and visiting Wroxeter
Archaeology for all
Wroxeter’s people
Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century
References

Citation preview

WROXETER ASHES UNDER URICON Roger H. White

Archaeopress Roman Sites

WROXETER ASHES UNDER URICON A Cultural and Social History of the Roman City

ROGER H. WHITE

Archaeopress

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG www.archaeopress.com ISBN 978-1-80327-249-8 ISBN 978-1-80327-250-4 (e-Pdf) © Roger H. White and Archaeopress 2022 Cover: Original cover art work by Lyn Evans

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

Contents List of Figures��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������iii My Wroxeter����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 7 Archaeologists and their stories������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 11 Poetic visions ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 32 Wroxeter depicted����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 68 Writing and visiting Wroxeter�������������������������������������������������������������������������������108 Archaeology for all��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������150 Wroxeter’s people����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������183 Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century����������������������������������������������������������������������213 References�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������223 Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������235

i

ii

List of Figures Figure 1: Figure 2:

Figure 3:

Figure 4: Figure 5: Figure 6: Figure 7: Figure 8:

Figure 9: Figure 10: Figure 11: Figure 12: Figure 13:

The author, photographed in the office at Wroxeter by Graham Webster’s wife, Diana Bonakis Webster, in 1987 at the start of the writing up process��������������������� 2 A visit by Eaton Constantine school to Wroxeter in July 1959. The custodian, Alf Crow, is explaining the site. For most of these children, this may well have been their first, and last, experience of the site. Image © Shropshire Archives (SA) 3181/311 Leighton Village Hall slide collection��������������������������������������������������� 3 Wroxeter and its landscape viewed by air from the north. The arc of the northern rampart is apparent, as are the consolidated ruins at the centre of the site. The village is centre right. The River Severn is prominent, and the now demolished pink cooling towers of Ironbridge B power station are in the left background. Author’s photo 26th July 2013����������������������������������������������������������� 8 Thomas Wright in a studio portrait by Ernest Edwards of Baker Street, London, 1866��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13 Illustrated London News engraving of the excavations in April 1859; the original would have been monochrome. Author’s photo, 2019����������������������������������������������� 14 Donald Atkinson, by L. Haffer, 1946. Courtesy of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Photo by the author, October 2021����������������������������������������������� 17 The western part of the Forum Inscription as first uncovered, shattered on the street below the entrance. After Atkinson 1942, pl.44B��������������������������������������������� 18 The Wroxeter Forum Inscription, as displayed at Rowley’s House, Shrewsbury in the 1990s following its restoration. The paler areas are plaster – about 75% of the original inscription survives – but the restored letters can be confidently provided. Author’s photo, July 1993������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 18 Details of some of the letters in the inscription showing original tooling marks and stylistic details. Author’s photos, August 2020���������������������������������������������������� 20 David Kyndersley’s and Lida Lopez Cardoza’s artistic response to the Wroxeter Inscription. Author’s photo 2013����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 21 Eric Gill’s Golden Cockerel font, 1929, based on the lettering in Wroxeter’s forum inscription. Image courtesy of Mike Ashworth����������������������������������������������� 22 Graham Webster, in around 1948 when he was appointed as Curator at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. Photo courtesy of Diana Bonakis Webster��������������� 24 Mike Corbishley (l) and Phil Barker (r) celebrating the end of the baths basilica excavation in August 1985. Author’s photo����������������������������������������������������������������� 25

iii

Figure 14:

The baths basilica excavation July 1971 – ploughsoil is being removed by a trowelling line of diggers to reveal the underlying surface. Note that the fields beyond the site are still under cultivation. Photo by Phil Barker���������������������������� 27 Figure 15: The Wrekin from near Cressage in a watercolour by Tom Prytherch, 1902. Image © Raby Estates 2020��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 34 Figure 16: A map of the post-Roman kingdoms of England and Wales in the seventh – ninth century. Not all of these polities were extant at the same time. After Hill 1981, fig. 41 and Ray & Bapty 2016, fig. 1.1. Drawing by Sophie Lamb�������������������� 35 Figure 17: Offa’s Dyke on Llanfair hill, north of Knighton. Author’s photo, December 1994� 37 Figure 18: The Pillar of Eliseg, near Llangollen, a ninth century monument commemorating the kings of Powys. Photo by Theo Bumpus, August 2020���������������������������������������� 38 Figure 19: The Wem Hoard, a recent discovery of hacksilver including many coins (right) some of which have been cut into halves and quarters. It dates to the latter half of the fifth century. Author’s photo, November 2018������������������������������������������������ 39 Figure 20: Regularly sized platforms on the south aisle which indicate timber buildings put up in the shell of the basilica. Photo Philip Barker, August 1974���������������������� 42 Figure 21: The tombstone of Cunorix, a man of Irish descent buried at Wroxeter around AD500. The inscription is cut into a broken Roman tombstone. Author’s photo, August 2011����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 43 Figure 22: Lead pans for boiling brine to extract salt. Found at Shavington, Cheshire the inscriptions commemorate late Roman clerics presumably based at either Chester or Wroxeter. After Penney and Shotter 1996 and 2000������������������������������� 44 Figure 23: A plan of the baths at Wroxeter with a plot showing the approximate location of burials mentioned by Thomas Wright. These cluster around the frigidarium, which may have become a chapel in the immediate post-Roman period. After Ellis 2000 with additions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 45 Figure 24: The post-Roman British defended coastal site at Degannwy, by Llandudno. This lay roughly on the border between Powys and Gwynedd. Its small size, and defensive qualities offer a stark contrast to the defensive situation at a place like Wroxeter. Author’s photo, June 2006���������������������������������������������������������� 46 Figure 25: The proposed reconstruction of Wroxeter’s territory in the Roman period, fossilised in the medieval diocesan boundary between Hereford and Lichfield. After Barker et al. 1997, fig.327��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 48 Figure 26: A.E. Housman, by Francis Dodd. Image © National Portrait Gallery, London, 1926 NPG 3075������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 50 Figure 27: The wooded scarp of Wenlock Edge, looking west. Author’s photo, August 1993� 51 Figure 28: J.P. Bushe-Fox, Inspector of Ancient Monuments and an important innovator in Romano-British studies. Image courtesy of English Heritage Trust������������������� 52 Figure 29: Sir Henry de Vere Vane, 9th Baron Barnard (‘Statesmen No.704’). Chromolithograph by George S. Fothergill, as depicted in Vanity Fair on 15th December 1898. Image © National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG D44939������������� 52 Figure 30: Visitors to the excavations at Wroxeter being shown finds, perhaps by one of Bushe-Fox’s student diggers. Photo courtesy of English Heritage Trust; Accession number 88038026������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 53 Figure 31: ‘The City in the Corn’ as photographed by Henry Lang Jones in 1913; an atmospheric frontispiece to Songs of a Buried City����������������������������������������������������������������54 Figure 32: Wilfred Owen in 1912, the same year that Bushe-Fox’s excavations at Wroxeter started. Wilfred Owen Literary Estate��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 57 Figure 33: The ferry at Uffington, at about the time Wilfred Owen and his brother Harold used it. Image © SA PH/U/1/46������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 58 Figure 34: Bushe-Fox’s excavation of the Temple, Site V, in 1913 (see Figure 103). All those visible are probably labourers rather than student excavators. After Bushe-Fox 1914, pl.IV, 1���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 58

iv

Figure 35: Figure 36: Figure 37:

Figure 38: Figure 39:

Figure 40: Figure 41: Figure 42: Figure 43: Figure 44: Figure 45: Figure 46: Figure 47: Figure 48: Figure 49: Figure 50:

Figure 51:

Figure 52:

Figure 53: Figure 54:

A 1952 watercolour by Edwin H. Judd of the fonts from Shrewsbury Abbey and Wroxeter. The latter is certainly from a large Roman column base. Image © Shrewsbury Museum Service SHYMS: FA.1994.09�������������������������������������������������� 59 Mary Webb, in around 1920. After Coles, 1977 frontispiece�������������������������������������� 63 The display of micaceous sandstone tiles outside the site museum at Wroxeter. Photographed on 25th June 1914 by Arthur Whinfield, President of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society from 1916. Image © Worcester Archives 832 BA 16072 2310������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 64 The Wroxeter Mirror – one of the most beautiful, and least-known, finds from Roman Britain. Author’s photo, October 2010������������������������������������������������������������� 65 Mytton’s rather schematic view of the Old Work’s north side, 1721. The wall depicted to the left is the wall opposite (south of) the Old Work. Image © Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham (XMYT The Mytton Papers 261 – Wroxeter 1651)������������������������������������������������������� 69 The south façade of Attingham Hall. Author’s photo, August 1985������������������������� 71 Attingham Hall as viewed from under William Hayward’s bridge over the river Tern, which was in place by 1780. Author’s photo, May 2021����������������������������������� 73 A page in Repton’s Red Book for Attingham Park showing the suggested spire added to St Andrews, Wroxeter. The Tern bridge and river is also prominent in the image. Attingham Collection. © National Trust��������������������������������������������������� 73 Cronk Hill, designed by John Nash in c.1802. Now restored to its original stonecoloured finish. Author’s photo, July 2020������������������������������������������������������������������� 75 Thomas Girtin’s watercolour of the Old Work at Wroxeter, 1798. Private collection������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 77 Pearson’s 1807 engraving of the Old Work, based on Girtin’s view. Author’s photo������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 78 Revd. William’s watercolour of the north side of the Old Work, 1788. Image © SA 6001/372/1/68�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 79 Revd. William’s watercolour of the south side of the Old Work, 1788. Image © SA 6001/372/1/67�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 80 David Parkes’ engraving of the south side of the Old Work with fanciful background. After Urban 1813. Author’s photo���������������������������������������������������������� 81 Hartshorne’s engraving of the Old Work, as published in Salopia Antiqua, 1841. Author’s photo������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 84 The Old Work viewed from the north-east. From this position the roof of The Cottage can be seen framed in the doorway, as is still the case today. Image © West Northamptonshire and Northampton Archives, HaC vol XXIV, Hartshorne p.95, 1838������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 85 Hartshorne’s atmospheric view of the south side of the Old Work from a point diagonally opposite that in Figure 50. Note the build up on this side of the Old Work, not otherwise visible in any other view. It suggests there was a substantial amount of rubble here from the collapsed vault. The shadows cast by the projecting vault are particularly noticeable. Image © West Northamptonshire and Northampton Archives, HaC vol XXIV, Hartshorne p.96, 1838�������������������������� 85 The Old Work as depicted in the frontispiece for Wright’s Uriconium (1872). It is very clear from the sheer detail in this image that this engraving is copied from a photograph taken during the excavation, as confirmed by the spoil heaps in the foreground, and by the presence of the workmen. Author’s image� 86 Tom Prytherch painting outside Topsy Cottage. A posed image since this is a postcard, as shown by the label. Probably ca. 1910. Private collection������������������� 87 ‘Wroxeter from Severn Fields’, a watercolour by Tom Prytherch painted in 1920. The blue building is Tom’s studio. The Cottage, the house tenanted by the Everalls from 1888, is centre left. Private Collection������������������������������������������� 88

v

Figure 55: Tom Prytherch in his studio. Behind his head, partly obscured by other pictures, is one of his large oil paintings of the ruins at Wroxeter. Private collection������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 88 Figure 56: The alabaster tombs of, on the left, Sir Thomas Bromley and his wife, and right Sir Richard Newport and his wife, St Andrew’s Wroxeter. Painted by Tom Prytherch for the 9th Lord Barnard. Image ©Raby Estates 2020������������������������������ 89 Figure 57: ‘The Old Work and Ruins’ by Tom Prytherch, ca. 1908. Photograph by the author courtesy of English Heritage Trust Acc. No. 88070008���������������������������������� 90 Figure 58: A postcard version of ‘The Old Work and Ruins’ with added details. It is not known where the original now is or even if it still exists. The signature and date (1908) are in the right-hand corner. Image © SA PH/W38/3/13��������������������� 90 Figure 59: ‘The Fall of Uriconium’ by Tom Prytherch, date unknown. Photograph by the author courtesy of English Heritage Trust Acc. No. 88070007���������������������������������� 92 Figure 60: Wroxeter Churchyard Gates and Topsy Cottage. A clear inspiration for the gateway seen in the Fall of Uriconium. Watercolour dated 1900 by Tom Prytherch. Private Collection����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 92 Figure 61: Alfred Hulme’s ‘Fugitives sheltering in the Hypocaust’, 1909. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: FA.1991.197����������������������������������������������� 94 Figure 62: A late 19th century photograph of the room where the old man in the hypocaust and his two companions were found. This image shows how accurate Hulme’s painting was in relation to the site. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/7������������������������������� 94 Figure 63: Forestier’s view of the forum entrance from the Illustrated London News, 1925. Author’s photo������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 96 Figure 64: The view of the bustling street between the Forum and public baths by Forestier published in the Illustrated London News, 1925. Author’s photo���������������� 97 Figure 65: Ivan Lapper’s reconstruction of the whole of Wroxeter Roman City, viewed as from the north. Comparing the two images will show the addition of a cattle market (the rectangular area on the left) and the area of pitting (brown patch with smoke on right-hand side) to the second version. Note too the change in building density towards the north end of the town, nearest the viewer. All of these changes were a reflection of the findings from the geophysics. Images © Historic England Archive (IC118/114 J900034 and IC118/001)����������������������������� 99 Figure 66: Three versions of the interior of the baths basilica dating from the 1990s to 2012. The largely monochrome version is the first. This was corrected by the red version, which more accurately displays the mosaics, but compresses the height of the basilica. These are both by Ivan Lapper. The latest version, by Liam Wales, more accurately conveys the scale of the building, and its likely architectural details. Together they show how ideas and presentation of the site have changed over the last three decades. Images © Historic England Archive (IC118/011, IC118/012 and IC118/017)���������������������������������������������������������101 Figure 67: The panel interpreting the hot rooms of the baths from the viewing platform showing how the panels aid understanding of the ruins in the background. Details, such as the ceiling decoration, are based on discoveries made on site. Author’s image, August 2003����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������102 Figure 68: One of the landscape panels, this one looking to the south-west. Painting by Ivan Lapper, as displayed on site. Author’s image, August 2003����������������������������103 Figure 69: Ivan Lapper’s view of the Forum – as colourful a scene as that by Forestier. Image © Historic England Archive (IC118/013)���������������������������������������������������������103 Figure 70: Alan Sorrell’s 1973 reconstruction of the baths complex. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2013.00123������������������������������������������������������������������������105 Figure 71: Alan Sorrell’s view of Wroxeter. This view to the south-west echoes that of Corbet Anderson more than a century before. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2013.00124������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������105

vi

Figure 72:

The reconstructed town house at Wroxeter, based on Bushe-Fox’s Site VI. It has proved popular with the general public, despite its design flaws and academic inaccuracies. Author’s photo May 2012����������������������������������������������������������������������106 Figure 73: An iconic cover of the first edition of Dawn Wind, by Charles Keeping, 1961. Wikipedia Commons������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������109 Figure 74: A collapsing farm building at Muckley Cross, between Much Wenlock and Morville in Shropshire. It is plain that the building will eventually form a heap which will then become a grass-covered mound. Author’s photo, February 2012������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������112 Figure 75: The ‘worm stone’ at Down House, Kent, Darwin’s home but also his laboratory. Author’s photo, April 2011��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113 Figure 76: Charles Roach Smith, the London chemist who was one of the leading archaeologists of his day. Author’s image������������������������������������������������������������������114 Figure 77: A medallion struck in honour of Charles Roach Smith’s efforts to preserve the Roman town wall of Dax in France. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2022.00009��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������117 Figure 78: Francis Bedford’s 1859 photograph of the western hypocaust, as reconstructed by Henry Johnson following its unfortunate encounter with the Cannock Miners. Image source Wikipedia Commons���������������������������������������������������������������121 Figure 79: The pen and watercolour drawing made by George Maw in April / May 1859 of the remnants of the mosaics in the north aisle of the baths basilica and the herringbone tile floor in the baths. Image © Shropshire Museums Service SHYMS: 2022.00005��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������123 Figure 80: A fragment of a floor laid out using mosaic tiles from Maw’s factory at Benthall, Shropshire. This is clearly following the suggested layout in Maw’s catalogue (right). Photos courtesy of and © Hans van Lemmen����������������������������������������������124 Figure 81: F.W. Fairholt’s etching of a visit to Wroxeter in 1859. An attentive gentleman points to where the Old Man was found while a labourer carries on in the background. Author’s image����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������126 Figure 82: John Groom’s 1862 photo of the Bell Tent set up as a refreshment point among the spoil heaps. The house behind is 1 & 2 The Ruins, then a freshly built pair of tenant’s houses. Next to it are the Wroxeter farm buildings. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/39������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������128 Figure 83: The enameller’s workshop as recorded in a stereophotograph in 1859. The column and furnace mentioned are evident, as is one of the spoil heaps. The table is the square block of masonry. It is actually the foundation for a support for the vaulted roof. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/38�����������������������������������������������������131 Figure 84: John Corbet Anderson’s view of the south Shropshire Hills from the highest point of the town, north of the Old Work (visible to the right). Caer Caradoc is the right of the two conical hills, the other being the Lawley. Long Mynd is on the right, Hope Bowdler hill to the left of Lawley and Caradoc (see Figure 71). Author’s image����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������135 Figure 85: The base of the tombstone found in 1861, as drawn by Hillary Davies, the talented illustrator who recorded many of the finds from Wright’s excavations. Image © SA: PR/2/551���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������136 Figure 86: The largest of the spoil heaps at Wroxeter. The wall in the foreground is that of the macellum while behind it is the Old Work, with the Wrekin visible behind the tree. This photograph is a rare record of the mound. Photo perhaps by Francis Haverfield, ca.1908. After Page 1908, fig 12a������������������������������������������������137 Figure 87: Melancholic views of the site in the early 20th century. It is not surprising people wrote gloomy poems about the site. One view is from the museum entrance. The random stones are part of the site lapidarium – stray architectural elements encountered in excavating the site (Image © SA, James Mallinson PH/W/38/3/36). The other view shows the small enamel

vii

signs to guide the visitor, and the main spoil heap. Author’s collection, photographer unknown������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������138 Figure 88: A late 19th century view taken from a position similar to that adopted by Francis Bedford in 1859 (see Figure 78). Note the deterioration of the walls and hypocaust in just a few decades. Image © SA: PH/W/38/3/22�������������������������������141 Figure 89: Percy W. Taylor’s previously unpublished 1931 plan of the baths site at Wroxeter. Intended for the new site guide by John Morris it was not used in that publication. The mounds are prominent, and their height can be judged by the profiles below the plan. Only the walls in black were visible at this time. Note that the baths basilica is here misidentified as the [Forum] Basilica. Author’s collection���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������142 Figure 90: The forum excavations in 1924, around the time Henry Morton visited. The view is dominated by the tipped light-railway hopper showing a mechanised approach to getting the spoil off the site. Workmen can be seen in the trench beyond the railway while a young boy in knickerbockers and flat cap looks on. After Atkinson 1942, pl.17B������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������143 Figure 91: One of the Aerofilms views of the site in 1929. The heaps are prominent on the site while in the foreground are some visitors and the pale stones of the now relocated site lapidarium. In front of them lies the newly exposed forum colonnade. A small black car by the site entrance suggests these visitors motored to the site. Image © Historic England EPW028866�����������������������������������146 Figure 92: Francis Jackson (right) with his friend Charles Vernon Everall, Wroxeter’s tenant farmer, and ‘Catch of the Season’, a salmon caught in the Severn below the house in the 1920s. The building is the still-extant summer house outside the Cottage at Wroxeter. Private collection���������������������������������������������������������������147 Figure 93: Kathleen Kenyon at Wroxeter in July 1937. She is probably consulting the map to decide where to place the sections she dug across the defences. If so, she is very likely standing close to the junction of the Norton Road and the Horseshoe Lane, north of the main site. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/22�������������������152 Figure 94: An aerial photograph of Wroxeter showing the ruins with, in the foreground, the cropmarks of a Roman town house, site of Kenyon and Webster’s excavations in 1952 and ‘53. The white rectangles are the concrete bases of World War 2 huts. Image © CUCAP AV53, June 27, 1948������������������������������������������153 Figure 95: The iron column needlessly supporting the Old Work at the turn of the 20th century. Image © SA, Mallinson 607 PH/W/38/3/31. For the ugly concrete post doing the same job, see Figure 98���������������������������������������������������������������������������������156 Figure 96: Graham Webster, surveying in obviously inclement summer weather in September 1952. His Vespa is nowhere in sight. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook)�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������157 Figure 97: The Priory schoolchildren at Wroxeter, 1952. Top: a posed photo taken for the Shrewsbury Chronicle showing the Priory boys surveying. Gareth Wyn Jones is second from the right. Middle: The human pyramid – Peter Reynolds is bottom row, centre. Beyond are the custodian’s house (right) and museum (left). Bottom: lunch on the spoil heap. Mr Wilmott is looking directly at the camera; the students are apparently lustily singing one of their ditties. Digital scans supplied by G. Wyn-Jones, 2021������������������������������������������������������������������������159 Figure 98: The Manchester Guardian photographer’s view of the freshly consolidated ruins at Wroxeter in September 1952. The impact of the Ministry of Works is already apparent. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook)������������������������������������������������161 Figure 99: The Wyatts excavating at Wroxeter. Their digging attire is notably formal, even for the time. The Priory schoolboy behind them gives a more accurate idea of what the new generation of diggers usually wore. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook)�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������162 Figure 100: A view of the custodian’s house (with the chimney), the site museum behind it, and the entrance booth taken in the late 1950s, as indicated by

viii

Figure 101:

Figure 102: Figure 103:

Figure 104:

Figure 105: Figure 106: Figure 107: Figure 108:

Figure 109:

Figure 110:

Figure 111:

the freshly consolidated ruins to the right and the poplars by the colonnade which have rapidly grown. The spoil heaps have also (finally) been removed. Extreme right is 1 & 2 The Ruins, then still in use as tenants’ houses. Author’s collection���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������163 Philip Barker (second from right) with University of Birmingham Extra Mural colleague Stan Stanford (extreme left) and Shropshire associates, including Ernie Jenks (extreme right). Taken during the Smethcott Castle excavation, 1956-8. Image courtesy of the Barker family�������������������������������������������������������������164 Arnold Baker, standing beside his RAF surplus DH82a Tiger Moth and Series 1 Land Rover in the 1950s. Photographer and date unknown; image from Baker 1992�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������167 A classic Arnold Baker oblique, taken in 1975 (SJ563083-201). The house on the left is The Cottage while the baths site is just visible in the top right corner. The triangular field filled with cropmarks are the buildings excavated 1912-14 by Bushe-Fox – the white square is the temple uncovered in 1914 (see Figure 34). Author’s collection���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������167 A photo by Jim Pickering of the excavations underway in 1964. The boxtrenches dug by Graham Webster are evident, as are the partly consolidated ruins of the site with the Old Work under scaffold. The modern huts on the left are those provided by the University of Birmingham to host the student excavations. On the upper right the full extent of Wroxeter Farm can be seen, along with the Wroxeter Post Office on the opposite corner. Image © SA: PH/W/38/1/6�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������168 A view of diggers on Graham’s site at Wroxeter in 1964 or 5. Among them must be prisoners from HMP Drake Hall, hence the presence of a Warder (centre). Photograph by Sheila Broomfield in Author’s collection����������������������������������������169 The University of Birmingham brochure produced to commemorate the opening of the Sir Charles Foyle Centre at Wroxeter, and the Field Studies Centre at Preston Montford, Shrewsbury. Author’s collection�������������������������������170 A view by Charles Daniels, one of Graham Webster’s supervisors, of the trying conditions of the 1966 excavation in the piscina area. Note the propped-up walls and shoring holding back the spoil. Charles Daniels archive������������������������171 A photograph by Charles Daniels of the main praefurnium of the baths as first uncovered in 1967, and its consolidated state today. While the work is radical in its impact, it was also necessary in that the poor state of the masonry in the upper photograph shows how fragile these remains were. Charles Daniels Archive A1201.68 and author, August 2020����������������������������������������������������������������172 The traditional group photo of the excavation team for the Baths Basilica site in 1984 with, in the left centre, Prince Edward (above the X). To his left is his tutor, Dr Kate Pretty, Deputy Director of the site. Many of the others present returned to the excavation year after year. Photo by Sidney Renow (who is holding the X). Author’s collection�����������������������������������������������������������������������������174 The Macellum excavation in 1975. The custodian’s house, site museum and poplars have gone. The team are focused on the remains in the herringbonetiled courtyard. The two men at the back, in hats, are Tim Strickland, Graham’s senior site supervisor and Prof Tony Barratt formerly of University of British Colombia. Author’s collection via Frank and Nancy Ball; photo by Graham Webster�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������175 The plan for a new Wroxeter, as envisaged in the 1976 DoE feasability study. It was never agreed or implemented and will never be realised in this format. Note the new (and improbable) line for the B4380 Shrewsbury to Ironbridge road curving around the northern half of the city. The proposed extension of the display area would have closed the road running down towards the village, which is disingenuously not shown on this map but occupies the southern end of the plan, adjacent to the area marked Private. After P. White 1976������������������176

ix

Figure 112: Mal, one of the Directly Employed Labour force, constructing one of the missing walls of the macellum on a foundation of crushed stone in May 1989. The stone has been retrieved from the site stone heap kept for just this purpose. Author’s photo May 1989����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������178 Figure 113: The spectacular steel-and-glass baths cover building at Xanten, Germany. A replica in modern materials of the Roman town bathhouse whose plan is very similar to that at Wroxeter. This image captures the building before the museum was added to the left of this structure. This is similar in concept to Phil Barker’s suggestion for a cover building at Wroxeter. Author’s photo, April 1999�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������179 Figure 114: The work of the Wroxeter Hinterland project, clockwise from top left. Volunteers carrying out the resistivity survey; Bessie White (my mum), Jenny Smith, and Jon Guite potwashing in the kitchen of No.2 The Ruins; Corvedale Schoolchildren fieldwalking at Atcham, Shropshire; volunteers excavating the mosaic at Whitley Grange Roman villa – Jenny Smith extreme left. Author’s photos 1996-7������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������181 Figure 115: Cropmarks of the roads at Wroxeter appearing in the field south of the baths in a drought year. These marks are in the same location seen by Bushe-Fox in 1912. The grass in shallow soil above the road surface has dried out quicker than the grass on either side. Author’s photo, July 1995�����������������������������������������186 Figure 116: The full-face portrait coin of Carausius as illustrated in Corbet Anderson’s book on Uriconium in 1867. Author’s image�������������������������������������������������������������187 Figure 117: The north wall of Wroxeter St Andrews. The large stones in the centre of the wall form the surviving wall of an Anglo-Saxon church. A small roundedheaded blocked window can also be made out between the two larger (and clearly later) windows. A large grey stone lying at ground level below the blocked window displays a lewis slot. Author’s photo, June 1995��������������������������188 Figure 118: The stone screen erected from Roman fragments in garden of The Grange probably sometime in the late 19th century. Author’s photo, August 2010���������190 Figure 119: A massive piece of Roman masonry in the wall of the drive way of The Grange, next to St Andrews. Its upper surface is composed of in situ facing stones which will have been the face of the wall. The thickness of this piece is thus around a metre, the same as the Old Work, so it is quite likely this is the derivation of this fragment. Author’s photo, August 2021��������������������������������������������������������������191 Figure 120: Wroxeter farm shippen yard wall, inside the building. The course of massive masonry lies at exterior ground level so the wall depth below gives the amount of soil removed to create the yard. Virtually all of this stone is Roman. After White and Hislop 2002, pl.18����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������193 Figure 121: One of the square stone bases imaginatively repurposed as a plant holder by Stanier. It was found when excavating the shippen yard of Wroxeter farm in 1854. Author’s photo, June 1995����������������������������������������������������������������������������������194 Figure 122: John Lyster’s drawing of the bath house found, and dismantled for its stone, in 1701. The first record of a Roman building in Wroxeter. After Lyster, 1706���������195 Figure 123: Thomas Telford’s handsome isometric perspective engraving of the bath house uncovered at Wroxeter. After Rickman, 1838, pl.10��������������������������������������196 Figure 124: A hand-coloured lithograph of the mosaic found in the garden of a villager in Wroxeter in 1827. There is a letter from Thomas Wright pasted onto it to confirm its authenticity as a record of the mosaic. (Photo courtesy of Debbie Klemperer, formerly of the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent)���������������������������197 Figure 125: The tombstone of Tirintinus, as once displayed in the Rowley’s House Museum, Shrewsbury (now in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery). Author’s photo, March 1993�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������199 Figure 126: Three Wroxeter tombstones as depicted in the original publication by John Ward. That in the middle is of Placida and Deuccus. Author’s image�������������������200

x

Figure 127: Alan Duncan’s imaginative reconstruction of Agricola leaving Wroxeter’s fortress at the head of the 20th Legion on his campaign in Wales, AD 78. Image © Shropshire Museum Service�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������201 Figure 128: C. Flavell Hayward’s entry into the Wroxeter visitor book. Image © SA 6001/186 f.60r��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������207 Figure 129: The cover of the music for Flavell Hayward and Elgar’s ‘A War Song’ (1903). Wikipedia commons������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������208 Figure 130: Ellen, Lady Berwick, with her husband, Richard, 7th Lord Berwick and a shooting party which may have included the Head Gardener, George Pearson, who recorded his visit to Wroxeter in the visitor book in 1884. Unknown photographer, 1880s. Attingham Collection. © National Trust������������������������������210 Figure 131: The author leading a guided tour of Wroxeter to a part of the site not normally open to the public. It has been a long-term aim to open up more of the site to the general public. August 2019�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������214 Figure 132: The consolidated and rebuilt walls of a Roman building at Reinheim, Saarland. If you look carefully at the wall in the centre you can see that the lower part is the original wall. The rest has been built up to stabilise it and make sense of the plan of the building. This is a standard approach in Germany to excavated archaeological sites but is very different to the style in Britain. Author’s photo, October 2007��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������214 Figure 133: Two of Atkinson’s workmen digging the forum. In the background is the fence of 1 & 2 The Ruins, and to the left, the sheep fold behind the farm buildings (Image © SA PH/W/38/3/51). The image indicates that the ruins are relatively shallowly buried and would be relatively easy to present to the public���������������217 Figure 134: The display inside Shrewsbury Tourist Information Centre. Plenty of lovely images of Shropshire, but none of them of Wroxeter. Author’s photos, December 2021, with the consent of staff������������������������������������������������������������������218 Figure 135: Goss Crested Ware souvenir of Wroxeter. The crest is of Shrewsbury – the Three Loggerheads over a ribbon with Floreat Salopia. Height of vessel 69mm. Image © Shropshire Museum Service, SHRMS: 2018.00170������������������������������������219 Figure 136: The orientation display panel in the reception area of Attingham Park. Wroxeter Roman City is visible in the bottom right corner – the purple line of the estate boundary goes across the northwest corner of the monument. Author’s photo, June 2009���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������220 Figure 137: The Grassy Town forlorn, and its rent and mournful wall … with acknowledgement to the shade of Mary Webb. Author’s photo, July 2020�������������������������������������������221

xi

Preface

My Wroxeter I first visited Wroxeter in the long, hot summer of 1976. I had always wanted to be an archaeologist and, believing that you needed training first, I paid to enroll on a training excavation. This one was run by the University of Birmingham’s Extra-Mural department, which organised two-week long courses of vocational training for people who weren’t studying for degrees, or simply were interested in the subject. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and wanted to come back the next year, but this time as a digger. As it happened, no excavation was running there in 1977 so I returned in 1978, along with my cousin from Canada who had asked me to arrange a dig for him as he was about to study for Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. I picked Wroxeter as a known quantity, and in the sure and certain knowledge that we would find things, which I thought he might appreciate. Early on in my involvement in the excavations at Wroxeter, I was struck by how little research appeared to have been carried out on the site. Occasionally there had been excavations, which would get written up eventually, but if you wanted to find out more about Wroxeter, the most recent work was a book published more than a century before, in 1872. There was a summary of the known information that had been published in a textbook written by John Wacher1 but there was no real active research beyond the annual excavation. While both Graham Webster and Philip Barker worked on the site, these were not the only 1

Wacher 1975

1

2

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 1: The author, photographed in the office at Wroxeter by Graham Webster’s wife, Diana Bonakis Webster, in 1987 at the start of the writing up process.

excavations that they did. Indeed, for Philip, his main excavation was the castle site at Hen Domen at Montgomery. It thus seemed to me that there was an opening at Wroxeter and that it would be a good idea to continue to be a part of this dig and hope that I could be involved in its writing up. I returned every year until the end of the excavation in 1990, this summer activity latterly coincided with my university studies at Liverpool where I was first an undergraduate (from 1979) and then immediately after that, a doctoral student. Handing in my thesis at the very end of January 1987, I started work at Wroxeter full time the week after as I had hoped, writing up the excavations I had taken part in as a digger and a supervisor (Figure 1).

At first, I lodged in Wroxeter at the large house on the river cliff called The Cottage. At that time, it was owned by Sue Everall, two of whose daughters, Chris and Anne, had worked on the baths basilica site as volunteer diggers. Every morning, from January to October, when I finally found somewhere I could afford to buy in nearby Shrewsbury, I would leave the Cottage, climb over the fence, walk across the field, dodging the sheep and their droppings, and arrive at 1 & 2 The Ruins where I shared the upstairs workplace with Heather Bird, senior draftswoman. Our shared task was to write up the Baths Basilica excavation, advised by our colleagues Phil Barker, Kate Pretty and Mike Corbishley, a task that took five years. My station was on the east side of the house, looking over the road that separated our workplace from the baths basilica and its last relic, the Old Work, which dominated the view. Beyond was the Wrekin on the skyline. Sitting there, I would see the visitors come and go on the site, the four workmen Ray, Reg, Mal, and George, directly employed by English Heritage in those days to

My Wroxeter

Figure 2: A visit by Eaton Constantine school to Wroxeter in July 1959. The custodian, Alf Crow, is explaining the site. For most of these children, this may well have been their first, and last, experience of the site. Image © Shropshire Archives (SA) 3181/311 Leighton Village Hall slide collection.

maintain the site, and the villagers who would descend at the crossroads from the bus travelling along the Shrewsbury to Ironbridge road to walk the half mile down to the village. Children returning from school were dropped at the same location and might divert into the site shop for some ice cream, as we did too on occasion. As I sat there in the site house which had been converted in the mid-1970s by its new owners, the Department of the Environment, to become the headquarters of what was initially envisioned as a permanent base for the archaeological exploration of the Roman city,2 I became more and more aware not just of the Roman city and its archaeology but of the community and the farmland that it had become. Since the starting point of any conversation with someone from the village, or any other locality nearby, was my job as an archaeologist at Wroxeter, I would get to hear what they thought of the site, and its history, and how they had seen it change over the years. I rapidly discovered that most had only visited the site once – as school children – and had rarely felt moved to visit again (Figure 2). The majority, like some of the visitors, would just 2

Everill and White 2011

3

4

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

peer over the fence at the site as they walked by, there not being very much to engage the mind or imagination other than a confusing jumble of low walls set in coloured gravel and grass. More impressive was the enigmatic fragment of wall, known since time immemorial as the Old Work, but seen every day, this too became unremarkable. Consciousness of the wider city was minimal. People were amazed when told that the site was the fourth largest town in Roman Britain. Their surprise often came from thinking that the visible ruins were the complete town, a misapprehension abetted by the English Heritage label and title of the site guide for the monument: Wroxeter Roman City. I would point out to them the ramparts, whose full circuit is three miles, visible from a number of locations (the best section being behind the Wroxeter Hotel). They would nod an understanding yet, as their gaze passed over the unbroken expanse of grass and sheep, I could see that they were not entirely convinced of the former town’s existence. The question I could see forming in their minds, and sometimes hear expressed directly, was how could a town vanish so completely? While I could explain that there were natural agencies – wind, plants, worms – that could in our climate quite rapidly bury ruins, this doesn’t mean that at other times people didn’t think of more imaginative and exciting ways to account for the vanished city of Uricon. This book aims to tell some of their stories, but also explores how the Old Work and the landscape in which it is set have inspired poets, artists, and writers over the centuries, all of whom were no doubt struck by the singular survival of an enigmatic slab of wall rearing from the bucolic fields of Shropshire. *** I first became aware of the work of artists in relation to Wroxeter when I was asked to contribute an archaeological perspective to a series of summer guided tours in 1996 entitled Three Poets at Wroxeter. These talks were jointly hosted and organised by the Housman Society, the Mary Webb Society and the Wilfred Owen Society and brought me a whole new way of thinking about the site. I used this knowledge to inform a paper I offered at the European Association of Archaeologists conference at Pilzen in 2013 on the literary and artistic aspects of the site and this was revived and revised for a talk I contributed to the Church Stretton Arts Festival in 2019. The bulk of the book was written in June 2020 during the first Covid 19 lockdown and reorganised and revised during the second, in August 2020. The text was finalised in February 2022. The sources used in the text are the fruits of a lifetime of collecting material relating to Wroxeter, but I have also been the beneficiary of donations made by executors of the archaeological estates of Donald Mackreth and Charles Daniels, alongside generous gifts made by Arnold Baker, Frank and Nancy

My Wroxeter

Ball, and Philip Barker in their lifetimes and by Vivian Wyatt in respect of his parent’s materials. I discovered more material from on-line searches in the British Library holdings of Newspapers and in the Shropshire Archives both of which provided some unexpected nuggets of detail and characters. I am grateful for the funding provided by the University of Birmingham to attend the Pilzen conference, and for the helpful advice of colleagues there over the years, including Henriette van der Blom, Elena Theodorakopoulos, and Gareth Sears. I would especially like to thank Simon Esmonde Cleary whose encouraging words, and perceptive corrections, have saved me from many mistakes and errors. For advice on the painters Tom Prytherch and Alf Hulme, I am grateful to Marjorie Downward and Peter Pryce, their respective descendants, who were generous with the images and information. I am extremely grateful for the generous permission granted by Lord Barnard of the Raby Estate for permission to use the watercolours by Thomas Prytherch on display in Raby Castle. For the poets, I am indebted once again to the Housman Society, Yvonne Morris of the Wilfred Owen Society and Gladys Mary Coles of the Mary Webb society for both answering my queries and correcting the errors or misunderstandings that I had inadvertently introduced when writing about them. For information on Attingham Park and its estate, I am grateful for the insightful comments on my draft by Saraid Jones and Sarah Kay. Any remaining faults must be laid at my door rather than theirs. Emma-Kate Lanyon of the Shrewsbury Museum Service and the staff of Shropshire Archives were, as ever, a tremendous help and support in supplying illustrations and permissions, as were the staff of Historic England Archives, and Cameron Moffatt and Rachel Kitcherside of English Heritage Trust. Matt Thompson of EHT set me very firmly on a much better track in terms of how to write this study following his initial reading of the text. Equally, at the end of the process, David Breeze offered his friendly advice and astute corrections to the nearly finalised text. Hans van Lemmen and Mike Ashworth gave permission for the use of their images, for which I am extremely grateful. I have attempted to identify all images and copyrights but would be grateful if I have made an error to be contacted so I might correct the mistake in future. Of my many former contacts in the village and those associated with the site, Chris Everall and Anne Hardy (née Everall), stand out as friends whose perspective as inhabitants of Wroxeter while they were growing up, was invaluable. I am extremely grateful for their help, friendship and support, including access to materials they hold. I am indebted to the custodians of the site for providing information and support for my work on the site. Without their help and access, I would have missed many snippets of information and

5

6

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

contacts, and I am eternally grateful for their supplies of ginger beer and ice cream after long days as a tour guide. My wife and family have been an unfailing support throughout my working life and during the writing of this during the testing times of the Covid lockdowns. Our own little family legend about Wroxeter, used by my wife to enlighten our infant children, was that Wroxeter was so called because it was full of rocks. They have suffered the site enough I feel. Above all I would like to thank all those with whom I worked or met at Wroxeter, and those I have encountered who lived there. The list is too long to give here, and far too many of them have now died, but it is to all them that I would like to dedicate this book in love and remembrance.

Introduction The purpose of this book is to explore the everyday understanding of the Roman site at Wroxeter, in Shropshire (Figure 3). How has people’s perception and understanding of the site changed over time, and how has their experience of the site been expressed in writing, poetry, oral tradition, folklore, and art? As an archaeologist, it has been my life’s work to explore this abandoned Roman city, to try and understand through the opaque medium of the soil and artefacts contained within that soil, how the city was founded, grew, developed, and died. To do so takes time and patience, the teasing out of strands of evidence, or the application of new and evolving technologies which allow us to see further, understand more and continue to build a picture of one settlement within Roman Britain. From the many public talks, and books (both popular and aimed more squarely at an academic audience) that I have delivered, written, or contributed to over the years it has been my purpose, like any well-trained archaeologist, to use the evidence to construct a ‘truth’ about the past in a particular place and time. I also believe that we must make that story live through the people whose lives we uncover, however imperfectly we know or understand them. In the abstraction of talking about people’s lives through pits, pots, or brooches it is easy to lose sight of the fact that these were real people living real lives. That a day was as long for them as it is for us, and that the years and decades that we casually talk about when we research Roman Britain covers a four-hundredyear span equal to that from the deaths of Edward the Confessor in 1066 to Richard III in 1485, or that from the union of Scotland and England in the person of James VI/I in 1603 to the Scottish referendum of 2014. There was undeniably enormous change in that society over such a long span of years, but we struggle to both comprehend and convey it to our audiences. 7

8

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 3: Wroxeter and its landscape viewed by air from the north. The arc of the northern rampart is apparent, as are the consolidated ruins at the centre of the site. The village is centre right. The River Severn is prominent, and the now demolished pink cooling towers of Ironbridge B power station are in the left background. Author’s photo 26th July 2013.

All the while that I attempt to do this, I have been aware that there are other narratives and stories about the same site. Some are based upon looking at the same evidence that I do but reaching different conclusions. I certainly have no monopoly on truth, and everyone is entitled to their view and understanding of the evidence. I never have, and never will, profess to know what actually happened at Wroxeter at any given moment in history. All we can do is try to make sense of the evidence as it currently exists. Earlier archaeologists looking at the site viewed its history differently. Sometimes they misinterpreted what they saw or failed to understand it at all. Mostly, their understanding of the context of the site, their perception of the realities of Roman Britain, were established on relatively narrow foundations because we simply hadn’t dug, or published, enough sites. Since 1945 there has been an exponential growth in our understanding of Roman Britain simply from the sheer number of excavations and the development of new technologies that enable us to explore sites without digging them. These developments have had an undeniable impact on how we now understand that period. Similarly, the society in which we exist as practicing archaeologists is very different. The Britain that I grew up in during the 1960s and ‘70s is very different from the society that I experience today

and someone of my generation, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, and race will have biases and opinions that others who differ in any and all of these characteristics are unlikely to share. In the end though we owe it to the past to try and understand what happened and to present our version of the truth, in full awareness that while the result is neither definitive nor accurate, it is constructed honestly on the basis of what evidence we have at the moment. The aim of this book is thus to try and see how people have understood and represented Wroxeter over time. It recognises above all that the story of Wroxeter is not just an archaeological one. I want to explore how the site impinged on the society of any particular era, and how it provided inspiration for artistic work. No study could ever hope to be comprehensive and there are many voices that are permanently lost to us: the ordinary inhabitants of Wroxeter village, for instance whose voices we seldom hear and whose opinions have in the past sadly counted for very little. But speaking as an archaeologist, this is entirely normal. As a profession, we never expect to hear the voices from the past. It seldom happens since it is vanishingly rare to be able to identify the people we encounter from the past, even in the intimacy of excavating someone’s mortal remains. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to listen for the echoes of these people and their views. In striving to understand how people engaged with Roman Wroxeter I have focused on how they engaged with it through three categories that stand out in reviewing the available material: poetry, art, and literature. These three elements form the main chapters of the study. They are prefaced by a study of how archaeologists have told their own stories of the site, focusing on three individuals and their interpretations based upon the discoveries that they made. Poetry is self-explanatory as a category, but I have contexualised each of the poems discussed giving a brief biography of the poet where possible and how and why these poets were associated with the site. Art encompasses a variety of media: watercolours, engravings, paintings and some photographs. The discussion is not exhaustive but focuses on three sub-themes, the first being how the Old Work has been depicted over time, and what this tells us of how the monument was perceived. The second theme focuses on the key artist of Wroxeter and its region, Tom Prytherch, who happened to live in the village from around 1890-1926, and the last theme is on how artists have reconstructed the site for the benefit of visitors’ appreciation of the ruins and wider monument using information supplied by archaeologists, and their own imaginations and talents. The chapter on literature draws again on three elements. The first is the obvious category of stories based directly or indirectly on Wroxeter as a place. Second are writings that use Wroxeter as a subject of study, for example in science or more commonly in travel- or site-guides, with a cut-off point at 9

roughly the outbreak of war in 1939. Third is a study of the presentation of the site itself, of how it appeared to those visiting and how those responsible for running the site before the Second World War strived to make visiting an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. While not a literary theme directly, it provides important evidence for how poets, artists and writers experienced the site and thus were inspired to express their feelings. The changes wrought over the half century following the Second World War saw a profound shift in how Wroxeter was perceived and presented and has thus been set into a chapter of its own. Its focus is at first on how the acquisition of the site from its county archaeological curators by Ministers and Government radically affected the appearance of the monument. The sometimes overwhelming level of top-down decision-making was muted by the contribution of the extraordinary generation who fought and lived through the war and their occasionally idiosyncratic work is highlighted for fostering a huge growth in understanding of the deep history of Wroxeter. Mid-way through this period saw the apogee of state engagement with the site, developments that have been fundamental to the survival and protection of the whole buried town, but which could also be characterised as a missed opportunity to make Wroxeter one of the premier archaeological sites in the country. A final coda to this chapter looks at how University-led research took on the impetus of engagement with the site to re-engage with Wroxeter and its hinterland. A short chapter then offers a vision of how the site might be presented in the future and once again become an inspiration for artists and visitors.

10

Archaeologists and their stories However much we dress what we do in a cloak of scientific respectability, archaeologists are in the end storytellers. I believe this is what Mortimer Wheeler meant when he wrote … In a simple direct sense, archaeology is a science that must be lived, must be ‘seasoned with humanity’. Dead archaeology is the driest dust that blows …1 Archaeologists work with the intractable remains of human activity left behind in the soil and in the landscape. From these dead fragments we must weave a story that, if we can do it convincingly, can be a powerful narrative of a past that delivers a truth about how past human societies experienced their world. We may, of course, be entirely wrong, even if the story is convincing, but to contribute our understanding is surely better than merely recording and reporting the dead facts, forcing readers to construct their own narrative. We can strive to be ‘objective’ in our work, eliminating biases and preconceptions but must acknowledge that we are creatures of our time, reflecting back the society in which we exist. We must endeavour to make sense of what we excavate and turn it into a ‘site narrative’ that will be understood by our peers, but also by anyone else who cares to read the results. Our interpretations impact directly on how archaeological sites are viewed by the general public. Anyone who visits a site like Wroxeter Roman City is expecting to hear a story. They pay their entrance fee, pick up a guide book or listen to an audio guide and wander around looking at whatever panels and reading materials are made available to them. There may be purpose in their visit: they want to actively know about a particular element of a site like Wroxeter, for instance its military background or the evidence it contains 1

Wheeler, 1955, v.

11

12

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

for how a public baths functioned. Equally, they may just be there to pass the time, perhaps in company with fractious children who are not particularly interested in being there in the first place. As they wander around the site, there may well be questions that come to mind that they want answered, even if it is only the names of the hills that they can see in the distance. It is the custodian’s business to provide those answers – in Wroxeter’s case this means English Heritage staff – but their answers are often supplied by archaeologists and their understanding of the site. However, the very nature of archaeology means that archaeologists are often unable to offer a clear narrative. This has to be so because it is very rare to be able to actually put names and precise dates to the evidence of the past that we uncover. Most of human history is lived out anonymously, a story that can only be written in abstract. When we can put names to people and places, archaeology comes to life and becomes much more engaging to society in general. A body excavated in a car park only becomes of interest when the scientific analysis proves to the best of our knowledge that this was once King Richard III. The villain of Shakespeare’s play can be tested against the reality of his mutilated mortal remains, but this was an outcome only made possible by meticulous research which alerted the excavators to the possibility that they might encounter a king in their otherwise routine dig.2 For more remote and less well-documented periods, such certainty is not achievable. Sutton Hoo’s principal burial is thought by many to be that of King Raedwald, but there is no absolute certainty in the identification and other candidates have been argued for, albeit not convincingly.3 Archaeologists thus tread a cautious line in their story telling and need to be aware that an accepted story is only as good as the evidence on which it is based. Any interpretation is at best a working hypothesis that fits the known facts. Just because it is a good story doesn’t mean it is true and if new facts emerge to challenge the existing understanding, then the hypothesis must be restructured to take them into account. We can illustrate the difficulties of writing an archaeological narrative through three stories written by archaeologists working at Wroxeter, all of which are directly based on evidence encountered in excavations there but which, crucially, were also affected by the general perceptions of Romano-British society at the time of excavation. I will tell these stories in order of their telling, starting with Wroxeter’s most celebrated tale, the Old Man in the hypocaust, and ending with a story that is still in flux.

2 3

Pitts 2015. Carver 2019, 339-40.

Archaeologists and their stories

Figure 4: Thomas Wright in a studio portrait by Ernest Edwards of Baker Street, London, 1866.

The Old Man in the hypocaust While Wroxeter’s first excavator, Thomas Wright (1810-1877; Figure 4), was born in Tenbury, Worcestershire, he grew up in Ludlow and spent most of his life in London. Visiting Wroxeter in 1854, he conceived of the idea of excavating in the area of the Old Work, the large free-standing wall that dominates the centre of the abandoned town. As his fellow-antiquarian Charles Roach Smith had said during his own 1851 visit to the site ‘It is rather surprising that, while all sorts of conjectures have been put forth on the character and destination of the building to which this fine fragment belonged, no one seems to have attempted to set the question at rest by excavating the foundations and recovering the plan.’4 This is exactly what Wright set out to do by persuading the M.P. for Ludlow, Beriah Botfield, to put up 50 guineas for an excavation which was then match-funded by subscribers to the excavation. This was an extraordinary achievement for the time, and testament to Wright’s persuasive skills. 4

Smith 1854, 30.

13

14

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 5: Illustrated London News engraving of the excavations in April 1859; the original would have been monochrome. Author’s photo, 2019.

On 3rd February 1859, Wright was able to set his workmen on excavating within the doorway of the Old Work.5 By 16th April, one of his first reports on the excavation appeared in the Illustrated London News.6 South of the Old Work, rooms with hypocaust floors were found and an illustration in the ILN shows the ruins almost completely uncovered (Figure 5), which given that only two months had elapsed from when the dig started confirms this was a clearance rather than an archaeological excavation. In this initial article Wright seems to believe that these elements represented the remains of a large public hall and a town house. At this stage he has not realised that these were all part of the same building, the public baths, a fault corrected soon after in other accounts. It was among the ruins of the hypocaust that Wright made a discovery that, ever afterwards, dominated his accounts of the site. An early version of the discovery is that given in the site guide whose first edition came out in 1859. He sets the scene: ‘abundant traces of burning in all parts of the site leave no doubt that the city of Uriconium was plundered, and afterwards burnt by some of the barbarian invaders of Roman Britain … The human remains which have been met with in different 5 6

Wright 1872, i-v. Wright 1859.

Archaeologists and their stories

parts, bear testimony to a frightful massacre of the inhabitants … remains of at least four or five skeletons were found … and the bones of a very young child.’ The most sensational discovery was in a hypocaust where ‘three skeletons were found, that of a person who appears to have died in a crouching position in one of the corners, and two others stretched on the ground by the side of the wall. The crouching skeleton was said to have the skull of a very old man, and close by him was the remains of a wooden box containing 132 coins, the latest of which appeared to be of Valens (Emperor 364-378). Wright is unequivocal in his interpretation: ‘We are justified from all these circumstances in concluding that, in the midst of the massacre of Roman Uriconium, these three persons – perhaps an old man and two terrified women – had sought to conceal themselves by creeping into the hypocaust … and were suffocated there or … falling rubbish may have blocked up the outlet so as to make it impossible to escape.’7 This account is backed up by that of Dr Henry Johnson who witnessed the discovery alongside Wright and adds a little fresh detail, and some of the emotion of the gruesome find: ‘Immediately adjoining the hypocaust just mentioned is another of a very regular oblong square form, and here we made a remarkable discovery. We found three human skeletons! One, that of a very old man, crouching in a corner; the others were extended at full length, against the wall. One of these was a female. Near to the old man lay a heap of Roman coins, in such a manner as to lead us conclude that they had been contained in a small wooden box or casket. … Probably they were suffocated there, or, perhaps the building being on fire, the falling rubbish may have prevented their escape. No traces of clothing, or weapons, were met with near them—only a small heap of coins, 132 in number, perhaps all their worldly wealth.’8 The image is a very powerful one: for nearly a century afterwards, virtually every account of Wroxeter includes the story of the old man in the hypocaust. Its success no doubt lies in combining a frisson of imagined horror at the plight of the victims with the almost moralistic discovery of a box of coins by the man’s side: useless accompaniments to a miser’s death. As we shall see in later chapters, Wright’s story had a potent artistic legacy but what is striking here to a modern archaeologist is just how little detail there is of this discovery. There is no illustration of the bodies and much of the account is vague. There is no hint of a forensic examination of the skeletons or of a search for the cause of death which, if violent, might well have left traces on the bones. The gender, and age, of the individuals is just asserted, or suggested, and left at that. The reason is not surprising. Wright wasn’t a trained archaeologist, any more than his companion Henry Johnson was. Johnson was able to apply some of his skills since he was a medical doctor and he it was who was able to determine the suggested age and gender of the skeletons. Neither man had the 7 8

Wright 1860, 40-1. Johnson 1869.

15

16

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

necessary skills that could have helped them, but at this time no-one did. Where one can perhaps be more critical of Wright is how he fits the discoveries into a pre-existing narrative of rapine and destruction by ‘barbarian invaders’ rather than reflecting on other reasons why the bodies might have been found where they were. This too is not surprising since Wright was above all an historian rather than an antiquarian. At this time the historical accounts written by Bede in the eighth century, or the lurid account written by the British monk Gildas in perhaps the sixth century, were still given historical primacy as truthful records of the conquest of Britain in the post-Roman period. Wright was also a popular writer, as is shown by his numerous articles and lectures on Wroxeter and other historical and archaeological subjects. An exciting narrative based on the thrilling discovery of the actual victims of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Roman Britain was too alluring for him to resist. In fact, there is no real evidence for a destruction level at Wroxeter such as charred timbers or fallen columns. Wright’s ‘abundant traces’ turn out to be no more than a black, humic soil, characteristic of the decay of organic materials. Two of the bodies were carefully interred or ‘stretched out’ as Wright and Johnson tell us and it seems more likely that rather than being helpless victims, these people were carefully buried within the hypocaust as it was conveniently there: all you had to do to inter a body was to break through the overlying floor. Wright’s story demonstrates to us how easy it is to slip into existing notions of history and fit the evidence to a pre-determined account. Another person visiting at around this time was Samuel Mitchell, from Sheffield, whose handwritten account is preserved in the Shropshire Archives. Inevitably, the focus of the account is the morbid discovery of the Old Man, and the terrible fate which it purportedly signals for the city, which he likens (improbably) to the ‘avalanche of lava’ that engulfed Pompeii. For him the terrible discovery in the hypocaust was the key discovery, recounted in gruesome detail: ‘In the earth and soot remnants of these furnaces three skeletons were found. One of a person who had died in a crouching position in one of the corners, whom Dr Johnson of Shrewsbury says from the appearance of the skull must have been a very old man & two others stretched on the ground by the side of the wall, one of which at least was a female. Near the old man lay a little heap of Roman coins (for these were found in one mass) which had evidently been contained in a little box, a number of small iron nails being scattered among them, with portions of decayed wood which had attached itself to several of the coins. Mr Wright and Mr Roach Smith consider from these and other circumstances (and I fully concur with them, after a minute examination of the place) that in the midst of a massacre, these three persons, an old man, & perhaps two terrified women had sought to conceal themselves, and escape slaughter, by escaping into the hypocaust as a place where their enemies would never think of looking for them.’ However, Mr Mitchell has spotted a flaw in the reasoning of how the fugitives got to their place of

Archaeologists and their stories

concealment and proposes a solution to it. ‘I consider rather in opposition to their views tho’ they do not venture to contradict it, that this terrible conflagration must have occurred in the summer season when the crops were on the ground and ripe. If it had been in winter or even early in spring or late in autumn, 3 passing refugees could not have entered the hypocaust which [being in use] would be as bad as a baking oven and would have been death to them. But when the house was given over to the devouring flames, the carbonaceous vapour would soon fill up the vacuum beneath and destroy all life, even if the falling column across the steps had not barred their egress.’9 The fate of the Old Man and his companions was clearly a gripping, and widely accepted, narrative precisely because it fitted with notions of how Roman Britain had ended. An Emperor comes calling? Our second story derives from the work of Professor Donald Atkinson (Figure 6) in the field on the other side of the road from the ruins around the Old Work, where the modern replica Roman house now stands. In 1924, Atkinson’s first year of excavation on what was revealed to be Wroxeter’s forum (a combined market place, hall of justice, and town hall), he was fortunate to make some spectacular finds that surpassed anything ever found at Wroxeter before. The first cluster of finds consisted of the colonnade itself and, smashed on the street in front of it, a magnificent panel on which was carved the dedicatory inscription (Figure 7).10 This allowed the dating of the completion of the forum to 129-130, while the excavator believed the project had been started in around 120.11 The forum had been dedicated to Figure 6: Donald Atkinson, by L. Haffer, 1946. the Emperor Hadrian (117Courtesy of the Society for the Promotion of Roman 138), whose name and titles Studies. Photo by the author, October 2021. take up most of the five lines Mitchell 1860, 1 & 23-4. SA MI8894/1. RIB 288 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/288 11 Atkinson 1942, 181-2. 9 10

17

18

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 7: The western part of the Forum Inscription as first uncovered, shattered on the street below the entrance. After Atkinson 1942, pl.44B.

Figure 8: The Wroxeter Forum Inscription, as displayed at Rowley’s House, Shrewsbury in the 1990s following its restoration. The paler areas are plaster – about 75% of the original inscription survives – but the restored letters can be confidently provided. Author’s photo, July 1993.

Archaeologists and their stories

of writing, the last line carrying the name of the tribe of the Cornovii who were dedicating the building to the Emperor (Figure 8). We have relatively few municipal inscriptions of this kind from Roman Britain and at the time it was a particularly startling discovery. Unsurprisingly Atkinson, as a Professor of Ancient History at Manchester, was keenly interested in the inscription’s reconstruction and translation, but what struck him above all was its quality. As he remarks in the original report, there was no sign of weathering on the inscription: ‘the edges of the letters are as sharp as if freshly cut, and the chisel marks in the letters are still plainly visible.´ The letters of the inscription diminish in height from 240mm in the top line to 140mm in the fifth. This compensates for the height at which the inscription was set above the entrance to the forum. From the foreshortened perspective of a person standing on the street, the letters would look almost the same size and weight. Atkinson’s conclusions were that ‘as a specimen of lettering the inscription challenges comparison with the finest work ever produced … not even Rome itself has produced a more perfect example of the art.’ This conclusion was based on comments made by staff at the Victoria & Albert Museum who had favourably compared the Wroxeter inscription with that of Trajan’s Column in their own Cast Gallery. He continues ‘the separate forms, the spacing and arrangement within the several lines, and the balance of the whole, betray the hand of a master craftsman … wholly beyond the capacity of local skill. It must be supposed that an expert in the art was imported for the occasion.’12 From this he speculates that Hadrian, who we know visited the province for around three months in 122 to survey the beginning of construction on Hadrian’s Wall,13 may also have visited the legionary fortresses of Britain, located at York, Chester and Caerleon. Had he done so, he would have passed through Wroxeter, and could thus have given his blessing to the newly initiated project to construct the forum. This rather contrived journey, for which we have no evidence, is necessary to account for the suggestion that a master cutter of inscriptions then arrived six years later, under instruction from the Emperor, to inscribe the magnificent inscription over the finished doorway.14 How likely is the scene that Atkinson has painted? Even without considering the speed with which an Imperial entourage could progress around the province, in addition to the time we know he spent in northern Britain ensuring Hadrian’s Wall got off to a good start,15 a great deal rests on the quality of the Atkinson 1942, 179, all quotes. Birley notes Hadrian is thought to have been in the province in July but left before the winter months (1997, 127 & 138). 14 Atkinson 1942, 182. 15 Birley 1997, 131-8 indicates how occupied and hands-on the Emperor may have been in engaging with the building of his wall. 12 13

19

20

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 9: Details of some of the letters in the inscription showing original tooling marks and stylistic details. Author’s photos, August 2020.

Archaeologists and their stories

Figure 10: David Kyndersley’s and Lida Lopez Cardoza’s artistic response to the Wroxeter Inscription. Author’s photo 2013.

inscription. We shall look in more detail at the arguments surrounding the superlative nature of this work below as there is evidence now that that the technical competence of the cutting is not quite as good as Atkinson asserts. Nonetheless the suggestion of Imperial interest in the project had been made and other pieces of evidence were gradually brought to bear by others to further embellish the story until it became a narrative in which the Emperor took a direct and decisive hand in the re-foundation of the town. For all his knowledge, Atkinson was not himself a master letter-cutter, but one who was, David Kindersley (1915-1995) did inspect the inscription. In March 1993 I took David and his wife, Lida Lopez Cardosa, who now runs their stonecutting workshop in Cambridge, to examine the inscription in Shrewsbury. They were supervising the carving of an inscription that they had been commissioned to cut in a stone panel on the east side of Attingham Hall which commemorates Teresa Hulton, Lady Berwick, wife of the 8th Lord Berwick, who had done so much to conserve the house in the 20th century. David’s opinion of the Wroxeter inscription was that it was of a very high quality, but equally that it clearly had mistakes. He pointed out that in places, letters (Cs and Os particularly) had been cut at slightly the wrong angle and that corrections had had to be made by the cutter (Figure 9). The depth of the cutting also intrigued him – some of the deepest letters nearly went through to the other side. His

21

22

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

view was that it was provincial work, not of the absolute highest quality.16 The visit inspired him and his wife to create a new panel, using the same stone as the Wroxeter inscription and in the same font style, for the new Education Room created at Wroxeter at roughly the same time (Figure 10). Sadly, there has not been an opportunity to fit the piece in place. One does wonder if a superlative level of carving was ever achieved in Roman inscriptions.17 We know that many faults in carvings across the Empire were masked by the red paint that was used to pick out the letters and make the Figure 11: Eric Gill’s Golden Cockerel font, 1929, inscription more legible from based on the lettering in Wroxeter’s forum distance, or by other means such inscription. Image courtesy of Mike Ashworth. as insertions or erasures.18 More fatal to Atkinson’s argument is that the inscription was carved not at the start of the project, but at its end, as he himself recognised. How likely is it that Hadrian, or his entourage, knew when to send a letter-cutter from Rome to carve this inscription, nearly a decade after Hadrian’s purported visit? Despite this conclusion, the letter-cutter has done a truly remarkable job, and there is no reason to doubt that provincial craftsmen were capable of high standards of technical work. This is best appreciated when the inscription is seen in the correct light as then the letters create an optical illusion that suggests that they stand proud of the stonework rather than being incised into it. When the inscription was first published, in the Illustrated London News,19 its purity of form made a huge impression on one person in particular: Eric Gill, who later taught David Kindersley how to letter-carve. Eric Gill was a noted The same conclusions have been reached by a modern retired stone-cutter, Richard Grasby (2013, Study 5; discussed in Tomlin 2018, 244). 17 Tomlin 2018, 77-8. 18 Edmondson 2015. 19 Andrews 1925, 520. 16

Archaeologists and their stories

illustrator and typographer – his best known font is perhaps Gill Sans – as well as a sculptor and in 1929 he created a new type-face called Golden Cockerel commissioned for the Golden Cockerel Press who used it in their Four Gospels of 1931 (Figure 11).20 It is clearly based on the Wroxeter inscription, as is most obviously shown in the curving shape of the descender of the R, and the boldly triangular ends to horizontals and uprights. Not copied, however, is the use on the original inscription of the T with opposed down- and up-turned ends to the horizontal stroke. As Atkinson continued to work on the remains of the forum it became clear that the building complex overlay another large civic building, a bath house. Although this had been constructed to an advanced degree so that the foundations were finished, the furnaces had never been fired and the drains were not complete, so it seemed that the complex had not after all functioned. While some of the walls had been reused to create the later forum complex most had been quietly buried and forgotten. In 1936-7, Kathleen Kenyon carried out excavations across the road from the forum on the ruins of the baths and by the Old Work. She found evidence here too for changes in the initial layout of the public baths. From here it was a short step to proposing that the baths and forum of the first town, established towards the end of the first century, had been on opposite sides of the road from where they were finally constructed. This suggestion arose due to a misunderstanding of the relationship between the baths basilica and the baths themselves so that in her view ‘the buildings as originally completed, consisted of two which were structurally quite independent … and there is a suggestion of a change of plan.’ If, she suggests, these [unfinished] baths obviously formed part of the first large-scale lay-out of the city in the Flavian period [in the late first century] … another component part of this lay-out would undoubtedly been a Forum. It thus seems a very reasonable suggestion that this lay on the site just excavated and that the hall [i.e. the baths basilica] was begun as the Basilica attached to this Forum.’21 Both Atkinson and Kenyon were tentative in their connection of the evidence with Hadrian, but Graham Webster (Figure 12), a former colleague of Kathleen Kenyon, took the evidence much further, placing it at the heart and centre of his vision of Wroxeter’s development.22 This saw the town as being at ‘the very edge of the barbarian world’23 and thus a focus for Hadrian’s critical role in fostering the economic and social development of the more peripheral https://www.rct.uk/collection/1052088/the-four-gospels Kenyon 1940, 180 & 184. 22 Webster 1980. 23 Webster 1988a, 143. 20 21

23

24

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

parts of the Empire behind Hadrian’s newly imposed strong frontier works.24 The genesis of this argument lies in Hadrian’s interest in the endowment of cities across the eastern Empire as well as in North Africa and the Balkans (Pannonia) attested by historians and archaeology.25 Webster saw the reordering of the main public buildings at Wroxeter as well as the entire reshaping of the size of the town itself as a direct decision made by Hadrian and implemented under his direction.26 We have no direct evidence of this, and if true it would make Wroxeter Figure 12: Graham Webster, in around 1948 when exceptionally important at this he was appointed as Curator at the Grosvenor time but in the end Webster’s Museum, Chester. Photo courtesy of thesis is only based on a Diana Bonakis Webster. supposition about the quality of an inscription found on a single public building. In the intervening years since the excavation of Wroxeter’s inscription other discoveries have given a new perspective on the Forum inscription. For example, in 1999 an equally finely cut inscription from an otherwise lost triumphal arch was found at Tel Shalem in Judea. This was set up to commemorate the defeat of the Second Jewish Revolt in AD136 and was probably cut by soldiers of the 6th Legion based nearby.27 The quality is just as high as that at Wroxeter and suggests that we do not need to seek Hadrian’s engagement with the work at Wroxeter to account for its technical brilliance. If we remove the connection between the inscription and Hadrian, much of the evidence for Hadrian’s direct engagement falls away. The elements of the broader narrative of Wroxeter’s development – the unfinished baths, the completed forum and baths, and the changing alignment of the street grid – fit generally into a late first century sequence initiated by the abandonment of the legionary fortress evidenced by its dismantling, and the foundation of the new Webster 1988a, 140-43. Boatwright 2000. 26 Webster 1993, 51. 27 Opper 2008, 92; Eck and Foerster 1999. 24 25

Archaeologists and their stories

town with particularly ambitious boundaries. In this version, the unfinished baths belong with the fortress in the 90s AD and the new baths and forum are begun in 120s with the forum completed in 129/130 and the baths about a decade or more later. This slow and steady progress suggests not Imperial patronage but the normal accumulation of funds by the civic authorities acting under their own resources.28 In this version, Hadrian might still have offered encouragement, but little else, to Wroxeter’s townspeople. The dark age town: fact or fiction?

Figure 13: Mike Corbishley (l) and Phil Barker (r) celebrating the end of the baths basilica excavation in August 1985. Author’s photo.

Sixty years ago, in the early 1960s, our understanding of Roman Britain was seemingly grounded in the certainty that the Roman era in Britain had ended firmly in the first decade of the fifth century, if not in the late fourth century. By that date, the towns had been deserted, the villas were ruined, and the Romans had departed. In their place came the Anglo-Saxons, a people uninterested in the trappings of civilization but who imported a fine sense of display in their personal attire, and a taste for war. Distinct from the emerging English were other shadowy peoples – the Picts, Scots, Welsh and Cornish – who occupy even to this day those corners of the British Isles that are still less clearly ‘English’. Even at that time, this simple telling of

White 1999; White, Gaffney & Gaffney 2013, 178. Peter Ellis has independently come to the same conclusion (2000, 339).

28

25

26

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

British history seemed deeply flawed and a new generation of historians and archaeologists were busily nuancing it with their work on many sites across the British Isles.29 Among them was Philip Barker (Figure 13), a former art teacher at Priory School, Shrewsbury and then an adult education tutor for southern Shropshire who had started as tutor in Worcester for the Department of Extra Mural Studies at the University of Birmingham in 1965. The next year, Philip had been asked by his colleague, Graham Webster to assist him in his excavations at Wroxeter where the latter had been running a training school in archaeology since 1953.30 Graham had his hands full working on the archaeological levels buried under the ruins of the baths but was asked to investigate the site of a new house for the site custodian whose current home was built over some of the ruins and which obviously had to be relocated. A suitably bland site was found, right at the top of the field and adjacent to the fence and hedge delimiting the archaeological activity. What happened next tells us a lot about the then current perceptions among practicing archaeologists of what archaeology ‘should’ look like at different time periods. While both men were largely self-trained as archaeologists, Graham had been inculcated in the solid pragmatism of Roman archaeology by Sir Ian Richmond where the archaeology was predictable, and walls were so solidly constructed that they took a pick to shift them, a perception that fitted in with his previous profession as a civil engineer.31 Philip, however, had cut his teeth as an archaeologist excavating the ephemeral traces of medieval buildings whose clay walls were often hugely difficult to locate and define. Philip naturally approached his new site with the caution that he would take with a medieval site – it was the only sure way he knew how to dig – and was rewarded when the vestigial traces of a medieval-looking bow-sided building emerged directly under the turf and topsoil. Meanwhile, 100m to the west, a team of workmen were busily clearing away the overlying deposits on top of the floor of the baths basilica in a 5m wide and 30m long trench on the assumption that all the archaeology had long been ploughed away and only disturbed levels remained which should be removed as quickly as possible. Philip, however, noted that at the bottom of this supposedly archaeologically sterile trench were a large number of postholes and other features that suggested a building had been cut into the basilica floor at a late stage in its life.32 This, alongside his discovery of well-preserved archaeological layers immediately below the ploughsoil, Alcock 1971. White 2006, 196-7, with additional detail from Barrie Trinder in litt. 31 Webster 1991, 121-3. 32 The evidence for this building evidence is discussed in Barker et al. 1997, 76. 29 30

Archaeologists and their stories

Figure 14: The baths basilica excavation July 1971 – ploughsoil is being removed by a trowelling line of diggers to reveal the underlying surface. Note that the fields beyond the site are still under cultivation. Photo by Phil Barker.

caused Philip to argue that work in the big trench be stopped immediately and that a more cautious approach be adopted. It took a while for Graham and the Ministry of Works to be persuaded of Philip’s case but in the end they agreed that the ploughsoil should be stripped across the site of the baths basilica and the uppermost levels be treated with the respect due to surviving archaeological levels.33 The work slowed not because of Philip’s caution but only because this was a huge area to strip and investigate largely by hand (Figure 14). It took around seven years of manual labour before the whole upper surface of the archaeology was exposed across the 130m by 40m site. The sea of rubble confronting the archaeologists was difficult to understand. Philip commented ‘it is daunting to realise that this rubble spread, covering almost an acre, is quite meaningless in areas of less than about 2,000 square metres. Over 1,500 vertical photographs of the site have been taken. Not one of them looks more enlightening than a spread of rubbish. Put together one can see the phantoms of buildings, some of them vast, emerging from apparent chaos.’34 It was obvious that the exposed rubble had been severely cut about by 33 34

White 2006, 168-9. Barker 1975, 108.

27

28

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

earlier investigations, from at least 1859. Yet within the chaos were anomalies that suggested some archaeology survived. Notably, two large column drums located a short distance apart towards the middle of the baths basilica and parallel with the Old Work and the rest of the southern wall of the basilican hall. A visiting Inspector of Monuments, A.H.A. Hogg, suggested to Philip that the column drums looked like the pad-stones of a porch fronting a large building, a smaller example of which could be seen on the northern edge of the same site and which Philip had discussed with him earlier in the day. They began to pick out other features apparently symmetrical to these stones and eventually had marked out with ranging poles a gigantic platform of rubble and mortar, too large to be easily photographed. Other areas of structured rubble were identified, along with worn paths where the rubble strew had been worn flat by people using the basilican area. Based on these and other discoveries, Philip published a revolutionary paper in the journal Britannia suggesting that he had identified a complex phase of late occupation centred around the huge building, which it was argued must have been timber-framed in medieval style since there was no evidence for earth-fast posts. Instead of the ‘generally accepted view of the end of many Roman towns, with a steady decline into squalor leading to eventual abandonment … the evidence … from the very latest period of occupation of the basilican area shows that it was completely redeveloped with a planned complex of timber-framed buildings … looking back to classical models.’35 Dating these levels was problematic, however, since radiocarbon assay at that time needed large quantities of material while the finds, although plentiful, hinted at a late or even early post-Roman date. Yet equally, these buildings were not Anglo-Saxon in character. They seemed to be firmly Roman in concept. The initial conclusion of the paper was that ‘a date range between c. 350 and c. 500 must almost certainly cover the whole sequence … and it therefore seems likely that the major rebuilding took place some time after 400 but not necessarily long after this.’36 These conclusions were shocking at the time. Graham Webster had realised the implications when first convinced of the existence of Phil’s building in 1966: ‘such ephemeral features must have existed in Roman cites and, of course, elsewhere. Furthermore, they had, to date, all been removed in site clearance down to recognisable solid structures. This was a devastating new concept.37 The new phase at Wroxeter demonstrated that a whole new kind of Roman Britain existed. While still recognisably Roman in its character, from its finds and symmetrical planning, it was a time when timber not masonry was the most important building Barker 1975, 114. Barker 1975, 116. 37 Webster 1988b, quoted in Barker et al. 1997, 19. 35 36

Archaeologists and their stories

material. Further, the construction of these structures had come about through the selective demolition of a huge classical-style building using the demolition materials for its foundations. Over the next 10 years, the excavation continued until the very lowest levels of the basilica floor were reached yet late fourth century coins were still being found stratified under the archaeological deposits. An extensive sequence of events had been uncovered – the construction and use of the basilica, its reflooring on multiple occasions, evidence for its decay and eventual systematic demolition, and then replacement by a complex and apparently organised development of timber buildings. All of this had to be fitted within a chronology largely determined by coins and scientific dates. In the end, a key date was apparently provided for what was largely a floating chronology by a scientific date for the last firing of an oven dug into the basilica’s west portico. This gave a surprisingly late date at the end of the fifth century for the final disuse of the basilica and indicated that the levels above, including the large building on top of the rubble platform, probably belonged in the sixth century.38 Since 2014, such a late date is hard to justify because an article by Alan Lane in the prestigious journal Antiquity kicked away the credibility of the oven’s date on scientific grounds, and attacked the interpretation of fifth and sixth century occupation by arguing that any site of such importance in this time frame will have had material culture contemporary with it, but none had been found.39 He also pointed out that there have been no other Wroxeter-style buildings found in other late Roman towns, even those in western Britain, despite a continued search for them. This new position has largely been accepted in academe – a recent hefty tome on the archaeology of the fifth to eleventh centuries concludes that the remains are ‘not credible as the footprint of a vanished 5th-century town’ but nonetheless accepts that ‘the patterns have not been systematically explained.’40 The story of what happened at Wroxeter in the fourth, fifth, sixth and later centuries, is thus still not resolved. A broad programme of radiocarbon dating, and a thorough re-examination of the archaeological evidence, is currently underway but is yet to reach a definitive conclusion. However, excluding the flawed scientific date for the oven, the chronology is much more likely to conform to a fifth century conclusion rather than anything later. Whatever the final outcome, certainly the most important impact of the whole saga of Barker et al. 1997, 238-241. Lane 2014. 40 Carver 2019, 263. 38 39

29

30

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

the baths basilica excavation has been on how archaeology is conducted on complex urban sites in Britain. Wroxeter, and the contemporary excavations in Winchester by Martin Biddle in the 1960s and 1970s, demonstrated conclusively that large-scale open-area sites were vital for understanding how towns developed.41 Whatever was happening in this late phase of Wroxeter’s life, it did not conform to existing preconceptions of our Roman past. While the exact parallels for the activity at Wroxeter have not been found elsewhere, there is a growing body of evidence for the reuse of public buildings in late Roman towns, and for a re-ordering of urban life.42 This later evidence suggests for some, myself included, that this is evidence for a survival of a Roman life-style, which could be characterised as urban, beyond the traditional end of Roman Britain.43 This interpretation countered the traditional and deeply embedded narrative of the rapid conquest of Britain by incoming Germanic peoples. The reality was that while much the existing narrative about the conquest of post-Roman Britain held true for the eastern and southern part of Britain it had not been the case for the west or north until much later. The findings at Wroxeter apparently provided a glimpse of what such a society might look like, and how it could be discovered. For the public, this shadowy era is known as the Age of Arthur, and there were some who directly linked the discoveries at Wroxeter to that famous name, 44 even though the reality is that Arthur was not a real historical character.45 Yet the idea that there was a resistance to English incursion into the British Isles was real and it must have demanded the capacity to organise and fight the threat, even if the outcome was ultimately unsuccessful. As will be seen in later chapters, the idea of a valiant, but unsuccessful, resistance sits at the heart of artistic and literary representations of Wroxeter. *** Each of these three interpretations (or stories if you will) of the evidence uncovered at Wroxeter is, in its way, flawed. Like all interpretations of archaeological evidence, they can be accepted, or not, on their own merits, viewed as an attempt to understand the significance of the intractable data that archaeologists work with. They are shorn of the names and identities of Collis 2011; Everill and White 2011. Speed 2014. 43 White 2007. 44 Phillips and Keatman 1993. For the most recent assessment of Arthur’s historicity, see Halsall 2013. 45 Two influential titles of the period reflect this interest: Alcock’s Arthur’s Britain (1971) and Morris’ Age of Arthur (1978). 41 42

Archaeologists and their stories

real people who lived in the town and witnessed its life in the Roman period, and in that they are typical of the evidence that archaeologists must consider. Yet what interests me about these three stories is how they have influenced our broader understanding and appreciation of Roman Britain among the general public. In the following chapters, we shall see how stories told by archaeologists, or simply invented by writers and poets to entertain, have inspired an artistic legacy tied to Wroxeter and its ruins.

31

Poetic visions It might seem strange to think that poets would be attracted to write about an abandoned Roman town but as we shall see Wroxeter has been a place that inspired poets through the ages. I believe that there are two reasons that can account for their interest. The first concerns those who lived not too long after the events that saw the collapse of Roman power in Britain, and the rise of the English. The poet’s perspective is from those who lost this struggle: the early medieval Welsh who lost what they saw as their birth-right – the lands that the English had taken from them. The second group of poets comes much later, in the late 19th and early 20th century, when Wroxeter had been rediscovered and brought back to people’s minds. Visitors to the newly exposed ruins were confronted with a scene of neglect and decay that clearly triggered in them a sense of melancholy, but a recognition too of their beauty. Lament for a lost kingdom The last of the archaeological stories recounted in the first chapter demonstrates how hard it is to make sense of what was happening in Britain during the demise of Roman Britain and the transition to a new future. For those living at the time it must have been a time of bewildering change where the certainties that people for generations had taken for granted collapsed in a matter of years.1 For those who lived after the change had occurred, it was not surprising that they began to fill the void created by a sense of loss with stories. Given that this was the early medieval period that meant poetry which 1 Fleming 2021 is particularly powerful in rehearsing the devasting economic changes of this time, and how these events brought about the rapid economic demise of Roman Britain.

32

Poetic visions

could be chanted or sang in the lord’s hall for entertainment. One such poem survives to give an understanding of the loss felt by the Welsh in the ninth century who half-remembered their ownership of territory now claimed by the English, but which had been lost to them more than 200 years before. Stauell gyndylan ys tywyll heno heb dan heb wely wylaf wers. tawaf wedy.

The hall of Cynddylan is dark tonight Without a fire, without a bed, I will weep for awhile; afterwards I shall fall silent.

Stauell gyndylan am gwan y gwelet heb doet heb dan marw vy glyw. buw mu hunan

The hall of Cynddylan – it pierces me to see it without roofs, without a fire. My lord is dead; I myself alive.

Neur sylleis [olygon] o dinlleu I have gazed from Dinlleu Ureconn [Gwrygon] ureconn the country of Ffreuer. ffreuer werydre There is sorrow for the slaughter of my hiraeth am damorth vrodyrde ardent brothers. Llas Cynddylan llas Cynwraith yn amwyn Trenn tref ddiffaith Gwae fi fair arose u llaith

Cynddylan was slain, Cynwraith was slain, Defending Tren, a desolate town. Woe is me enduring their death

Canu Heledd, stanzas 18, 27, 81, 110. Trs. J. Rowland The words here are those of Heledd, a princess of the Welsh kingdom of Powys, recorded in the lyric poems (englynion) of Llywarch Hen which survive in the Red Book of Hergest. The englynion are three-line metrical stanzas, haiku-like in substance, which may have been delivered alongside a spoken narrative so that the elements could be woven together as a story allowing some chronological development to be traced within them, albeit imperfectly. As the translator Jenny Rowland notes, the thrust of the stanzas lies ‘not so much on the events of the story, but on their characters’ … often highly emotional reaction to them.’ She continues ‘The most typical poems are laments, for the dead, the passing of former society, and the character’s wretched fate.’2 They are never, for example, love poems. In this the Canu Heledd, which purports to tell the story of how the lands to the east of the Severn were lost to the invading armies of Anglo-Saxon warriors by the seventh century, is a perfect example. Unlike Beowulf, that other great surviving poetic masterpiece of the early middle ages, the englynion does not survive entire. We have songs (Canu) by Llywarch Hen and Urien as well as that by Heledd alongside other fragments, but enough survives to give

2

Rowland 1990, 1-2.

33

34

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 15: The Wrekin from near Cressage in a watercolour by Tom Prytherch, 1902. Image © Raby Estates 2020.

us an appreciation of its beauty even if all sense of the chronology of the events recorded is flawed. The Hall of Cynddylan that she mourns is said to stand where Cynddylan and his brothers are buried, at the eglwysau Bassa – the Churches of Bassa, while the city is the ‘white city on the Tren’, the Roman city at Wroxeter, on the central Shropshire plain east of Shrewsbury (see Figure 16). If so, then the hill must be the Wrekin – rendered as Dinlleu Ureconn or Dinlleu Gwrygon in versions of the text – which rises dominant about four miles distant from the city (Figure 15). There is no doubting the power and emotion of this work, but the world it records is not that of the seventh century, it is of the ninth.3 The proof is in the names the poet uses: eglwysau Bassa a Welsh transliteration of the very Englishsounding Baschurch, the Bassa element being an English person’s name.4 Similarly, if Heledd and her company were standing on the Wrekin looking to Wroxeter then they would be standing not within their own territory but that of the English since the Wrekin lies to the east of Wroxeter. It does not make a great deal of sense within the historical realities of the fifth to seventh century, 3 4

Rowland 1990, 120-1. Gelling 1990, 30-1.

Poetic visions

Figure 16: A map of the post-Roman kingdoms of England and Wales in the seventh – ninth century. Not all of these polities were extant at the same time. After Hill 1981, fig. 41 and Ray & Bapty 2016, fig. 1.1. Drawing by Sophie Lamb.

35

36

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

but it is completely understandable in the light of events in the ninth century when the work was composed. When the poems were first sung, the reality was that the kingdom of Powys, characterised as ‘an affiliation or confederation of sub-kingdoms or princedoms’5 in the north-eastern part of Wales was under severe pressure on all sides from its more powerful neighbours. On its eastern border they were struggling to hold their own against the rising power of the Mercian kingdom, led throughout the eighth century by a series of aggressive kings, Cenred (704-9), Aethelbald (716-757) and Offa (757-796; Figure 16). There were already English settlements being founded deep into what would be considered Powys’ territory.6 Equally, Powys’ neighbours to the west, the powerful Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd, was looking to grow and consolidate itself against English expansion at the expense of its neighbour. A physical reminder of this era is the monument known as Offa’s Dyke, which in the popular imagination at least is seen as a ‘frontier’ separating Welsh and English (Figure 17). Certainly, Offa’s intention was to echo linear Roman barriers, like Hadrian’s Wall, but, as with its Roman predecessor, it is not at all clear what Offa’s Dyke was intended to do in military or economic terms.7 It clearly conveys power and undoubtedly hindered traffic across the barrier since there are few obvious crossing points. If nothing else, it makes apparent that lands to the east of the new border were now firmly beyond the control of Powys, a point reinforced by the strong predominance of English place names in Shropshire.8 The poem thus looks back to a time when the folk-memory was that the kingdom that later became Powys was much bigger, when it controlled not just north-eastern Wales but also much of Shropshire and Cheshire including the major Roman towns of Uriconium (Wroxeter) and Deva (Chester). Whether this was ever the case is, in a sense, immaterial since this was a time when there was no recorded history in our sense of the word. The belief of the rulers of Powys, recorded on the ninth century monument known as the Pillar of Eliseg near Llangollen (Figure 18), was that they wielded power given to them by the usurping Emperor Magnus Maximus (383-388) – Macsen Wledig as the Welsh called him – who raised his standard of revolt in Britain.9 Those lands will have included Wroxeter and its surrounding territory, referred to by Heledd in the poem both as Tren (the name survives as the river Tern, a tributary of the Severn whose name has been anglicised by swopping round its middle letters) Ray and Bapty 2016, 271. Charles-Edwards 2013, 424-28; Ray and Bapty 2016, 272. 7 See Ray and Bapty 2016 for the latest thinking. For active debate on the dyke and its interpretations, see the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory : https://offaswatsdyke.wordpress.com/ 8 Charles-Edwards 2013, 419-24 9 Edwards 2009 5 6

Poetic visions

Figure 17: Offa’s Dyke on Llanfair hill, north of Knighton. Author’s photo, December 1994.

and by Ercal, the English name for the same area (see Figure 25).10 The Mercians too had a name for this region, but rather than a geographic name they called this area after its people – the Wreocensætan – ‘Wroxeter (or Wrekin) people’.11 Their name appears, alongside other identified peoples, as tribute payers in the eighth century document known as the Tribal Hidage whose purpose was to record what tribute, in the form of manpower, each named people would contribute to the defence of the Mercian kingdom. The folk memory that the englynion recalls is that the British, and specifically the kingdom of Powys, had once controlled this broad territory, but had lost everything east of the Severn and Dee to Mercian aggression. How might this have happened if not by conquest? To understand how this territory east of the Severn and Dee passed from British to English control, we need to turn to the demise of Roman rule in the early decades of the fifth century. In doing so we have to remember that decisions taken at that time were done so without the benefit of hindsight: no-one then knew that the Roman administration would not return. Indeed, I would argue that most believed that it would, and it was only slowly and gradually 10 11

Rowland 1990, 576 & 601. Hooke 2011, 153.

37

38

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 18: The Pillar of Eliseg, near Llangollen, a ninth century monument commemorating the kings of Powys. Photo by Theo Bumpus, August 2020.

appreciated – after about 30 to 40 years – that there was no way to reassemble the shattered fragments of the Western Empire.12 To use a modern analogy, this was no Brexit following an agreed timetable and countdown to a final break; it was more like the collapse of the Soviet Empire at the end of the 1980s; a rapid falling apart but not to a plan or timetable, and one in which the outcome was uncertain. While we do not know exactly what the withdrawal of Roman administration meant in practice (as Hilary Cool has mused, Which Romans? What Home?13) we can assume that lower tiers of government probably stayed in place and functioned, not least because they would be expected to do so by the Roman authorities whose presence might be re-established at any time. 12 13

White 2007, 196-201. Cool 2014.

Poetic visions

Figure 19: The Wem Hoard, a recent discovery of hacksilver including many coins (right) some of which have been cut into halves and quarters. It dates to the latter half of the fifth century. Author’s photo, November 2018.

So, potentially for a decade or more, administration, and taxation, probably continued as normal, but at provincial level, with coins still circulating and the economy functioning as best it could. Some evidence for this can be seen in the nascent Church in Britain which appeared to be functioning and in contact with the continent in the early- to mid-fifth century much as during the fourth century.14 The primary concern of any provincial government at this time will have been to secure their defences against external attack and internal strife. In Britain, of the four provinces probably in operation at this time, the three in the south and east appeared to seek military support from the near continent while the fourth, the western province of Britannia Prima which (roughly speaking) covered the modern south-west, Wales, and the marches up to the river Mersey, 14

Thomas 1981, 240-74.

39

40

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

sought help from the Irish peoples, principally of the western seaboard of the Irish Sea.15 Payment for this support was made in Britain in the form of silver coin and hacked-up pieces of silver plate (Hacksilber hoards), much in the way that Charles I paid his armies in the English Civil War: both emergencies are marked archaeologically by large and valuable hoards dating their respective periods (Figure 19). As Kenneth Painter has commented ‘Hacksilber was often the product of extreme economic or political conditions.’ 16 However, this only went on for a relatively brief period, the strain in the Roman system being shown by the increasing propensity to trim the edges of the silver coins to ensure a continuing supply. After this expedient failed, the mercenaries could no longer be paid and it was plain to all that Rome would not be returning to Britain, at least not in the foreseeable future. It was at this point, traditionally put in the 440s, that increasingly large parts of Britain fell under the control of people from largely German-speaking parts of the continent. This was not a wholesale conquest, however: there is evidence that a mosaic of polities arose, some controlled by the native, British-speaking and often Christian communities centred largely on the sites of Roman towns such as Verulamium, Lincoln and Canterbury. Some of these briefly became kingdoms in their own right, such as Elmet, centred on the British settlement at Loidis (Leeds) while Lincoln’s territory was called Lindsey. Alongside them arose the nascent English kingdoms of West Saxons, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, East Saxons, South Saxons, and Northumbria (i.e. Deira and Bernicia combined) that gradually exerted dominance over the British polities, perhaps mostly by absorbing them rather than necessarily defeating them in battle (see Figure 16).17 The cultural presence of the English was signalled by their extensive cemeteries whose dead wore clothing and items of personal adornment that visibly marked them out from their culturally British neighbours even though some (perhaps many) of the people in these cemeteries will have had British heritage.18 In the western province, however, the situation was different. There were no cemeteries of culturally English people here until the 7th century and beyond. Instead, the Irish appeared to be largely still under the control of their British employers, although increasingly the two groups were assimilated so that some of the kingdoms in south-west Wales claimed joint Irish and Welsh lineages.19 Thus, what had been a provincial boundary became an active linguistic and cultural frontier between the two groups evolving gradually into White 2007, 198-9. Painter 2013, 224. 17 Scholarly accounts of this period are myriad, and often in complete disagreement, but see Halsall 2013 for a common-sense view. Fleming 2010, 1-151 provides an easily accessible history. 18 Carver 2019, 54-7 & 84-105; Fleming 2021. 19 Charles-Williams 2013, 174-191. 15 16

Poetic visions

the British/Welsh and English, even if to all intents and purposes these were culturally similar to each other. What this meant for Wroxeter has been touched upon in the first chapter. In truth, we don’t know but one thing is certain: there is absolutely no evidence for an attack on the town. The town centre would have been a primary focus of any assault, and archaeologically, destruction by fire is very recognisable, not just by the appearance of a black soil but in discoloured stone and heataltered materials, such as burnt clay walls. The destruction of the buildings in the Roman fortress at Colchester during the Boudican revolt are an excellent example of this.20 Famously, some burials have been found by roadsides in Wroxeter, for example by Donald Atkinson outside the forum,21 and in 2005 on a roadside south of the baths, but in no case did these individuals display evidence of a violent death. They had simply been buried in the roadside ditch in the accumulation of soil there. Unusual, and perhaps evidence for a breakdown of civic life, but not of violent death. From our current experience, we might suggest that they were victims of a pandemic or disease, but if so, they were buried since their bodies were clearly not scavenged by wild or domestic animals nor did their pathology show a violent death. Second, while we cannot date the activities on the baths basilica precisely yet, what they are evidence for is an organised hierarchical society in which orders were given by some and carried out by others. The dismantling of the basilica – a building the size and height of a cathedral nave – does not happen without organisation. The archaeological evidence is unequivocal that the structure did not fall or burn down. Large parts of it were systematically demolished, and the materials reused in the construction of building platforms and other activities (Figure 20). There was evidence for a market, supported by the animal bone analysis which shows that these later citizens were increasingly reliant on wildlife taken from around the town for their existence.22 In other words, those still living at Wroxeter appear to have been trying to carry on life as best they could, under someone’s direction, even while everything around them changed. Who that person was is something we shall doubtless never know, but it is difficult to imagine that they could be other than a warlord, or a churchman. Both are possible in the immediate post-Roman period. We know the names of many warlords or petty kings, in both British and English communities at this time, but many more must have existed who are unrecorded. At Wroxeter, Crummy 1997, 73-84 offers many graphic photographs of what buildings that have burnt down look like when excavated archaeologically. 21 Atkinson 1942, pl.30 B. This individual has its skull placed by its feet. This was not the cause of death but a late Roman burial custom in which the head was detached after death, for unknown reasons. 22 Hammon 2011. 20

41

42

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 20: Regularly sized platforms on the south aisle which indicate timber buildings put up in the shell of the basilica. Photo Philip Barker, August 1974.

one candidate, is Cunorix, whose epitaph was cut into a re-used Roman tombstone ploughed up on the north-east corner of the town’s rampart in the late 1960s (Figure 21). No body was found in association with the stone. Linguistically, his name is British – Hound King is the meaning – but his father’s name is given in an Irish formula so Cunorix is of Irish descent. The formulation suggests a date around 500 AD23 but what his role was at Wroxeter, if any, is unclear. It was common for those living in the post-Roman period to site their tombstones or memorials on older monuments as if to assert a connection with a past that they now perceived to be their own24 so Cunorix’s association may have been with a site already deserted. The second alternative, that of a churchman, has much in favour of it as a suggestion. We know that, like everywhere else in the Empire, in the fourth century towns like Wroxeter were expected to have a functioning church, and 23 24

Wright and Jackson 1968; Bryant and Parsons 2012, 319. Williams 1997.

Poetic visions

Figure 21: The tombstone of Cunorix, a man of Irish descent buried at Wroxeter around AD500. The inscription is cut into a broken Roman tombstone. Author’s photo, August 2011.

that their citizens would necessarily support, and obey, its wishes. That the church continued to function into the fifth century is not in doubt: St Patrick was a Romano-British Christian, and we know that the Christian community in Britain invited St Germanus of Auxerre and Bishop Lupus of Troyes to come to their aid in around 429.25 We do know of two other clerics perhaps of this time, from the region of Powys east of the Severn, who are named on large lead pans used to boil brine to extract salt. These were found at Shavington near Nantwich in Cheshire, one of the three Cheshire wiches where brine occurs naturally in the form of brine springs. Their names are Cunitius, identified as a clericus and Flavius Viventius, episcopus (Figure 22). The names assert ownership of the contents rather than just the pans since salt was a valuable commodity and it may be suspected that the revenue supported the church. Sadly, we are not told where Cunitius and Viventius were based, but Nantwich lies roughly 25

Thomas 1981.

43

44

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 22: Lead pans for boiling brine to extract salt. Found at Shavington, Cheshire the inscriptions commemorate late Roman clerics presumably based at either Chester or Wroxeter. After Penney and Shotter 1996 and 2000.

equidistant between Chester and Wroxeter and so they could be associated with either, neither, or both.26 Chester perhaps has the stronger claim since we know of a synod of the British church there in 615, but there is no certainty. Where does this leave Wroxeter? The reordering of the space created by the demolition of the baths basilica created an area with controlled entry points, some based on existing doorways in still-standing walls or at newly created choke-points. The doorway into the baths proper, however, remained open and the room beyond, the unheated room of the baths (frigidarium), appears to have remained in use. The survival of its north wall as the Old Work suggests this, along with the fact that burnt grain was found on its floor in the 19th century when it was first excavated, evidence for the room’s use as a granary at some point. In the 20th century a complete medieval pottery vessel was found 26

White 2007, 88.

Poetic visions

Figure 23: A plan of the baths at Wroxeter with a plot showing the approximate location of burials mentioned by Thomas Wright. These cluster around the frigidarium, which may have become a chapel in the immediate post-Roman period. After Ellis 2000 with additions.

close by suggesting that some rooms in the bath were still useable into the 14th century. This is analogous with the preservation of much of the baths at Caerleon, described by Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century.27 Also found in the 19th century excavations, in the sub-floor of the rooms around the frigidarium, were a number of skeletons (Figure 23). These were the ‘victims’ described by Thomas Wright who developed a narrative of fire and sword around these bodies, but the descriptions of their burial rather suggests a more peaceful, and pragmatic, internment of the dead in the hollow space beneath the floors of still-extant rooms. These burials must be early in the post-Roman period since burial within the city walls was not permitted in the Roman period so it is suggested that they are evidence for the reuse of the frigidarium as a chapel or church.28 The association between baths and the early church is not improbable since there was a requirement for flowing water, which baths had 27 Zienkiewicz 1986, 262-8. Giraldus’ text, translation, and commentary is provided by G. C. Boon ‘Giraldus Cambrensis and the ruins of Caerleon, 1188’ in the same volume, 269-71. 28 Mackreth 2000, 369 & 375.

45

46

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 24: The post-Roman British defended coastal site at Degannwy, by Llandudno. This lay roughly on the border between Powys and Gwynedd. Its small size, and defensive qualities offer a stark contrast to the defensive situation at a place like Wroxeter. Author’s photo, June 2006.

in abundance. The robust construction of the frigidarium, a room aligned east – west, with walls nearly a metre thick, a vaulted concrete roof and cold plunge pools that could be used as immersion fonts, suggests a minimum of effort to convert the building to its new purpose. The evidence thus points to a persisting Christian community based in the heart of Wroxeter, initially able to exert enough control to reorder the space within a former public building, and to keep some element of trade flowing. However, it is also apparent that this community must have been very precarious. There was no way that the town centre, or even the town itself, could be defended. It was just too large. All of the defended sites of this date, such as New Pieces nestling in the Breidden Hills thirty miles west of Wroxeter, or Dinas Powys on the outskirts of Cardiff, or Helsby, overlooking the Mersey and Wirral near Runcorn,29 are small hillforts, capable of housing no more than a warlord and his retinue (Figure 24). If Wroxeter had ever produced a warlord, it is highly unlikely that he would have sat in the town centre, surrounded by buildings in majestic decay. He would have looked instead for a strongly fortified place, 29

Respectively, Lane 2014; Alcock 2003; Garner 2016, 268-9.

Poetic visions

small and easily defended. He would have looked, indeed, to the west where he would have seen a rocky hill surrounded on three sides by the unpredictable River Severn only six miles from Wroxeter. While that rocky hill did become a settlement – the ‘fortified place of the scrubland’ – its name, Scrobbesbyrig (Shrewsbury), is English not Welsh, although interestingly the Welsh name for Shrewsbury, Amwythig, also means fortified place.30 No evidence has been found for a post-Roman British presence at Shrewsbury, and tellingly the engylnion preserved in the Red Book of Hergest do not mention Amwythig either. They instead talk of Pengwern – ‘the place at the end of the alder swamp’ – which was the location of the hall of Cynddylan and his kin. Numerous sites have been suggested to be Pengwern, including both Wroxeter and Shrewsbury, but neither convinces since it is difficult to see why their established names would have been replaced by a new one, only to revert to the old ones later. Other candidates for Pengwern include the lowland marshy fort of the Berth at Baschurch, attractive because of its association with the burial place of Cynddylan and his brothers, but as Jenny Rowland reminds us, there need not be a geographic coincidence between where lords live and where they are buried.31 Current excavations at the Berth have not found any evidence for post-Roman occupation.32 Other candidates, both north of Wroxeter are the forts at Nesscliffe, on a sandstone bluff overlooking the modern A5 north of Shrewsbury, and Whittington Castle.33 Neither has turned up evidence for post-Roman occupation either, but both could be good candidates for postRoman halls since their rural location would chime well with a kingdom whose name – Powys – derives from the Latin word pagenses, or country-dwellers. So what happened to the fragile Christian community based in the centre of Wroxeter? A burial on the baths basilica site suggests it was abandoned by the early seventh century at the latest. The remnants of Wroxeter’s inhabitants probably moved to the southern end of the town where the later village of Wroxeter grew up, centred on the Anglo-Saxon church of St Andrew (see Figure 117). The earliest date for this church is early ninth century, a date given by a large and impressive oolitic limestone cross carved in the Mercian tradition which stood until the mid-18th century in the churchyard.34 It is suspected, however, that this church was preceded by a British community, perhaps monastic. Some support for the continuity of worship, and tenurial arrangements, can be detected in the fact that the boundary between the dioceses of Hereford and Lichfield, perhaps established in the ninth century, Gelling 1990, 267-71. Rowland 1990, 572-4. 32 Prof. Henry Chapman, pers. comm. 33 Note that the identification of Whittington as the ‘White Town’ mentioned in the Canu Heledd has been ruled out etymologically by Margaret Gelling (1990, 312). 34 White and Barker 1997, 137-50; Bryant 2012, 314-8. 30 31

47

48

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 25: The proposed reconstruction of Wroxeter’s territory in the Roman period, fossilised in the medieval diocesan boundary between Hereford and Lichfield. After Barker et al. 1997, fig.327.

Poetic visions

followed the line of the Severn, except at Wroxeter where the large parish of Condover on the other bank from Wroxeter was incorporated within the diocese of Lichfield (Figure 25). This looks very like Wroxeter’s territory being incorporated wholesale into later ecclesiastical arrangements.35 Thus, the loss of the territory held by Powys east of the Severn rather than being the result of the bloody battles mourned in the englynion was in reality a bloodless transfer, the price of a military alliance between king Penda of Mercia, king Cadwallon of Gwynedd and the king of Powys against the aggression of successive kings of Northumbria commencing with Æthelfrith’s victory at the Battle of Chester in 616, and ending only with the cataclysmic defeat of the Northumbrians at the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685 at the hands of the Picts. Battles were certainly fought, but not at Wroxeter, and not in defence of that town, which was already probably deserted. Pathos in ruins One of the more surprising facts connected with Wroxeter is that three wellknown poets, and one less celebrated one, used the site as imagery in their compositions over the space of the thirty years from 1896. Three of these compositions were directly related to the site, but one was more allusive. The interest in the site can presumably be seen as a belated reaction to the discoveries made by Wright which had at least guaranteed its inclusion in the many travel- and guide-books to the county that were produced to cater for the emerging tourist market, and the fact that those travelling will have been both educated and leisured. Our first poet, A.E. Housman (Figure 26), put his 1879 copy of John Murray’s Handbook for Shropshire and Cheshire to more imaginative use.36 While he was living in Highgate village, North London, he wrote much of A Shropshire Lad there even though he had not much been in Shropshire at that time.37 As a native of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, from where Shropshire appeared to him at distance as the famous ‘blue-remembered hills’, he and his family will have visited there from time to time in his youth perhaps even to Wroxeter itself, although proof is lacking.38 He didn’t take all the Handbook’s information about Wroxeter to heart though. As a Classicist, he probably already knew the name Uriconium, which he shortens to Uricon rather than using the full name which Murray’s Guide incorrectly suggests derived from Ur-i-conium, or ‘City Bassett 1992. Wells 1988. 37 Maas 1971, 328. 38 I sought in vain for the name Housman in the visitor books relating to the site which are discussed in a later chapter. 35 36

49

50

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

of Iconium.’39 He also resists the tale of the ‘Old Man in the hypocaust’ preferring instead the allusive references to a sense of loss more akin to the spirit evoked in the englynion of Llywarch Hen a millennium before Housman’s time. This poem itself inspired other works, notably the ‘tremulous, febrile music’40 of ‘On Wenlock Edge’ (1909) composed by Ralph Vaughan-Williams (Figure 27). Poem XXXI

Figure 26: A.E. Housman, by Francis Dodd. Image © National Portrait Gallery, London, 1926 NPG 3075.

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves; The gale, it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

‘Twould blow like this through holt and hanger When Uricon the city stood: ‘Tis the old wind in the old anger, But then it threshed another wood. Then, ‘twas before my time, the Roman At yonder heaving hill would stare: The blood that warms an English yeoman, The thoughts that hurt him, they were there. There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then ‘twas the Roman, now ‘tis I.

39 40

Murray 1879, 59. Higgins 2013, 78.

Poetic visions

Figure 27: The wooded scarp of Wenlock Edge, looking west. Author’s photo, August 1993.

The gale, it plies the saplings double, It blows so hard, ‘twill soon be gone: To-day the Roman and his trouble Are ashes under Uricon. From A.E. Housman A Shropshire Lad (1896). Reproduced with the sanction of the Housman Society. The next two poets, Henry Lang Jones and Wilfred Owen, were both writing in 1913, coinciding with the excavations carried out by the splendidly named Jocelyn Plunkett Bushe-Fox, Inspector of Ancient Monuments (Figure 28), at the behest of the Shropshire Archaeological Society. The genesis of the excavation can be traced to a meeting reported on in the 1899 Transactions of the Society which records the stirring address made by the Society’s President, the Hon. Henry de Vere Vane, 9th Baron Barnard who, seeing the extensive campaigns at the deserted Roman towns at both Silchester in Hampshire and Caerwent in South Wales, wished to renew the works at Wroxeter (Figure 29). He asserted that rather than relying on the government to find funds, ‘he thought it desirable that undertakings of an antiquarian nature should be carried out by some of the

51

52

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 28: J.P. Bushe-Fox, Inspector of Ancient Figure 29: Sir Henry de Vere Vane, 9th Monuments and an important innovator in Baron Barnard (‘Statesmen No.704’). Chromolithograph by George S. Fothergill, as Romano-British studies. Image courtesy of English Heritage Trust. depicted in Vanity Fair on 15th December 1898. Image © National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG D44939.

learned voluntary societies in the country (Applause).’41 Speaking in support of the motion to commence excavations were the two men instrumental in carrying out the excavations on the Roman town at Silchester in Hampshire on behalf of the Society of Antiquaries of London, William H. St John Hope and George E. Fox. The latter had recently concluded small-scale exploratory excavations at Wroxeter on behalf of the society and wrote a new Guidebook for the site based on his findings and the earlier understanding of the site.42 Despite the exhortations of the Society’s President it took more than a decade for enough funds to be accumulated for an excavation to start, in 1912. In that first year, Bushe-Fox found the chosen area of excavation much disturbed – he had almost certainly relocated the site of a 1788 dig recorded by 41 42

SHNAS 1899, vii-viii. Fox 1898.

Poetic visions

Figure 30: Visitors to the excavations at Wroxeter being shown finds, perhaps by one of BusheFox’s student diggers. Photo courtesy of English Heritage Trust; Accession number 88038026.

Telford,43 but the 1913-14 seasons were much more productive, until work was halted abruptly in August with the outbreak of war.44 As was common practice at the time, the workforce was a mixture of agricultural hands supervised by university students. For a small entrance fee, visitors were welcome to walk around the excavations, as is clear from both Lang Jones’ and Owen’s poems and photographs of Edwardian visitors in straw hats and blazers (Figure 30). Henry Lang Jones has not left much of an imprint on history. Almost all we know of him comes from his slim volumes of poetry: Songs of a Buried City (1913), Rhymes of Nantwich (1918) and Caldbeck Calling (1956), which locates him in Carlisle towards the end of his life. He was born in 1876, at Santos in Brazil but returned to England in 1891 and ten years later was assistant master at Willaston Unitarian School, Nantwich, becoming headmaster there between 1906-1932 when, presumably, he retired or moved on. He died at Warcop in Westmorland on 12th July 1972.45 The record of the school notes that he was also a fine musician and composer. Songs of a Buried City (Figure 31), contains Bushe-Fox 1913, 3. Bushe-Fox 1914 & 1916. 45 Willaston School 2020. For further details regarding Jones, I am indebted to David Breeze. 43 44

53

54

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 31: ‘The City in the Corn’ as photographed by Henry Lang Jones in 1913; an atmospheric frontispiece to Songs of a Buried City.

10 poems, eight of which are about Wroxeter, one about Caerwent and the last is about Silchester. The one chosen here gives two perspectives: an excavator interrupted having his lunch, describes the ruins exposed by Wright in the 1850s, trotting out the usual stories about the old man in the hypocaust and pointing out how the numbered signs on the site relate to the guidebook. The other half is a reflective contemplation by the author on the self-imposed limits of what archaeologists can say about their excavations and how, with imagination so much more can be brought back to life. The effect of this is rather punctured at the end, which sadly reflects the overall quality of the work in the volume. A more leaden example is ‘Down the Roman Road’, which has a (deliberately?) plodding metre: ‘Down the Road, The Roman Road, There comes a host of men, Left ! right! In the morning light, Swinging down the Road…’ The second verse focuses on a car driving down the road, and the third on two lovers doing the same. The theme is both trite and obvious, but it is telling that we are already in the modern world where you can arrive by car and be in Church Stretton easily in time for tea. Another poem offers a cod-Shropshire dialect conversation between two

Poetic visions

men, a labourer on the dig and his mate who wants to know what he is doing. Its title ‘In the Trenches’ is, however, retrospectively sobering given that our other 1913 poet is Wilfred Owen, and that many of the student excavators on the 1912-14 excavations that both Owen and Lang Jones visited and spoke to were killed in the Great War. In 1913, one of the student diggers was Mortimer Wheeler who was there with another four students, none of whom survived. As his biographer Jacquetta Hawkes, herself a distinguished archaeologist, writes ‘the thought of this at once intensified his sense of isolation and his conviction that as a survivor he had been entrusted with a mission [to improve technical standards of excavation] on behalf of the dead.’46 Other exceptions were Bushe-Fox himself who, with another student, Donald Atkinson, served in the Royal Garrison Artillery.47 Atkinson was to make his mark on Wroxeter a decade later. The dry bones Ah! So you’ve found me out! I like to come And munch my humble sandwich in this spot— It seems, somehow, right in the heart of things. This is the Baths, you know, the Public Baths; They dug them out some fifty years ago. No, not the Wall—the Wall’s been standing there For eighteen centuries, or thereabouts. You’ve had your lunch already, in the car? Ah well, you might just have a glance around. Down under there they found three skeletons— An old man, and two women—one quite young. Close to the old man lay his money box. … No, no; the numbers are of modern date— They correspond with figures in the plan. You had a good look round the diggings? Yes, There’s quite a lot to see—for those who care. Well, glad we’ve met again. You like your work? … That’s so—in fact, you’ve hardly time to think. Church Stretton? Where you see those cone-shaped hills. Oh yes, by tea-time easily. … Good-bye! ****** Nothing to him—a second world to me! And how should it be else with those who live In close communion with the past, and wait The daily revelation of the spade, 46 47

Hawkes 1982, 82. Wallace 1994.

55

56

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Interpreting the secrets it reveals, And reconstructing, piecemeal, that which was? A guess or two may sometimes go astray; But knowledge and experience can attain To something close on human certainty, And even ‘apparently’ and ‘may-have-been’ Enclose the truth … But is there nothing more? Is cold interpretation all we seek, And not to feel the pulsing blood beneath— To re-create—to strike the vital spark— To fill these dry bones with the breath of life? ‘Beyond our powers,’ we say, and drop our hands. Beyond our powers! And yet I think—I think— That I have sometimes trembled on the verge Of vision; and the veil may yet be raised. … It may be on some breathless summer’s eve, The twilight deepening to the shades of night. I shall be leaning on my favourite gate, Gazing across the fields to where he stands, The Wall, lone relic of the mighty past, When I shall see, all swift and silently, His brother-wall rise up, and there, and everywhere— Ay, all the city start up from her tomb, With halls and temples, baths and colonnades, Great mansions, meaner tenements, and shops, And streets that run this way and that, whereon Are men and women faring to and fro. Life—life returns once more! and over all Broods the eternal majesty of Rome. ****** Hullo! past two! They’ve started work again. I wonder what’s in store this afternoon. Wilfred Owen was 20 when he wrote Uriconium, an ode. Born in Oswestry in 1893, he moved to Monkmoor Road in Shrewsbury at an early age (Figure 32). He and his brother Harold used to cycle out from town and in 1909 first visited Wroxeter.48 Their route was to cycle down to the foot-ferry opposite Uffington (Figure 33) and then from Uffington, it was a straight-forward cycle along the ‘long dusty road to Uriconium’ past the west side of Attingham Park and onto Telford’s Holyhead Road for a short stretch, turning at the east lodge down the old turnpike to Ironbridge. At the first fork they could take a right along 48

Stallworthy 1994, xix.

Poetic visions

the narrow road on the crest of the river cliff and into the village or continue left up and over the city rampart until reaching the crossroads and the forge.49 At that stage, the old site was open to the public, although already quite neglected. The tin-shed museum, behind which was the custodian’s house, will have been the first destination, not least since Wilfred seems to have befriended the curator,50 but from 1912, they will have been regular visitors to Bushe-Fox’s excavations until they ended in 1914. Owen’s poem makes clear references to the town houses and temple discovered (Figure 34), alongside references to the mundane finds of pottery, bracelets, and animal bones which would have been seen by any visitor (see Figure 30). The language of the poem is consciously archaic and Owen contrives to weave into the fabric the thencurrent understanding of the historical context as would have been taught in any school of the time: there is talk of Celts and Cymry, shaggy hair and savage jaw, and of a time before axe and saw, before the Roman come and imposed an order, that is then swept away by the Saxons in fire and sword. There is also a careful inclusion of elements that would have been familiar to those who knew the village: the Roman base used as an anvil and the church font made from a

Figure 32: Wilfred Owen in 1912, the same year that Bushe-Fox’s excavations at Wroxeter started. Wilfred Owen Literary Estate.

49 50

Owen 1965, 21. Stallworthy 1974, 49.

57

58

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 33: The ferry at Uffington, at about the time Wilfred Owen and his brother Harold used it. Image © SA PH/U/1/46.

Figure 34: Bushe-Fox’s excavation of the Temple, Site V, in 1913 (see Figure 103). All those visible are probably labourers rather than student excavators. After Bushe-Fox 1914, pl.IV, 1.

Poetic visions

Figure 35: A 1952 watercolour by Edwin H. Judd of the fonts from Shrewsbury Abbey and Wroxeter. The latter is certainly from a large Roman column base. Image © Shrewsbury Museum Service SHYMS: FA.1994.09.

hollowed-out column (Figure 35). While having little of the raw power of his war poetry, Owen’s offering gives us a coherent picture of how people saw, and understood, Roman Britain at that time. His biographer, John Stallworthy, certainly sees it is his first ‘war poem’ with its references to the sacking and burning of the city, and his pity for the victims.51 Uriconium, an ode It lieth low near merry England’s heart Like a long-buried sin; and Englishmen Forget that in its death their sires had part. And, like a sin, Time lays it bare again To tell of races wronged, And ancient glories suddenly overcast, And treasures flung to fire and rabble wrath. If thou hast ever longed To lift the gloomy curtain of Time Past, 51

Stallworthy 1994, xxii-xxiii.

59

60

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

And spy the secret things that Hades hath, Here through this riven ground take such a view. The dust, that fell unnoted as a dew, Wrapped the dead city’s face like mummy-cloth: All is as was: except for worm and moth. Since Jove was worshipped under Wrekin’s shade Or Latin phrase was writ in Shropshire stone, Since Druid chaunts desponded in this glade Or Tuscan general called that field his own, How long ago? How long? How long since wanderers in the Stretton Hills Met men of shaggy hair and savage jaw, With flint and copper prong, Aiming behind their dikes and thorny grilles? Ah! those were days before the axe and saw, Then were the nights when this mid-forest town Held breath to hear the wolves come yelping down, And ponderous bears ‘long Severn lifted paw, And nuzzling boars ran grunting through the shaw. Ah me! full fifteen hundred times the wheat Hath risen, and bowed, and fallen to human hunger Since those imperial days were made complete. The weary moon hath waxen old and younger These eighteen thousand times Without a shrine to greet her gentle ray. And other temples rose; to Power and Pelf, And chimed centurial chimes Until their very bells are worn away. While King by King lay cold on vaulted shelf And wars closed wars, and many a Marmion fell, And dearths and plagues holp sire and son to hell; And old age stiffened many a lively elf And many a poet’s heart outdrained itself. I had forgot that so remote an age Beyond the horizon of our little sight, Is far from us by no more spanless gauge Than day and night, succeeding day and night, Until I looked on Thee, Thou ghost of a dead city, or its husk! But even as we could walk by field and hedge Hence to the distant sea So, by the rote of common dawn and dusk, We travel back to history’s utmost edge.

Poetic visions

Yea, when through thy old streets I took my way, And recked a thousand years as yesterday, Methought sage fancy wrought a sacrilege To steal for me such godly privilege! For here lie remnants from a banquet table Oysters and marrow-bones, and seeds of grape The statement of whose age must sound a fable; And Samian jars, whose sheen and flawless shape Look fresh from potter’s mould. Plasters with Roman finger-marks impressed; Bracelets that from the warm Italian arm Might seem to be scarce cold; And spears - the same that pushed the Cymry westUnblunted yet; with tools of forge and farm Abandoned, as a man in sudden fear Drops what he holds to help his swift career: For sudden was Rome’s flight, and wild the alarm. The Saxon shock was like Vesuvius’ qualm. O ye who prate of modern art and craft. Mark well that Gaulish brooch, and test that screw! Art’s fairest buds on antique stem are graft. Under the sun is nothing wholly new! At Viricon today The village anvil rests on Roman base And in a garden, may be seen a bower With pillars for its stay That anciently in basilic had place. The church’s font is but a pagan dower: A Temple’s column, hollowed into this. So is the glory of our artifice, Our pleasure and our worship, but the flower Of Roman custom and of Roman power. O ye who laugh and, living as if Time Meant but the twelve hours ticking round your dial, Find it too short for thee, watch the sublime, Slow, epochal time-registers awhile, Which are Antiquities. O ye who weep and call all your life too long And moan: Was ever sorrow like to mine? Muse on the memories That sad sepulchral stones and ruins prolong. Here might men drink of wonder like strong wine And feel ephemeral troubles soothed and curbed.

61

62

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Yet farmers, wroth to have their laws disturbed, Are sooner roused for little loss to pine Than we are moved by mighty woes long syne. Above this reverend ground, what traveller checks? Yet cities such as these one time would breed Apocalyptic visions of world-wrecks. Let Saxon men return to them, and heed! They slew and burnt, But after, prized what Rome had given away Out of her strength and her prosperity. Have they yet learnt The precious truth distilled from Rome’s decay? Ruins! On England’s heart press heavily! For Rome hath left us more than walls and words And better yet shall leave; and more than herds Or land or gold gave the Celts to us in fee; E’en Blood, which makes poets sing and prophets see. From: The Poems of Wilfred Owen Jon Stallworthy (ed.) 1990 (London: Chatto and Windus). With the sanction of the Wilfred Owen Royalties Trust. Our last poet, is our first woman author, and another local: Mary Webb (Figure 36). She was born in 1881 at Leighton, on the Shrewsbury to Ironbridge road, overlooking the extravagant bends in the river Severn as it approaches the Ironbridge Gorge at Buildwas, but 15 months after her birth her family had moved to nearby Much Wenlock. From 1902 she was living in Meole Brace on the outskirts of Shrewsbury just after developing a thyroid condition that shortened her life. In 1912 she married a local school teacher and moved briefly to Somerset before returning to Shropshire.52 The success of her first book, The Golden Arrow (1916) enabled the couple to buy a plot of land on Lyth Hill, only a mile or so from Meole where they built a cottage. There she lived in sight of Wroxeter and used the location as a setting for one of her essays, The Return of the Romans: a Dream of Uriconium (1923), written for the Transactions of the Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club and reprinted in the Shrewsbury Chronicle.53 The essay imagines a Roman centurion ‘of the Thracian cohort, hawk nosed and dark of eye’ stationed out at the Snailbeach lead mine setting out back home to the ‘White City in the Woodland’ with its ‘roofs of glittering spar … fringe of wheat; the groves of young, edible chestnuts and mulberries, and the vineyards; the hazel spinneys and the Coles 1998. Published respectively in Vols. VII & VIII, 16th March 1923 and in the Shrewsbury Chronicle for 30th March 1923. For reprinting ‘The Return of the Romans: a Dream of Uriconium’, acknowledgements are due to the Executors of the Mary Webb Estate; also to Wildings of Shrewsbury; Coles 1977, 27-8. 52 53

Poetic visions

gardens’ where his waiting wife and child, Placida and Deuccus live. All three characters are taken from tombstones found in the 18th century, although the Thracian, Tirintius, is not named, and his military role is misunderstood since he was not a centurion. While we have no firm evidence for the more exotic plants mentioned here (although there is a black mulberry still in Wroxeter village, and also a modern vineyard), the reference to glittering spar is to the rhomboid roof tiles found in the site which are made of a micaeous flagstone. A display of these was set up outside the site museum Figure 36: Mary Webb, in around 1920. After Coles, so visitors will have been very 1977 frontispiece. familiar with their visual effect when the sun catches the mica in the stone (Figure 37). It is not unlikely that Webb’s reference was inspired consciously or unconsciously by Wright’s comment in his book: ‘the roofs of Uriconium, when seen in the sunshine, must have sparkled and glittered in the most extraordinary manner.54 The centurion’s return is not to be made through the open countryside of today but through ‘forest – dark, impenetrable, primeval’ that it was then imagined covered the intervening ground. His route crests Lyth Hill, where he ‘surveys the plain … Nothing is there but a billowing ocean of forest. No sound comes up but the tapping of woodpeckers, the neighing of wild horses, the bellow of a wild bull.’ Webb’s perception of the landscape echoes the widely accepted understanding of the British countryside in prehistoric times encapsulated in Sir Cyril Fox’s influential book The Personality of Britain (1st ed. 1932), in which he famously says that over southern Britain the ‘forest was in a sense unbroken, for without emerging from its canopy, a squirrel could traverse the country from end to end.’55 It is a poetic image that modern archaeology has, perhaps sadly, conclusively disproved.

54 55

Wright 1872, 212-3. Fox 1938, 89.

63

64

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 37: The display of micaceous sandstone tiles outside the site museum at Wroxeter. Photographed on 25th June 1914 by Arthur Whinfield, President of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society from 1916. Image © Worcester Archives 832 BA 16072 2310.

Mary Webb’s books and poems were shot through with her love of the Shropshire countryside, its nature and its people. Her use of dialect and emotion in books such as Precious Bane (1924) polarised opinions: Stanley Baldwin remarked in 1928, a year after her death, that she was a neglected genius, thereby bringing about a popularity that she had not achieved in her lifetime.56 Stella Gibbons took the opposite pole, writing Cold Comfort Farm (1932) in a wickedly sharp and conscious parody of the genre.57 When, in 1923, excavations began again at Wroxeter, Mary Webb was an enthusiastic advocate of the work and, although in failing health, did her best to popularise the site.58 The work was under the patronage of the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society and had been funded by Sir Charles Hyde, one of its Vice-Presidents.59 The target of the excavations at Wroxeter, which were directed by Professor Donald Atkinson (see Figure 6) of the University of Manchester, was the site directly opposite the baths, in the same field as the Bushe-Fox excavations, but further to the north. The excavations were, like Wright’s 75 years before a spectacular success in locating substantial remains of the town’s forum. However, Atkinson had even greater luck with the remarkable finds he made among the ruins, including the Wroxeter silver Coles 1998, 322-4. Hammill 2001, 833. 58 Coles 1998, 274. 59 Atkinson 1942, xv. 56 57

Poetic visions

Figure 38: The Wroxeter Mirror – one of the most beautiful, and leastknown, finds from Roman Britain. Author’s photo, October 2010.

mirror (Figure 38) which has been described as ‘probably the finest example of its type in existence’,60 as well as heaps of unused pottery in the gutter – evidence for a destructive fire, and the shattered inscription commemorating the dedication of the forum by the civitas Cornoviorum, discussed in another chapter. Webb wrote her poem before these discoveries so her focus in the poem is elsewhere. Its title uses the more correct early form of the name for the town,61 in preference to the alternative spelling used by Wright and others. The poem itself plays to her strengths in evoking the beauty of the site and the emotions brought out in her by her visits there. Viroconium by Mary Webb Virocon—Virocon— Still the ancient name rings on And brings, in the untrampled wheat, The tumult of a thousand feet.

The quote is from the Roman Art historian, Martin Henig in Harley et al. 2006, 174. The name is now attested on two contemporary documents: a Vindolanda tablet , and one of the Bloomberg tablets (); Bowman, Thomas and Tomlin 2010, 198-201; Tomlin 2016 104.

60 61

65

66

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Where trumpets rang and men marched by, None passes but the dragon-fly. Athwart the grassy town, forlorn, The lone dor-beetle blows his horn, The poppy standards droop and fall Above one rent and mournful wall: In every sunset-flame it burns, Yet towers unscathed when day returns. And still the breaking seas of grain Flow havenless across the plain: The years wash on, their spindrift leaps Where the old city, dreaming, sleeps. Grief lingers here, like mists that lie Across the dawns of ripe July; On capital and corridor The pathos of the conqueror. The pillars stand, with alien grace, In churches of a younger race; The chiselled column, black and rough, Becomes a roadside cattle-trough: The skulls of men who, right or wrong, Still wore the splendour of the strong, Are shepherds’ lanterns now, and shield Their candles in the lambing field. But when, through evening’s open door, Two lovers tread the broken floor, And the wild-apple petals fall Round passion’s scarlet festival; When cuckoos call from the green gloom Where dark, shelving forests loom; When foxes bark beside the gate, And the grey badger seeks his mate There haunts within them secretly One that lives while empires die, A shrineless god whose songs abide Forever in the countryside.

Poetic visions

For reprinting ‘Viroconium’ by Mary Webb, acknowledgements are due to the Executors of the Mary Webb Estate; also to Headland  Publications  (Selected Poems of Mary Webb,  edited with an Introduction and Notes by Gladys Mary Coles, third edition 2005). It is one of the curiosities of Wroxeter that these poems were written when they were, and yet none appeared after the Second World War. There is no obvious reason for this other than the observation that before the war the unkempt nature of the site, and the low number of visitors, encouraged such reflections, whereas the crisply presented ruins-in-a-lawn feel of the Ministry of Works era for the site, described in a later chapter, gave a more business-like and thoroughly unromantic air to the site. This tension between the romantic and poetic vision of Wroxeter, as against the more pragmatic representation of the realities of Wroxeter’s appearance is played out too in art.

67

Wroxeter depicted ‘Wondrously ornate is the stone of this wall, shattered by fate; the precincts of the city have crumbled and the work of giants is rotting away … often has this wall, hoary with lichen, stained with red, lasted out one kingdom after another, left upstanding under storms …There were bright city buildings, many bathhouses, a wealth of lofty gables, many a mead-hall filled with human revelry – until mighty fate changed that … The site is fallen into ruin, reduced to heaps …’1 The Ruin, The Exeter Book fol. 123-124 Translated by S. Bradley, 1991 While usually thought of as a description of the ruins at Bath rather than Wroxeter, the Anglo-Saxon poem known as The Ruin is useful in reminding us of the mingled awe and suspicion that ruins can have on the observer. With Wroxeter, the sole reminder of its past was the huge slab of masonry, the ‘Old Work’ which enigmatically dominates the fields in which it sits. Visitors, particularly from the 18th century onwards when interest began to grow in Britain’s Roman past, in parallel with the exploration of the wider Roman Empire through the Grand Tour, were drawn to the wall. Many who were skilled enough to paint or sketch (as many were) recorded it in pen and watercolour, some of which were also turned into engravings. Study of these many images of the Old Work offer an insight into how reliable these illustrations are, and what they tell us of the society that created them. Above all they inform us of how people valued the relic.

1

Bradley 1991.

68

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 39: Mytton’s rather schematic view of the Old Work’s north side, 1721. The wall depicted to the left is the wall opposite (south of) the Old Work. Image © Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham (XMYT The Mytton Papers 261 – Wroxeter 1651).

The Old Work gained even greater prominence once the excavations on the baths proper began in 1859. Put once again into an architectural context, the Old Work’s significance was magnified since, artistically, it formed an impressive backdrop for the stubs of wall that lay before it. One artist in particular, the Welshman Thomas Prytherch, took advantage of this, and the setting within which the Old Work was placed, because he lived in Wroxeter. He developed a repertoire of views of the village and its locale, alongside visions of the destruction of the city, capturing the site and its landscape as it was at the dawn of the age of the motor car. As a third strand, this chapter will look at the more recent pictures of the site which, rather than capturing its modern reality, seek to reconstruct the missing town and its buildings. Such endeavours were pioneered on archaeological sites by Alan Sorrell after the 1950s, but many artists have now offered their visions of the site and have helped archaeologists and the public alike in promoting our understanding of the town. These paintings are part of the modern approach to the presentation of archaeological sites aiding visitors to understand the ruins in front of them by recreating the buildings they once were, whether as an image or as a physical reconstruction of a Roman building as a visitor attraction.

69

70

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

The Old Work and its images Our first account of the Old Work is that given by William Camden, writing at the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, although his work was only published in English in the 17th century. In Gibson’s English translation of 1695, we receive our first description of Wroxeter, and its principal monument: ‘… here is nothing to be seen of it, but a very few reliques of broken walls, call’d by the people The old works of Wroxceter [sic], which were built of hewn stone, and laid in seven rows, arched within, after the fashion of the Britains.’2 While sparse indeed, the description is enough to tell us that the Old Work looked much as it does today since one can still count seven rows of bonding tiles in it, and the arches too are still present. This general impression is given more substance in the first full account of the Old Work, written by a Mr Carte of Leicester and reported to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1721, alongside the first known, albeit schematic, drawing of the wall (Figure 39). A copy of this document is also to be found in the Mytton papers held at the University of Birmingham. William Mytton (16931746) was an antiquarian based in Shropshire who began collecting details of the antiquities of the county which, although never published, survive as examples of the first scientific accounts of the monuments of Shropshire. ‘The main wall now standing is 20 yards long and the foundation from it westward is 40 yards so that the rubble wall and foundation is 70 yards long. The middle arch is 6 yards high from the ground, but from the floor much higher. It is 6 yards broad, the other two only 4 yards broad but exactly the same height. The hole in the middle arch is supposed to be bulg’d through, and so is the other. The 2 straight black strokes at each end are 2 smooth walls coming out at the ending of the arches. The foundations answering the main wall’s arches is 10 yards from it, the 2 curves of tiles go quite through the wall. The outside of the wall is built exactly as you see it, the stones laid exactly across one another but in the middle is all manner of rubbish & pebbles. The arches seem to be covered with the same as the wall. There are standing out some rugged pieces a yard & half from the wall. The wall is 8 yards high now from the ground. The north side of the wall is smooth & even only you may see some small holes in it like scaffold holes.’3 Carte’s account also records the wall on the other side of the room from the Old Work, the south wall of the frigidarium. Interestingly, this is the only account to mention it so it may have been robbed out to ground level after this date since it is not visible in the watercolour by Revd. Williams later in that century. His drawing of it (visible in the left-hand corner of the illustration at right angles to the rest of the drawing) is labelled ‘The foundation answering the main wall and Arches’ he writes ’this foundation is but 6 yards long and one yard high.’ 2 3

Gibson 1695, 544. Mytton Notes on Churches etc. Vol. VII University of Birmingham Special Collections fol. 1651.

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 40: The south façade of Attingham Hall. Author’s photo, August 1985.

Although undoubtedly useful as an image of the monument, the drawing presented to the Antiquaries was not terribly accurate. Representations made later in the 18th century began to convey its appearance with more veracity. This can be partly attributed to the growing awareness of and interest in the abundant remains of Europe’s Roman past, an interest supercharged by the excitement surrounding the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The connections between Pompeii and Wroxeter might seem tenuous at best, even faintly ridiculous,4 but in spite of the obvious fact that both are Roman towns, they are roughly the same size (ca. 80 ha. or 180 acres). At that point the similarity ends, however, and the differences multiply. The rediscovery of the lost cities had an enormous cultural impact on European aristocracy adding extra impetus to the already strong engagement with the Grand Tour and all its social and cultural ramifications.5 Those who could afford to do so spent their wealth not just on travel but on acquiring antiquities with which to fill their aggrandised houses, both in town and country, while the discovery of Roman frescos in Pompeii and Herculaneum encouraged a revolution in interior design picking up on the Roman love of colour and texture within their buildings. According to Mike Watson (2002, 30) comparing Wroxeter to Pompeii is ‘akin to describing Shrewsbury Town FC as Britain’s Real Madrid.’ 5 Sloan 2004. 4

71

72

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

All of this is reflected in a house situated less than a mile from Wroxeter; the seat of the Noel Hill family, Lord Berwick, at Attingham Park. Noel Hill inherited the modest Tern Hall in 1782 and commissioned the Scottish architect George Steuart to completely reconstruct the mansion as a large fashionable Neo-Classical building, Attingham Hall (Figure 40). It was completed in 1789, contemporary with Noel Hill’s death.6 The second Lord Berwick, his son Thomas Noel Hill, spent a fortune on redesigning the interior and exterior of the Hall to make it even grander, an investment reflecting the sudden importance of Shropshire as a hot-bed of technological innovation based around Coalbrookdale, not more than 10 miles east of Wroxeter.7 The growth of visitors, national and international, to Shropshire as a key locale in the technical and economic development that we call the (first) industrial revolution demanded dramatic improvements to the road network from London to Shrewsbury, and from Shrewsbury to Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge, the eponymous new settlement (after 1779). The latter route was a road that crossed Wroxeter diagonally (and still exists today as the B4380) which was upgraded to a turnpike road in 1778.8 The London route took a little longer to upgrade, but the impact of the growing traffic was reflected first in the county town so that in 1779 the Shrewsbury hotelier, Robert Lawrence, owner of the Raven Hotel in that town, began a coach service that ran three times a week from Shrewsbury to Holyhead. Two years later he took over the Lion Hotel at the English Bridge end of the town and launched a coach service from London to Holyhead via Shrewsbury, adding further routes originating in Bath and Bristol and connecting to the Holyhead service as well as providing services to Aberystwyth, Towyn, and Barmouth.9 He daringly pioneered a route through the mountains of North Wales, via Betws-y-Coed, avoiding going to Chester and its rapidly silting embarkation point for Ireland at Parkgate on the Wirral. This was the route subsequently surveyed by Thomas Telford in 1810-11 when creating the first publicly funded road in Britain, the Holyhead Road, required for the Irish MPs to travel to Westminster as quickly as possible from their estates in Ireland following the 1801 Act of Union.10 Thus it was that for a brief time, before the coming of the railways, a regular coach service drove directly past Attingham Park on one side, and Wroxeter on the other. Thomas Noel Hill’s investment in Attingham Hall and Park took full advantage of this opportunity. First, he employed Humphry Repton to landscape the Park to form a fitting frame for the newly completed hall. As was usual, Repton drew Newman and Pevsner 2005, 126-30. Some idea of the impact of the industrial works at Coalbrookdale and in the Ironbridge Gorge on visitors can be judged in Trinder 2005. 8 Trinder 2016, 251 Tern Bridge-Leighton-Birches Brook. 9 Trinder 2003, 8. 10 Quartermaine, Trinder & Turner 2003; Trinder 2016, 198. 6 7

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 41: Attingham Hall as viewed from under William Hayward’s bridge over the river Tern, which was in place by 1780. Author’s photo, May 2021.

Figure 42: A page in Repton’s Red Book for Attingham Park showing the suggested spire added to St Andrews, Wroxeter. The Tern bridge and river is also prominent in the image. Attingham Collection. © National Trust.

73

74

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

up one of his famous ‘Red Books’, presented in 1798, giving before and after views of the landscapes he intended to create. In one of these views, Repton presents his plans for landscaping around William Hayward’s ‘uncommonly beautiful’11 bridge across the river Tern, with provision for visitors to pass beneath it to walk along the banks of the Tern and Severn down to Wroxeter to see the ruins and village (Figure 41). The connection between the two was made explicit in the same view in the Red Book which adds a spire to St Andrew’s Wroxeter, an embellishment that would have been visible from the portico of the Hall, but which was never in fact created (Figure 42). Repton’s argument for its provision was presented in the Red Book as a commentary to his accompanying illustration: ‘… because the general outline of the horizon, although beautifully varied by distant hills, … wants some object to rise above it, and check the eye in its range, besides the effect of this spire and the water [created by ponding the Tern behind a weir] is very great in giving an apparent inequality of ground to the landscape which is otherwise too flat.’12 Fittingly, during the 1798 improvements made to the river Tern as part of this work, a discovery was made of a small stone-built Roman burial chamber close to the confluence of the Tern and Severn, where the courses of the Roman road from Wroxeter and the Holyhead Road coincided. In the chamber were ‘three large glass urns of very delicate workmanship, one large earthen urn, and two smaller ones of fine red earth’. The glass urns are described as being about 30cm high and 25cm in diameter with a single ribbed handle. Each contained the ashes of the interred and a small glass ‘perfume bottle’ or lachrymatory. One glass urn was rescued intact and was taken to be displayed in the library at Attingham.13 There it joined the collection of antique vases, occasional statues and busts of Roman Emperors and gods, and cork models of temples (and even of mount Vesuvius itself) which were recorded in the catalogue of the 1827 sale of the house contents; listed there is a ‘glass cinerary urn (damaged)’ which may well be that excavated in 1798. No doubt the glass urn discovered on his own land would have been seen as complimentary to the distinctly Roman flavour that the Second Lord Berwick desired to create in the new Hall. The embellishment of the interior required a serious shopping trip combined with a Grand Tour of Italy. His travelling companion, Edward Clarke, recorded the acquisitions but also the pitfalls of such ventures:

Newman and Pevsner 2006, 130 . Humphry Repton, Red Book for Attingham Park. 13 ‘Urban’ 1798. 11 12

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 43: Cronk Hill, designed by John Nash in c.1802. Now restored to its original stonecoloured finish. Author’s photo, July 2020.

One thing I pride myself upon, and that is, that I have hitherto kept him from meddling with antiquities, and that I have almost cured myself of all my own folly in that way, by observing the wonderful system of imposition and villany that is practiced here upon poor John Bull every hour in the day. The greatest of these Romans carry cheating to such a degree of ingenuity that it becomes a science; but in baking legs, arms, and noses, they really surpass belief. Indeed Rome has been so long exhausted of every valuable relic, that it is become necessary to institute a manufactory for the fabrication of such rubbish as half the English nation come in search of every year ...14 Edward and Thomas were able to be more selective in their purchases and by the time they had finished they had acquired ‘… models and vases enough to lead [i.e. ballast] a ship …’.15 That wasn’t all. After Thomas’ return in 1794 he employed the emerging architect John Nash to work first on the estate around the hall (discussed below) and then on a lavish interior scheme between 1807-10, large elements of which have now been faithfully recreated by the ambitious National Trust conservation projects ‘Attingham Re-discovered’ and 14 Otter, 1825, 132. I am grateful to Saraid Jones of the National Trust for supplying this and the following quote. 15 Otter 1825, 229.

75

76

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

‘Through the Roof ’.16 The centrepiece of this was the architecturally daring top-lit cast-iron roofed picture galley, its walls painted in Pompeian Red leading to an extraordinary sweeping mahogany and bronze staircase within a pavillion-like pink-painted cylinder with fluted walls and scale-patterned conical ceiling, taking residents to the upstairs rooms. Nash didn’t confine his works to the hall alone. He had begun his work for Thomas in around 1800 by reworking the cottages lining the upgraded Shrewsbury road outside the estate with elaborated ogee-headed windows and thatched roofs for rustic contrast. Such improvements would have no doubt been seen and appreciated by those staying at the neighbouring and newly built Talbot Inn (now the Mytton and Mermaid).17 A mile or so away he then constructed to his own design the first fully Italianate villa in the country, the delightfully whimsical Cronk Hill, completed in 1804 (Figure 43). This has a simple Georgian exterior but is enlivened by a round tower at one end and a loggia façade crowned by a delicate stone balustrade.18 The villa sits in a flower-rich meadow set back from the little road that runs from the elegant Atcham Bridge, built in 1769-71 by John Gwynn, to the village of Cross Houses, with its then ultra-modern workhouse19 where the turnpike road to Bridgnorth and beyond could be found. It is no surprise that later members of the Noel-Hill family preferred to live in its more homely charms than in the huge Attingham Hall, even though it had actually been built for Francis Walford, Lord Berwick’s land agent. Although not often remarked upon, Cronk Hill is plainly visible from Wroxeter when standing on the road between the baths and the forum colonnade. This is hardly likely to be incidental given both this architect and his client: the user of this modern Roman villa could gaze across at the ruins of the Roman town across the Severn, as was the case so often with the Italian villas in their home country. The lavish spending of Thomas was so extravagant that he reached financial ruin and the contents of the house had to be sold to meet his debts in two separate sales. His brother, and the third Lord Berwick, William Noel-Hill, saved some of Attingham’s contents in the first sale and through careful financial management was able to stablise the estate. William worked first as a British Diplomat, first to the Court of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (18071814) and then to the Court of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (i.e. Naples and 16 Attingham Re-discovered https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/attingham-park/features/the-re-discoveredproject; Attingham Re-Discovered Through the Roof (archive blog): https://attinghamparkmansion.wordpress. com/category/through-the-roof/ (Accessed 3/7/20) 17 Newman and Pevsner 2006, 125. 18 Newman and Pevsner 2005, 240-1. 19 http://search.shropshirehistory.org.uk/collections/getrecord/CCS_MSA9031/

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 44: Thomas Girtin’s watercolour of the Old Work at Wroxeter, 1798. Private collection.

Sicily) from 1824-33.20 This enabled him to acquire his own collection in Italy, providing much of the surviving contents of the Hall today, including high quality Royal Italian gilded furniture, paintings from Italy, and dining table porcelain and gilded metalwork formally used in the Royal court in Naples.21 He also purchased two extremely important paintings by Jakob Hackert of The Excavations of Pompeii (1799) and a companion canvas of Lake Avernus with the Bay of Naples which remain in the picture gallery at Attingham Park.22 That of the excavations is an invaluable record of how much had been uncovered of the Roman city by 1800. Alongside the MPs and other dignitaries travelling the new fast route to Ireland were fashionable artists who travelled to sketch the awe-inspiring scenery in North Wales that the new road traversed. One such was Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), a noted watercolourist famed for his architectural works and landscapes.23 His early death caused his friend, J.W.M. Turner to remark Matthew 2005. I am extremely grateful for the input of Saraid Jones and Sarah Kay, Curator of Attingham Park, for their assistance with the detail on the Noel Hill family and the estate. 22 I am grateful to Saraid Jones for information regarding these paintings. Details of the circumstances in which the painting was created are set out at http://nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/608992 23 Morris 2015. 20 21

77

78

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 45: Pearson’s 1807 engraving of the Old Work, based on Girtin’s view. Author’s photo.

‘Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved’.24 His watercolour of the Old Work at Wroxeter, painted in 1798 during his tour of North Wales, is a delightful study (Figure 44). It shows the north side of the Old Work, chosen no doubt because viewed from that direction, one can see the tower of St Andrew’s Wroxeter framed in the open doorway, but also perhaps because this would be the most recognised view of the wall for anyone travelling from Attingham. The wall top is embellished with verdant growth that breaks it up while in the foreground is a small pond and grassy sward with shrubbery massed to the left. The countryside and church beyond the wall are rendered in the much paler and warmer yellow of ripening crops changing to the green of pastureland that echoes the rather dark greens in the foreground. A bar of sunlight like that catching the ripe fields is cast diagonally across the Old Work. Trees in full leaf dot the landscape, much as they do today, while above float cumulus in a pale blue sky. It is an idyllic view, but the artist has lent it an air of tension by massing the wall, vegetation, and pond on the left-hand side of the frame as 24

Thornbury, 1877, 71.

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 46: Revd. William’s watercolour of the north side of the Old Work, 1788. Image © SA 6001/372/1/68.

though squeezed into a picture too small for it. It was popular as an engraving – a version of it can be found in W. Pearson’s Select Views of the Antiquities of Shropshire, this time with a suitably diminutive rustic figure with his back towards us contemplating the majestic ruin (Figure 45), and minus the large bush shown on the left-hand side of Girtin’s watercolour.25 There is much debate among archaeologists and architectural historians about the reliability of using art to tell us of what monuments looked like in the past.26 After all, no-one sees things in the same way, and artists were trained to see the world in a particular fashion, according to the custom and taste of the time as well as their own artistic inclinations. It is very rare to be able to offer a corrective to this, but in Girtin’s case we can. Ten years before Girtin visited Wroxeter, the Reverend Edward Williams, Perpetual Curate of Uffington and Battlefield Church on the northern edge of Shrewsbury, painted two views of the Old Work, from the north and from the south. These were part of a comprehensive series of watercolours that he painted of the antiquities of Shropshire, especially its churches, to help cure himself of depression. Battlefield Church did not originally have a congregation as its foundation was 25 26

Pearson 1807. Hyde 1994, 29-32.

79

80

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 47: Revd. William’s watercolour of the south side of the Old Work, 1788. Image © SA 6001/372/1/67.

as a chantry chapel for the dead of the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, until it was suppressed in 1547 by order of Henry VIII. It then became a parish church, but without much of a congregation so his duties were, in reality, light although he seems to have been conscientious in carrying them out. It is immediately apparent from looking at his watercolour of the north side of the Old Work that he has provided a truer version of the wall at that time (Figure 46), which would be consistent with the recent observation that in his work ‘his aim was clearly to provide an accurate record rather than anything for artistic display’.27 The view is straight on, with no distortions either to the wall or to the Church tower visible again to one side, this time in its correct proportions rather than in the amplified size painted by Girtin. The wall top is clean of shrubbery, which seems much more believable given there is little opportunity for soil to accumulate on top of a seven-metre-high isolated wall. The biggest change is in the foreground where instead of a pond, sward, and shrubs, we have the regular furrows of a ploughed field. A single tree stands to the east of the wall, an ash, which only died in the 1970s. It is visible in many other later images of the wall.

27

Battersby 2018.

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 48: David Parkes’ engraving of the south side of the Old Work with fanciful background. After Urban 1813. Author’s photo.

The view of the south side (Figure 47) shows the more architecturally lively side of the monument, the stub of the projecting vaults casting shadows on the wall face and giving it greater depth. This watercolour shows too the rough pasture on this side of the wall, indicating that this area had not been ploughed since the wall tops were at the surface of the field. This can still be seen today when you look at the height of the walls in relation to the Old Work – they all rise in height the closer you get to the Old Work. The size of the doorway and holes in the wall are accurately shown in this version and can be contrasted with the engraving by David Parkes (Figure 48) which shows a much larger hole in the east side of the monument, as well as bringing in a completely fanciful background including what looks like a small tower-keep on a distant hill. Ultimately, the visual tricks seen in these engravings and watercolours were immaterial. They were created to please their clients, not to be accurate records of the structures. The fact that one of these illustrators was a clergyman also alerts us to the fact that having an ability to paint was considered a standard skill for any educated person, man or woman, alongside the ability to appreciate art.28 It reminds us that the market for such works was limited to those of genteel 28

Sweet 2017, 44.

81

82

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

taste and refinement. They were not created as souvenirs but as reminders that Britain too had a classical past, although nothing to rival the grandeur of monuments seen abroad.29 William Stukeley, the leading antiquarian of the early 18th century, used the abundant evidence of Roman ruins in the north of England to recreate a vision of the past world of Roman Britain, with more than a little hyperbole: ‘We may imagine the glorious show of towns, cities, castles, temples and the like […] by contemplating the prodigious quantities of their ruins and memorials beyond that of any other part of Europe.’30 This was relevant because the increasing interest in our own countryside, as is manifest in the Lakeland poets for instance, was a necessary response to the truth that due to the French Revolution and consequent Napoleonic Wars, it was not really possible to undertake a full Grand Tour. Rosemary Sweet makes the connection between the interest in ruins and the growth of tourism to see them explicit, but also makes another connection to England’s growing prosperity and industrial strength. The improvements in transport infrastructure – canals, roads and then, shortly after, railways – meant that travel was much faster, cheaper, and reliable than heretofore. Allied with the growth of the print trade manifest especially in the rise of local and (increasingly) national newspapers, a growing market for books and engravings was created. This, Sweet argues, was driven above all by the taste for the picturesque and the sublime, an ‘aestheticization of the ruin’ as a marker of taste and status.31 The Antiquarian style, if one may characterise it thus, that is displayed in the engravings and images of the Old Work was replaced in the early 19th century by a striving for a more accurate image of the monument. In Wroxeter’s case it is particularly evident in the work of Charles Henry Hartshorne (1802-1865). Born in the industrial town of Broseley in Shropshire, world-famous for its roof tiles and clay smoking pipes,32 Charles was the son of the ironmaker, John Hartshorne. He attended Shrewsbury School and University at Cambridge, graduating BA in 1825 and MA in 1828. In 1825 he was invited by Frederick North, Fifth Earl of Guildford, to accompany him to Corfu where North had been appointed archon (chancellor) of the University there (Corfu was at the time under the control of the British). Hartshorne used the opportunity to travel in Italy and the Levant, returning to Britain in 1826. There he was confronted with a crisis that had arisen in his absence and of which he was unaware until his return. Over the course of two issues of the John Bull33 articles hinted that Hartshorne had had a homosexual relationship with Richard Kennedy 2017. Sweet 2017, 49, who uses this quote to make a similar point. 31 Sweet 2017, 53-4. 32 Trinder 2016, 112-4. 33 A Sunday newspaper that, seemingly, pioneered the kind of journalism once encountered in the News of the World. 29 30

Wroxeter depicted

Heber, an M.P. and one of the founder members of the Roxburghe Club of bibliophiles.34 Heber was a noted book collector, but also had extensive estates in Shropshire and Yorkshire so the connection between the two men is in some sense not surprising even though there was a 29-year age gap between them. It was Heber who had introduced Hartshorne and North. The two men had very different responses to the crisis. Heber fled abroad using the opportunity to further his book collecting and presumably in the hope that the fuss would in time die down. He refused to return to rebut the charges not necessarily because there was anything in them but probably because he wished to avoid scrutiny of other episodes in his private life, although he did resign from his seat in Parliament.35 Hartshorne took the more dramatic course of seeking a criminal information against John Bull in king’s bench and was awarded £500. However, the damage to Hartshorne’s career had been done and his wish to serve in the Civil Service or at the British Museum were ended. As a result, he chose instead to be ordained deacon in 1827 and was appointed curate at Benthall, a mile or so upstream from Broseley. The following year, he married Frances Kerrich and was appointed curate at Little Wenlock, across the Severn from Benthall, remaining there until 1838. His later career was mostly spent in Northampton, where his papers now reside in the county archives. Hartshorne’s antiquarian publications were focused on monuments in Northampton and Northumberland, alongside other works on medieval embroidery but his principal work was an impressive volume on Shropshire’s ancient monuments entitled Salopia Antiqua (1841). This has been characterised as a ‘genuinely original archaeological synopsis … founded on an extensive and vigorous exploration of his native county: in 1837 he wrote (to Albert Way)36 describing long tramps, of 30-50 miles daily, over the Shropshire hills. The book was in some respects pioneering, for example, in its inclusion of material on dialect and place names.’37 The book is divided into chronological periods with monuments ascribed to different ages under unspecified criteria. So, under ‘Uncertain Period’ are to be found the hillforts of Abdon Burf, Clee Burf and Titterstone, all hillforts of the later Bronze Age and Iron Age, alongside the earlier stone circles (perhaps Neolithic or early Bronze Age) of Mitchells Fold, the Whetstones and the stone circle at Shelve. The next section is the ‘British Period’, mostly comprising Iron Age hillforts, the ‘Roman Period’ which comprises Wroxeter, a section of a metalled road called the Devil’s Causeway, sites thought to be associated with the campaign against Caractacus, and several more Iron Age forts. Lastly, we have the ‘Anglo-Saxon Period’ which has yet more Iron Age forts, but also Offa’s Morrison and Roberts 2012, 130-1. Baugh 2004 (https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/12504). This article informs most of this paragraph. 36 One of the founding members of the British Archaeological Association – see next chapter. 37 Baugh 2004. 34 35

83

84

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 49: Hartshorne’s engraving of the Old Work, as published in Salopia Antiqua, 1841. Author’s photo.

Dyke. The volume is then rounded off with a list of places in the Domesday Book entry for the county, and a long section on Shropshire dialect words, their meanings, and derivations. The two entries in Salopia Antiqua for Wroxeter focus on the discoveries mostly of the 18th century, such as the stray finds, tombstones, and bath houses that were found in 1701 and 1788 followed by a separate section devoted to the ‘Present state of Wroxeter’ which includes a detailed description of the Old Work and an engraving based on a drawing made in 1838 (Figure 49).38 This shows the wall from a position not dissimilar to that adopted by Girtin so that the landscape beyond is visible but in this version, the artist is standing much closer to the wall and its proportions look correct. Some foliage and a bare tree dominate the left-hand side of the picture but visible through the doorway is a house, perhaps The Cottage which was the principal house occupied by the tenant farmer for Lord Barnard’s lands within the defences of the former Roman town. A gentleman with his dog provide a scale for the wall. This rather static image can be contrasted with other views that are in Hartshorne’s papers (Figures 50 and 51). One provides a similar view to that 38

Hartshorne 1841, 128-33.

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 50: The Old Work viewed from the north-east. From this position the roof of The Cottage can be seen framed in the doorway, as is still the case today. Image © West Northamptonshire and Northampton Archives, HaC vol XXIV, Hartshorne p.95, 1838.

Figure 51: Hartshorne’s atmospheric view of the south side of the Old Work from a point diagonally opposite that in Figure 50. Note the build up on this side of the Old Work, not otherwise visible in any other view. It suggests there was a substantial amount of rubble here from the collapsed vault. The shadows cast by the projecting vault are particularly noticeable. Image © West Northamptonshire and Northampton Archives, HaC vol XXIV, Hartshorne p.96, 1838.

85

86

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 52: The Old Work as depicted in the frontispiece for Wright’s Uriconium (1872). It is very clear from the sheer detail in this image that this engraving is copied from a photograph taken during the excavation, as confirmed by the spoil heaps in the foreground, and by the presence of the workmen. Author’s image.

published in 1841 and is clearly the source for the engraving, but the second adopts a far more unusual viewpoint close to the south-western corner of the wall so that the wall dominates the entire picture giving a much more dramatic feel to the image. The wall looks almost like a ruin from the Mediterranean world rather than from the midlands of England. An Edwardian painter at Wroxeter From the mid-19th century on, those wishing to earn their living from painting were increasingly challenged by a new medium, photography. Why pay for an expensive painting of a scene or monument when one could capture it at a fraction of the price, with far greater veracity, through the click of a shutter or exposure of a photographic plate? Of course, it was not a simple as this in that photography was, of course, not in colour reliably until the mid-20th century so conventional artists still had the ability to earn a living, and for most the cost of the equipment was prohibitive, as well as being awkward to use in the field. Indeed, in many senses, photography made artists’ work easier in that they could use photography to allow them to capture scenes, and faces, with

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 53: Tom Prytherch painting outside Topsy Cottage. A posed image since this is a postcard, as shown by the label. Probably ca. 1910. Private collection.

ever-greater accuracy (Figure 52). The connection between photography and painting is not always explicit but can be detected in the work of an artist who lived and worked in Wroxeter for much of his life: Thomas (Tom) Prytharch. Tom Prytherch was born in 1864 at Pen-y-Darren in Upper Merthyr, Glamorgan. His mother, Sarah (née Everall), came from Wroxeter while his father, also Thomas, was an iron puddler at the famous Dowlais iron- and steel-works, once the world’s largest, where Tom too worked from the age of 10.39 It is not known when and how Tom Prytherch demonstrated an aptitude for drawing but Lady Cornelia Wimborne, wife of the owner of the works, chancing to see some of Tom’s pencil drawings, ensured that he was assigned to the Dowlais works engineering drawing office. By 1884 he had been fully trained and he worked in the office for five years. Clearly, he was not just a technical draftsman since he was also publishing political cartoons locally and when, in 1888, there was a byelection the Liberal candidate, William Pritchard Morgan, offered to assist Tom to enrol at the Slade School of Art. The offer may have been a means to increase Pritchard Morgan’s local popularity with the electorate and certainly it was For details about Tom Prytherch’s life and works I am indebted to Marjorie Downward and other members of the Prytherch family.

39

87

88

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 54: ‘Wroxeter from Severn Fields’, a watercolour by Tom Prytherch painted in 1920. The blue building is Tom’s studio. The Cottage, the house tenanted by the Everalls from 1888, is centre left. Private Collection.

Figure 55: Tom Prytherch in his studio. Behind his head, partly obscured by other pictures, is one of his large oil paintings of the ruins at Wroxeter. Private collection.

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 56: The alabaster tombs of, on the left, Sir Thomas Bromley and his wife, and right Sir Richard Newport and his wife, St Andrew’s Wroxeter. Painted by Tom Prytherch for the 9th Lord Barnard. Image ©Raby Estates 2020.

the case that when, after 15 months Pritchard Morgan withdrew his funding, the people of Dowlais stepped in to support Tom financially in his studies. He studied at the Slade from 1888-92 but on graduating he moved to Wroxeter to stay with his grandmother, Rebecca, and aunt Mary Everall in a small threeroomed house named Topsy Cottage, opposite the original Post Office in the village.40 Even after he moved to Shropshire though he kept up his contacts in London, visiting regularly, and his work appeared in The Strand magazine and in the Illustrated London News. Topsy Cottage is familiar to us from postcards of the time, some of which show Tom posed outside painting (Figure 53). He is recorded there in both the 1901 and 1911 censuses and gives his profession as Artist on both occasions. His work was enabled by the construction behind the cottage of a timber studio – too large to be called a shed – which had a large, glazed window at one end (Figures 54 and 55). His output falls into a number of categories but principally he painted landscapes, buildings and details of buildings, portraits and scenes from poetry or other genre paintings, such as English village scenes or Welsh Traveller’s 40 Topsy Cottage survives, but in a much-altered condition. It is a private house now largely screened from the road.

89

90

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 57: ‘The Old Work and Ruins’ by Tom Prytherch, ca. 1908. Photograph by the author courtesy of English Heritage Trust Acc. No. 88070008.

Figure 58: A postcard version of ‘The Old Work and Ruins’ with added details. It is not known where the original now is or even if it still exists. The signature and date (1908) are in the righthand corner. Image © SA PH/W38/3/13.

Wroxeter depicted

(Roma) encampments. Night scenes were a speciality too, as in his views of Wyle Cop (1915), Shrewsbury, and Piccadilly Circus in London (1911), the latter originally published in The Strand. His style is always highly detailed, a quality reflecting the use of photographs to provide details of sites or people. His landscapes in particular are beautiful and demonstrate a lovely quality of softness which is shown to good effect when depicting the Shropshire and Welsh Hills (see Figure 15). These were painted as commissions for a number of patrons, some of whom had estates locally, including Lord Barnard of Raby Castle, Durham, who owned most of the site of the Roman town, Lord Bradford of Weston Park, on the Shropshire – Staffordshire border, W.T. Rees of Aberdare, Dr Cresswell, Lt. Col. J. Jones of Merthyr, and others. It was while staying with the Jones family in Merthyr Tydfil in 1926 that Tom died. His body was brought back to Wroxeter to be buried in St Andrew’s churchyard. Several works by Prytherch depicting Wroxeter village are known, most of which are in private hands. One in the Raby Collection is an exquisite watercolour of the painted alabaster tombs of the Bromley and Newport families in St Andrews, Wroxeter41 that clearly shows his attention to detail and accuracy. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1901 (Figure 56). Others relate to the immediate environs of Topsy Cottage, including the cottage itself which was used as a backdrop to some of the genre scenes. However, his largest known canvases, now in the possession of English Heritage Trust, relate directly to the site. The first shows the excavated remains of the baths viewed from south-west while standing among the ruins (Figure 57). This is, in effect, the same view that Francis Bedford adopted when photographing the site in 1859 (see Figure 78) with the ruins and hypocaust in the foreground and the powerful slab of the Old Work dominating the background. While the image is familiar, what is refreshing and novel about the picture is its vibrant colour. All of the images thus far, aside from the 18th century watercolours, have been monochrome so to see the rich reds of the tiles and the greenery on the site is startling. In the foreground of the painting is the reconstructed hypocaust, already much diminished in height with more in the background, in the main suite, which seems better preserved. Ivy is beginning to creep over the walls in places and to the left can be seen one of the mounds on the site, already covered in vegetation. Another disturbed area lies in the right foreground, perhaps showing the limit of excavation at this date. Off picture and immediately to the right will have been one of the larger mounds covering the rest of the baths. In the background is the familiar ash tree with shrubs below it and, beyond, the Wrekin. At this stage, the land in front of the Old Work is shown as a lawn-like area of grass which had presumably been backfilled after its initial excavation. 41

Newman and Pevsner 2006, 719.

91

92

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 59: ‘The Fall of Uriconium’ by Tom Prytherch, date unknown. Photograph by the author courtesy of English Heritage Trust Acc. No. 88070007.

Figure 60: Wroxeter Churchyard Gates and Topsy Cottage. A clear inspiration for the gateway seen in the Fall of Uriconium. Watercolour dated 1900 by Tom Prytherch. Private Collection.

Wroxeter depicted

In the centre of the picture are features that have been included for decorative effect rather than accuracy: a panel of the mosaic floor of the baths basilica, and a stone capital, with between them a large orange-red urn. All of these items were in actuality located in the museum in Shrewsbury, as its 1881 Catalogue confirms.42 Intriguingly, a second version of this painting existed, known only as a postcard (Figure 58). The stance of the artist is here slightly adjusted so that the Old Work is closer to the left-hand side of the image and the Wrekin, on the right, is fully visible. The change of stance is fascinating since it is characteristic of the variation that you get from a stereo pair of photographs, a popular fashion in the 1850s-70, so this may be the source of these paintings. In this second version, further eye-catchers have been added to the ruins including two tombstones (propped up in the left-hand corner), a column base (right centre foreground), a column and capital immediately above and behind the column base, and for good measure, a loaded haywain in the background and grazing sheep in the doorway of the Old Work. The usual ash tree in the background has also been altered to make it smaller than on the English Heritage version. Needless to say, the stray column elements and tombstones were not on site, the latter having been kept in Shrewsbury since their discovery in the 1750s. The haywain is something that might have been glimpsed from this position as the field beyond was still in cultivation and the sheep may also have been on the site, but there was not a large area for pasture so both elements are most likely inventions of the artist. The second image held by English Heritage, The Fall of Uriconium, could hardly be more of a contrast to the previous painting (Figure 59). It depicts, under a lurid night-sky, the destruction of Wroxeter in fire and flame by a host of sword-wielding warriors, shown in the foreground silhouetted against the livid flames. Bearing no relation at all to the known archaeology of the site – this is clearly not the baths reimagined and repurposed – the centre is dominated by an intact gateway framed by a pair of columns. It is reminiscent of the entrance to Wroxeter churchyard which lay almost directly opposite Prytherch’s house, that was the subject itself of two small watercolour views of the gates and the road (Figure 60). Tumbling out of the gateway, and over a heap of rubble and timbers, are the defenders of the town, vaguely clad as Roman soldiers in crested helm, breastplate, tunic and carrying round shields and swords. Their opponents are curiously lacking in armour and seem instead to be clad in what look suspiciously like an animal skin worn over one shoulder, cavemanlike. Broken walls, archways, and colonnades appear in the flames and in the 42

Anon, 1881.

93

94

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 61: Alfred Hulme’s ‘Fugitives sheltering in the Hypocaust’, 1909. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: FA.1991.197.

Figure 62: A late 19th century photograph of the room where the old man in the hypocaust and his two companions were found. This image shows how accurate Hulme’s painting was in relation to the site. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/7.

Wroxeter depicted

foreground, all lit by the incandescent glow of the rampaging fire. It is an extraordinary visualisation of Wright’s, and earlier writers’, imaginings of the fall of the city. In its dominant vision of fire, flame, smoke and general red glow, however, it must surely relate much more to Prytherch’s youth at the Dowlais steelworks: the echoes here are with Philip James de Loutherbourg’s famous image of Coalbrookdale by Night,43 for instance, or Prytherch’s own painting of the Cyfarthfa Steelworks at Dusk (1896), now in the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery.44 Both Wroxeter paintings were the subject of postcards, as were a number of his other works relating to the village and environs, so Tom’s work will certainly have had a wider circulation. A third, smaller, painting relating to this pre-Great War period is that by Alfred J. Hulme. Painted in 1909 and given the title ‘Uriconium: Fugitives sheltering in the hypocaust at Viroconium’, the subject matter is all too clear (Figure 61). Here is the complete visualisation of Wright’s evocation of the end of the city. The Old Man huddles into the corner of the wall, the casket tucked under his leg and the hypocaust pilae appearing behind him in the gloom. To his left can be glimpsed the neighbouring room beyond the glowing embers of a fire spilling into the room at his feet. Wisps of smoke drift into the room over the heads of those inside while, glimpsed in the background are the arched doorway and steps that correspond accurately with the stoker’s entrance to the west furnace room of the baths. In the foreground to the right are two women. One is depicted dead or dying, feet and legs stiffly extended while she clutches at her throat, trying to breathe. The other bends over her while holding her and peers into her face in concern. In the end it is no more than the clothing in flesh of the skeletons described by Wright, but the details and setting are accurately portrayed in terms of the site and do at least give a visualisation of this popular story (Figure 62). Born in 1871, Hulme had only a brief career as an artist, exhibiting in London and the provinces, as his obituary records in the Shropshire Magazine of December 1951. Most of the article is devoted to an account of his largest and most wellknown painting, a canvas showing the entry of Henry Tudor into Shrewsbury, just prior to the Battle of Bosworth field. Henry had landed in Wales, his principal area of support, and was seeking to pass through Shrewsbury with his supporters and army. However, the town was under the jurisdiction of one of Richard III’s followers, the Bailiff Thomas Mytton, who had sworn that Henry would only enter the town over his body. As Henry approached the Welsh Bridge, Thomas came out and laid himself across the road so that Henry could step over him, thereby honouring his pledge. The painting was displayed 43 44

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co65204/coalbrookdale-by-night-oil-painting https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/cyfarthfa-steel-works-at-dusk-153492

95

96

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

in Shrewsbury in 1903, the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Shrewsbury, the large canvas being populated with the faces of many of the painter’s relatives and friends, but its current whereabouts are unknown. Hulme went on to be a curator at Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, on the Wirral where he devoted his time to study of Ancient Egyptian language. He eventually retired to Brighton where he died.45

Figure 63: Forestier’s view of the forum entrance from the Illustrated London News, 1925. Author’s photo. 45 I am grateful to Peter Pryce, Hulme’s great-nephew for supplying me with details of Alfred Hulme’s life. https://artuk.org/discover/artists/hulme-alfred-j-active-19051909

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 64: The view of the bustling street between the Forum and public baths by Forestier published in the Illustrated London News, 1925. Author’s photo.

Wroxeter reconstructed While artists like Prytharch and Hulme could not really compete with photography, although they could usefully embrace photographs in their work, other artists found a useful niche for their talents in creating imaginative reconstructions of sites discovered by archaeologists. One of the earliest proponents of this art form was the Anglo-French artist Sir Amédée Forestier (1856-1930) whose work featured prominently in the Illustrated London News. His most famous work, and one still used as a classic of its type, was his artistic reconstruction of the Glastonbury Lake Village, published in the ILN in December 1911 to accompany an article written by Glastonbury’s excavator, Arthur Bulleid. Although details in the illustration of the lake village are wrong (the armour and weapons are not appropriate to the setting) it is ‘artistically so attractive … that it is still used over 100 years after it was painted’, qualities that can also be perceived in the reconstructions of Wroxeter that accompanied the first accounts of the excavations of Wroxeter’s forum by Donald Atkinson.46 In the 1925 article on the discoveries, two images are provided. The first reconstructs the setting of the famous forum inscription over the entrance to the forum courtyard. It shows a young fruit-seller offering an apple to a woman in a shawl while another vendor offers a glass flask with two handles (a Roman vessel type known as an amphorisk) to another customer 46

Dobie 2019, 10 & fig.1.9, quote from caption.

97

98

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

(Figure 63). Behind these transactions a cart emerges from the forum entrance.47 On either side, under the colonnade, pottery and other wares are sold. The second painting is an ambitious two-page spread offering a superbly lively image of a street scene outside the forum. The artist’s chosen viewpoint is the south-east corner of the forum so both the south and east streets are visible at the same time (Figure 64).48 The view is dominated by a large oxen-pulled cart with solid wheels that creaks down the street surrounded by the bustle of pedestrian traffic on Watling Street, Wroxeter’s principal road. Visible on the right-hand side is the mass of the public baths and market hall. The forum’s colonnade dominates the left-hand side with the pedimented entrance and its inscription. In its bustle, it has always seemed to me to be more like an image of a street in India than in Roman Britain and perhaps there were colonial parallels in the artist’s mind, or possibly his war work came to mind, when he will have seen roads clogged with soldiers or refugees and this influenced his vision. Increasingly, artistic reconstructions became important not in magazine articles but on the archaeological sites themselves as a way to demonstrate how ruins seen in the field might have appeared at the time of their construction and use. The trend came from the realisation on the part of the managers of historic sites that it was no longer enough to sell visitors a dry academic text to act as a guide to the monument illustrated at best with a single plan. Gradually, images were introduced to guidebooks often offering photographs of the ruins or historic engravings where these existed. From the mid-1950s, reconstruction drawings began to appear from important artists like Alan Sorrell, who received his first commission from the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments in 1956.49 These arose from the understanding that visitors struggled to understand the ruins in front of them and imagine the walls and rooms that were once there, resulting in visits that were a passive and emotionless experience. As Michael Thompson, himself an Inspector of Ancient Monuments at this time, has commented, ‘Those who work with ruins sometimes forget how bewildering a ruin can be.’ Further, ‘it must be recognised that not all visitors wish to make the concentrated effort that an appreciation of a ruin requires. Effort is indeed the right word, for even those who are very experienced in this field will find difficulty in understanding everything.’50 Panels were an obvious answer, and by the 1970s and ‘80s were a lot cheaper than providing a model of the site, which was the option adopted at some sites.51 The introduction of panels had long been resisted because they acted as a magnet for visitors, who then created ugly muddy and grass-less Andrews 1925, 519. Andrews 1925, 533. 49 Thurley 2013, 246; Dobie 2019 43. 50 Thompson 1981, 31 (both quotes). 51 Notably at Fountains Abbey and Housesteads, on Hadrian’s Wall. 47 48

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 65: Ivan Lapper’s reconstruction of the whole of Wroxeter Roman City, viewed as from the north. Comparing the two images will show the addition of a cattle market (the rectangular area on the left) and the area of pitting (brown patch with smoke on right-hand side) to the second version. Note too the change in building density towards the north end of the town, nearest the viewer. All of these changes were a reflection of the findings from the geophysics. Images © Historic England Archive (IC118/114 J900034 and IC118/001).

99

100

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

scars around the base. The panels too would weather and, if left neglected or vandalised, would soon appear unsightly. Nonetheless, their use is still key on many heritage sites. The current series for Wroxeter created by Ivan Lapper in the 1990s52 were designed in consultation with the interpretation team, including the author as consultant and were reproduced in the 1999 edition of the site guide, complete with new colour cover. The first panels used on the site gave a birds-eye view of the entire town also sold as a postcard with, in the centre, the baths complex rendered highly visible by its gleaming white roof. The neighbouring panel showed the central core of the town with the baths and forum prominent in the image making the point that the visitor was only seeing a fraction of the whole town. Ivan Lapper worked all these images in gouache rather than watercolour, which means that the colours are more vibrant. It also allowed for easy changes to the images, as he explained to me. When we discussed his high-level images of the whole town, for example, I was able to correct one area where the geophysical plot had identified an area of industrial pitting. What had been green fields with isolated buildings was transformed into a brown area of dense pits and fumes with relative ease (Figure 65). Equally, the town house shown adjacent to the forum in the high-level view of the baths and forum was corrected to show instead a temple underlying the farm buildings, reflecting our current understanding of the site’s archaeology. Such exchanges highlight the importance of an artistic liaison between archaeologist and artist if the outcome is to be something that is justifiable intellectually. At the west doorway of the now-vanished basilica another panel showed the reconstructed interior which has gone through three iterations. The first example, recently reproduced in Judith Dobie’s book on archaeological illustrations,53 while offering a good sense of the space of the interior is too monochrome: Roman buildings were colourful whereas in this example the interior was uniformly cream-coloured. The arched colonnade and coffered ceiling are also improbable at this date. A revision introduced more colour, using some of the on-site evidence, but was inhibited by the landscape- rather than portrait-format adopted: the resultant image makes the basilica appear rather squashed in height although the arches and flat roof have gone. A new version by Liam Wales, commissioned in 2012 for the larger format red-spined guidebook, shows more clearly the height and sense of space in the original building (Figure 66).

52 53

Dobie 2019, 81-93. Dobie 2019, 156 (fig. 9.4).

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 66: Three versions of the interior of the baths basilica dating from the 1990s to 2012. The largely monochrome version is the first. This was corrected by the red version, which more accurately displays the mosaics, but compresses the height of the basilica. These are both by Ivan Lapper. The latest version, by Liam Wales, more accurately conveys the scale of the building, and its likely architectural details. Together they show how ideas and presentation of the site have changed over the last three decades. Images © Historic England Archive (IC118/011, IC118/012 and IC118/017).

101

102

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 67: The panel interpreting the hot rooms of the baths from the viewing platform showing how the panels aid understanding of the ruins in the background. Details, such as the ceiling decoration, are based on discoveries made on site. Author’s image, August 2003.

The next two panels appear on the viewing platform, installed in the 1970s just to the east of the newly exposed and consolidated main baths suite. The first gives a cut-away of the interior, showing the now-vanished rooms inside and using archaeological information to show the decoration (Figure 67). 54 The neighbouring panel shows a similar view but this time with the roofs complete. Further panels are provided in the main precinct area showing the outdoor pool and views of the subsidiary rooms of the baths at various times. The panel locations are carefully coordinated with the view of the elements of the site from that location so the relationship between the two is as obvious as possible. A panel provided at the entrance to the macellum gives a sense of the bustling life of the town, but perhaps not as effectively as the street scene by Forestier.55 Two further panels appear on the lower viewing platform adjacent to the macellum and in front of the hot-food shops. One offers an interpretation of the site as it looked in the final phase of the basilica. It is the only reconstruction set in winter, perhaps an unconscious reflection on the end of the occupation Image available at https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/educational-images/hotroom-wroxeter-roman-city-wroxeter-10531 55 Image available at https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/educational-images/streetscene-wroxeter-roman-city-wroxeter-10514 54

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 68: One of the landscape panels, this one looking to the south-west. Painting by Ivan Lapper, as displayed on site. Author’s image, August 2003.

Figure 69: Ivan Lapper’s view of the Forum – as colourful a scene as that by Forestier. Image © Historic England Archive (IC118/013).

103

104

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

of the site. As Judith Dobie has commented: ‘most of Ivan’s pictures are upbeat but this is a muted picture maybe reflecting dislocation and hardship.’56 The other offers a panorama of the landscape around Wroxeter when looking west, providing an identification of the hills that surround Wroxeter (Figure 68). This, and its companion across the road by the forum colonnade which offers a different view of other hills, were provided because the site custodians were being driven to distraction by repeated requests to identify the hills by those visiting the site. As far as I am aware this is still the only English Heritage site to reference the surrounding setting of the site in this way. One last image, a particularly colourful one, is provided next to the forum colonnade and shows the forum in all its glory from a birds-eye perspective (Figure 69). Ivan Lapper is just one of many artists that now work with English Heritage, and the other devolved heritage agencies such as Cadw and Historic Environment Scotland, including Terry Ball and Judith Dobie.57 All have their different styles but share in common the purpose to bring sites to life in as accurate a fashion as possible. In this they follow one of the greatest reconstruction artists, Alan Sorrell, a pioneer of the close working relationship between archaeologists and artists. A recent book on the artist, co-written by his daughter and son, Julia and Mark, is sub-titled ‘The Man who Created Roman Britain’, which reflects the enormous influence he had on the subject in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.58 He worked on numerous sites, but is especially known for his recreations of Hadrian’s Wall and its associated sites, the Roman cities of Verulamium, Colchester and London, and for villa sites such as that at Lullingstone. In one respect, the sub-title is misleading: Alan Sorrell also provided us with fine views of abbeys, castles, Iron Age hillforts and many other sites.59 Sorrell’s two views of Wroxeter, dated 1973, were commissioned towards the end of his life for the Shrewsbury Museum, then based at Rowley’s House and Mansion; they now reside in the new museum which is located in the old Music Hall. Of the two views one is a largely conventional birds-eye view of the baths complex (Figure 70). Prominent in the foreground is the curved concrete vault of the main baths suite with the mass of the basilica behind. Characteristically, he hasn’t been able to resist adding the Wrekin and Ercall Hill into the background. At that time it was not realised that the concrete vault would have been sheltered from the British weather by a conventional tiled roof and would not have been visible, this despite the fact that a surviving fragment of the vault over the baths at Bath still has external tiles attached to it. This is a common error based on the one of the few surviving in-situ Roman vaults on a bath house, on the Dobie 2019, 155. Historic England reference J900036). Dobie 2019 is a useful source for comparing the styles of the leading artists. 58 Sorrell and Sorrell 2018. 59 Sorrell 1981; Dobie 2019. 56 57

Wroxeter depicted

Figure 70: Alan Sorrell’s 1973 reconstruction of the baths complex. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2013.00123.

Figure 71: Alan Sorrell’s view of Wroxeter. This view to the south-west echoes that of Corbet Anderson more than a century before. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2013.00124.

105

106

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 72: The reconstructed town house at Wroxeter, based on Bushe-Fox’s Site VI. It has proved popular with the general public, despite its design flaws and academic inaccuracies. Author’s photo May 2012.

Hunting Baths at Leptis Magna in modern-day Libya. Naturally, the weather on the north African coast does not require concrete to be shielded from frost. The error has been perpetuated on Lapper’s reconstruction too.60 The second watercolour is a more recognisably Sorrell image in demonstrating a closer connection with the landscape (Figure 71). Beneath a cloud-darkened sky the distinctive outlines of the south Shropshire hills dominate the background: the Lawley, Caer Caradoc and Long Mynd. In the rest of the painting Sorrell offers us a recreation of the buildings uncovered by Bushe-Fox. In the foreground, the large town house, Site VI with, to its right, a playing-card shaped enclosure shown with horses within it. A small temple lies beyond the Site VI house, and then further houses beyond with their unifying colonnade facing onto Watling Street. This remains the only attempt to offer an interpretation of the ordinary houses of Wroxeter. It in its turn offered inspiration for a final piece of theatre at Wroxeter itself. In 2010, a television programme, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, was filmed at the site. The premise of the programme was to take six modern builders, used 60

This was down to me – I should have insisted on a tiled roof!

Wroxeter depicted

to working with modern construction methods, to build a Roman house using Roman technologies. The house itself was designed by Dai Morgan Evans of the University of Chester using as its basis the house excavated by Bushe-Fox known as Site VI, albeit a much-reduced version of that building. The resulting construction, largely a timber-framed house resting on a one-metre-high dwarf stone wall, offers a good understanding of how different Roman Wroxeter would have looked to our eyes (Figure 72). Although largely of timber, the Roman fashion was to hide this framework under a layer of lime plaster, unlike the medieval half-timbered tradition with which we are all familiar. Since the house was built relatively quickly, and certainly far faster than the Romans themselves would have constructed it, there were compromises in its details that mean that, unlike the illustrations, this is not as accurate as it might be. In that sense, it is a misleading exercise, but one that undoubtedly has great popularity with the visiting public. It makes visible how far attitudes have changed within heritage organisations which are now much more prepared to provide reconstructions of sites, both for presentational purposes as well as for their visitor impact. The cost of such work, however, means that the days of the reconstruction artist, whether working conventionally or increasingly in a digital format, are far from over yet. While the modern trend is increasingly for virtual reality reconstructions offering a more immersive (and possibly cheaper) experience, in reality onsite panels still have a great deal to offer to the visitor requiring no equipment to use and allowing engagement between viewers that the more isolating digital technologies do not allow. They still offer a valid and effective way to interpret sites and permit artistic imagination and archaeological evidence to be combined with flair and insight.

107

Writing and visiting Wroxeter Writers have been drawn to Wroxeter since its rediscovery in the mid-19th century, but not always to write literature. There are works of fiction, including by one of the leading children’s authors in the 20th century, and there is journalistic writing capturing visitor’s reactions to the excavations. Writers also sought to aid visitors by offering information, interpretations, or guidance filtered through their perceptions of the site. There is even scientific writing using Wroxeter as a laboratory to test a scientific hypothesis. Wroxeter is both subject and backdrop in these varied writings but all offer a perspective on how people approached and understood the site at different times. The Old Man’s fate reimagined Given the prominence of the story of the old man in the hypocaust in guidebooks, no visitor to the site can have failed to hear the story of its destruction and this, no doubt, inspired many to think of its fate, and their own. An example of the power of the imagery of the old man in the hypocaust and his historical context is demonstrated in two works of literature. One came from the pen of an author who had a long, and distinguished pedigree of writing strongly narrated and beautifully crafted stories that drew upon real archaeological discoveries and reimagined the world from which they had come: Rosemary Sutcliff. The other, more unexpectedly, was John Buchan. Sutcliff ’s most famous story, which turned into a trilogy that looked at the whole span of Romano-British history, was the Eagle of the Ninth and its sequels, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers. The focus was on the battered bronze 108

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

eagle found in the forum basilica of Silchester in the 19th century and imagined to be a legionary eagle, just like that carried by the Wroxeter standard bearer Titus Flaminius (see Wroxeter’s people chapter). In reality the eagle was probably cast to go alongside a statue of Jupiter.1 Another of her stories, less well known, is Dawn Wind (1961) set in the late sixth century after the end of Roman rule and has Wroxeter at its heart (Figure 73). The hero of the story is Owain, a citizen of Wroxeter. We first meet him, coming too after being knocked out and wounded in the battle in which Kyndylan and his brothers were killed, this Figure 73: An iconic cover of the first edition of Dawn time conflated with the Wind, by Charles Keeping, 1961. Wikipedia Commons. victory of Wessex over the kings of Gloucester, Bath and Cirencester at the Battle of Dyrham traditionally dated to 577. He slowly walks back to his home ‘and when at last he came in sight of Viroconium, it was raining and the Virocon rising beyond the white walls of the town seemed to have turned inwards on itself and sit brooding darkly on ancient sorrows, in its fleece of wet woods; while the Sabrina curling southward into its gorge was grey as a sword blade, sullen and without light.’2 This not entirely encouraging scene was reinforced as he approached the town, passing burnt-out farms. Entering the town, ‘there were no bodies at the gate, no signs of a struggle that he could see. The townsfolk must have known the Saxons were coming, and lacking their fighting men, fled in time. And the Barbarians, flooding into an empty town, had looted and burnt to their fierce heart’s delight … the city was dead. 1 2

Higgins 2013, 70-3. Sutcliff 1961, 40.

109

110

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

The streets were silent, and the houses stood up gaunt and gutted, with blind eyes and blackened roof beams fallen in.’3 He finds shelter in the ruins and there meets up with another waif and stray, a girl who had been a beggar in the city. They eke out a life in the town for a while seeking food and fuel as best they can in the ruins. One of the places they find is a ruined house on the west side of the city. The girl, Regina, knows it: ’that is the house of Ulpius Pudentius. He was very old, and they said he had bags and boxes full of gold under his bed.’4 Not long after this, a party of cattle raiders camp in the ruined city and, when the pair are discovered, they desperately try to run away. Seeking somewhere safe to hide they see an opening in a wall and dive through it, pulling cover behind them to throw off their pursuers. Carefully, Owain strikes a light in the gloom and ‘a little tongue of flame sprang up and in the uncertain gleam of light he saw the skeleton of a man huddled, half lying, into the angle of the wall. It was still partly covered by the rags of a fine woollen tunic, and clutched against it by the delicate fan of bones that was one hand, was a leather bag … Owain saw a scatter of coins, thick-furred with dust … Ulpius Pudentius, the master of the house.’5 They realise that this city of the dead is no place to stay and leave, seeking a new home in Gaul, but are taken by the English into captivity. After many adventures, in which Owain learns to live with, and respect, the English, he eventually returns to Wroxeter, following a faint trail left by Regina from whom he had been separated, eventually finding her in the old city. But even now, they know they cannot live there: ‘Are we still going to Gaul? Regina asked carefully, after a few moments. No. That was for the dark; now, there’s a dawn wind stirring. We are going south-west into the hills.’6 As ever, Sutcliff has successfully woven her characters into the more familiar figures and stories of the era so that we see figures and events, like the arrival of St Augustine in Kent, through Owain’s eyes. In her depiction of Wroxeter, she evokes a sense of the melancholy and loss that most visitors to the site at that time must have felt and, a century after his discovery, gave some narrative context to the figure of the old man in the hypocaust, albeit an imaginary one. Even more fanciful in its connection to the Romans, and for that matter Wroxeter, is a short story written by John Buchan titled The Wind in the Portico (1928). This is an extraordinary tale, more Edgar Allan Poe than the daring-do of 39 Steps or Greenmantle. While set in Shropshire, and ‘clearly not a hundred miles from the old Roman Uriconium (the modern Wroxeter),’7 the tale is set somewhere in south Shropshire located vaguely ‘between Ludlow and the hills’, perhaps meaning Linley where a Roman villa is known to exist which was excavated by Sutcliff 1961, 41-2. Sutcliff 1961, 57. 5 Sutcliff 1961, 79. 6 Sutcliff 1961, 299. 7 Daniell 1982, 193. 3 4

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Wright and is included in his volume on Uriconium.8 If Buchan, a classicist, had read Wright’s work, then this may be the inspiration for the setting. The story is introduced as a conversation between Richard Hannay and two companions, one of whom, Henry Nightingale, tells the story. As introduction, Hannay makes the throwaway remark ‘that it always puzzled him how so elaborate a civilization as Roman Britain could have been destroyed so utterly and left no mark on national history beyond a few roads and ruins and place-names. Peckweather … demurred … ‘Rome only sleeps … she never dies.’ Nightingale nodded. Sometimes she dreams in her sleep and talks. Once she scared me out of my senses.’ He then embarks on his tale. The hero of the story is working on a classical text and learns of a copy that is held at ‘Vauncastle Hall about five miles from the little town of Faxeter.’ He pays a visit and, while staying at his lodgings in Ludlow hears of a great church that the hall’s owner, Dubellay, had built in the woods. He eventually finds it and is confronted by a classical portico built into the hillside. He approaches and, although the day is still and he is surrounded by deep snow, there is a hot wind like that from a furnace blowing through the portico. Taking fright, he runs blindly back to the village. He decides to return the manuscript to Dubellay, owner of Vauncastle Hall who visits him at his lodgings. Dubellay tells Nightingale of his interest in Faxeter, which he states was a corruption of the Roman name of Vauni Castra. He had excavated the site of an old temple, rebuilt it, and found carvings and an altar of Vaunus there as well as a hypocaust which Nightingale thought accounted for the heat in the portico. Nightingale suggests in jest that the altar could be re-consecrated for Christian use, following a rite suggested by the fifth century Latin writer Sidonius Apollinaris, which upsets Dubellay greatly. Nightingale then departs and returns to the region in the summer of the following year when Dubellay suggests that he should stay at the Hall. On his arrival, Nightingale is encouraged to show the specific passage in the text by Sidonius to Dubellay, which he does. Over the course of that night and the one following Nightingale is mystified and discomforted by the absence of his host and a great heat that passes through the house. On investigating the hall, searching for his host, Nightingale discovers packages with Latin on them that translate as offerings to the god Vaunus, and a tunnel connecting the house to the temple. Nightingale warily uses the tunnel and, emerging, recoils in horror as he sees Dubellay, attempting to re-consecrate the altar to Christ, consumed by a burst of flame coming from it, accompanied by a gale of hot wind which, rushing along the tunnel burns the Hall down with Nightingale barely escaping with his life and vowing to keep these secrets to himself.

8

Wright 1872, 24-9.

111

112

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 74: A collapsing farm building at Muckley Cross, between Much Wenlock and Morville in Shropshire. It is plain that the building will eventually form a heap which will then become a grass-covered mound. Author’s photo, February 2012.

It is a bizarre story and, while only tangentially connected to Wroxeter, its mention of death caused by a fiery destruction is perhaps a distant echo of the suggested fate of the old man in the hypocaust, and of Wroxeter itself. 19th century scientists, archaeologists, and journalists at Wroxeter Most casual visitors to Wroxeter, on learning the extent of site and observing the depth of soil overlying the forum colonnade, wonder how the Roman city got so thoroughly buried. The answer is simpler than one might suspect. Any building, if left neglected long enough, will eventually collapse forming a heap on the ground (Figure 74). Mixed in with this will inevitably be some organic material – timber, plaster, lime, clay, straw – all of which will encourage natural agents of decay such as beetles, woodlice, rats, mice and any number of other organisms. These develop a soil and then the plants can get to work, their roots binding it and, when they decay, creating more soil. Once a soil is present, the main agent of burial can get to work: the humble earthworm. One man who not only realised this but decided to work out just how quickly worms could bury sites was Charles Darwin, Shrewsbury’s most famous son.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 75: The ‘worm stone’ at Down House, Kent, Darwin’s home but also his laboratory. Author’s photo, April 2011.

In 1881, the scientist published a slim book based on many decades of research in his garden at Down House, in Kent and elsewhere. Entitled The Formation of Vegetable mould through the Action of Worms it provided scientific proof of a theory first proposed by him nearly 50 years before in a paper of 1837 delivered to the Geological Society ‘On the Formation of Mould’. Specifically, his experiment was ‘to weigh all the castings thrown up within a given time in a measured space.’9 One of the chosen spaces was the famous ‘worm stone’ in the garden at Down House, a circular stone disc from which Darwin would collect the worm casts every day, dry them out and weigh them (Figure 75). On the basis of this, and many other experiments, he concluded that ‘in many parts of England a weight of more than 10 tons (10,516 kilograms) of dry earth annually passes through their bodies and is brought to the surface on each acre of land.’10 It is an astonishing figure, but one arrived at through research at a number of archaeological sites, including Wroxeter. Chapter 4 of his book is entitled ‘The Part which worms have played in the burial of ancient buildings’. In it he looks at findings from four different sites: 9 10

Darwin 1945, 21. Darwin 1945, 145.

113

114

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

a Roman villa at Abinger, Surrey, the site of Beaulieu Abbey and Silchester Roman town, both in Hampshire, and Wroxeter. At the first of these, he was present to do the measurements himself, supervising the opening of an area 14 by 9 ft (roughly 4.5 x 3m) reaching an apparently intact concrete floor within a room. Over the following seven weeks, the owner of the site, Thomas Farrer (1st Baron Farrer) carried on observations on this floor enthusiastically keeping a ‘worm journal’. He counted between 40 and 60 worm holes appearing in this floor, and additional holes in Figure 76: Charles Roach Smith, the London chemist the walls of the room.11 Darwin who was one of the leading archaeologists of his day. responded enthusiastically Author’s image. to the results of the worm journal, commenting that ‘such a diary was never kept before … I had not the least expectation of your taking such extraordinary pains ...’.12 Over the course of the 1500 years since the site had been abandoned, it was thus not surprising that 40cm of soil had accumulated over the site. At Wroxeter, the research was carried out by Dr Henry Johnson, who had been Thomas Wright’s supervising excavator in 1859. He dug trenches in the field containing the Old Work and in Shop Leasows, the field behind the forge, the highest point in the city. The soil depth in the first field was around 50cm while in the other field, topsoil was between 25cm and 1m deep. In places though the depth was much shallower – only 15 or 20cm. Through these, and other detailed observations made by Johnson, Darwin reasoned that ‘if a great pile of broken stones, mortar, plaster, timber and ashes fell over the remains of any building, their disintegration in the course of time, and the sifting action of worms, would ultimately conceal the whole beneath fine earth.’13 The important point to note here is that this process of burial needs no human agency at all. A city does not need to be sacked and Darwin 1945, 93-8. Burkhardt 2017, 31-3. 13 Darwin 1945, 113. 11 12

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

burnt to the ground to vanish. Once abandoned, time and worms will do the rest. In some sense, what makes Darwin’s work so remarkable is how he was in all other respects a seemingly ordinary Victorian gentleman. A doting father and devout Christian, what made him extraordinary was his inquiring mind and dogged research. While his discovery of the theory of natural selection had, in some sense, already been anticipated, what lifted his work was the sheer weight of scientific and systematically assembled research which underpinned and proved the theory, qualities that he displayed too in his prolonged study of the earthworm. Darwin was, however, very much a man of his time and people like him could be seen in all walks of life, including the burgeoning discipline of archaeology. An examplar of this era in archaeology is the life and works of Charles Roach Smith (Figure 76). Charles Roach Smith (1807-1890) was an outstanding example of a new kind of antiquarian (or more accurately an archaeologist), one who had not been to university but who had taught himself about antiquities, especially coins, and developed his knowledge largely through observation and correspondence with like-minded men in Europe.14 He was not, therefore, a field archaeologist in that he did not conduct excavations. His extensive collection of Roman and other antiquities, mostly purchased from workmen in London who were busily constructing the infrastructure of the growing city and from the dredgers operating on the Thames, was put on display in his own museum in the chemist’s shop from which he operated at Lothbury in the east end of London. He was a prolific author, writing many articles on coins, antiquities and monuments that appeared in the learned journals being established in counties across the country, including his home county of Kent. He was, in fact, so prolific that between 1848 and 1878 he filled seven volumes of his own publication, Collectanea Antiqua, which in keeping with the time was privately published and supplied to subscribers. Within their covers are articles on wanderings across Britain and the near continent (especially France) and on individual finds, often illustrated by Fredrick William Fairholt, the leading archaeological illustrator of the day (see Figure 81).15 The travels of these men were of course facilitated by the rapid growth of the railway network, and they put the unparalleled advantages of rail travel to good use. Roach Smith was also, however, an archaeologist with a mission to improve and further the standing of the study of Britain’s past. He had a deep interest and commitment to what these days would be called Britain’s heritage and saw it as one of his missions to see the establishment of a truly British Museum, that is an institution that 14 15

Rhodes 1992. Scott 2017.

115

116

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

would tell the story of the nation, rather than the British Museum as it was in his day, interested only in the societies and finds from past civilizations anywhere else but Britain. In the end he had some success in that he was able to sell his collection to the British Museum where it forms the nucleus of their Romano-British display, but it was a long and acrimonious struggle to achieve this outcome.16 Alongside his friends, Thomas Wright and Thomas Pettigrew, Roach Smith founded the British Archaeological Association (BAA) in 1843 which held its first Congress at Canterbury in 1844.17 The BAA was founded due to the impatience that they felt with the Society of Antiquaries of London, to which body all three had been elected. They found the Society too aristocratic, too London-centric, and without vigour. Above all, they felt it was not energetic enough in championing the cause of the archaeology of the British people. At the Canterbury Congress, however, a dispute broke out between Thomas Wright and Joseph Parker of the Oxford University Press, ostensibly over a book Wright was to publish in 1845 called The Archaeological Album, or, Museum of National Antiquities. What caused offence to Parker was that Wright intended to earn money from its sale, which no Gentleman would do, and its sale would impact on the sales of the Congress volume which Parker had the contract to publish. It was also true that many considered that the ‘jejune nature of [Wright’s] work was bound to antagonise the more serious-minded, particularly the architectural historians’ that formed a prominent group among the BAA.18 As a result another member of the BAA, Albert Way, launched a breakaway organisation, the Archaeological Institute, which soon after added the epithet Royal with the blessing of the monarch.19 The break-up was acrimonious and partly rested on suspicion of people like Roach Smith who earned their money from trade, or Wright who although a Gentleman earned his living from being paid for his writings and lectures instead of being wealthy enough to support himself and his interests. Added to this were overtones of religious disagreement about the direction of the Church of England. In short, both were victims of the prejudices of Victorian society. Yet the work of men like Roach Smith and Wright was extraordinary in their scope, professional attention to detail, and sheer academic output. Recognition of this came late in Roach Smith’s life. A reviewer of his first volume of autobiographic writings and biographical sketches of his associates, Retrospections: Social and Archaeological (1883) observed ‘Mr Roach Smith has lived to see archaeology, which was looked Kidd 1977; White 1988, 119-22. British Archaeological Association: History 2020. 18 Thompson 2004. 19 British Archaeological Association: History 2020. 16 17

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 77: A medallion struck in honour of Charles Roach Smith’s efforts to preserve the Roman town wall of Dax in France. Image © Shrewsbury Museums Service SHYMS: 2022.00009.

upon as a foolish mania, treated almost as one of the exact sciences.’20 What is also notable is that they were able to engage actively with sites all over Britain and Europe because of the rapid, and extensive development of the railway and postal networks.21 Through being able to experience these archaeological sites directly they were able to use their knowledge in the many heritage battles that were fought to preserve antiquity from the modernising zeal of Victorian developers. The survival of the Roman town walls at Chester, for instance, is directly the result of the energetic campaign waged by Roach Smith in Collectanea Antiqua: he used his knowledge of Roman construction methods and parallels to prove the antiquity of the structure and ensure its survival.22 Elsewhere, his network of contacts in France alerted him to the threat to the well-preserved Roman-period walls of the city of Dax, in Landes.23 His letters of support bolstered the campaign to retain them, and he was rewarded with a medal especially struck to commemorate the success (Figure 77). Charles Roach Smith’s visit to Wroxeter occurred in 1851, in the company of Samuel Wood, of Shrewsbury, who no doubt acted as guide. An account of the visit was published in the third volume Collectanea Antiqua. He describes arriving at a ‘straggling and picturesque village, containing a church, farm-houses, cottages and a few gentlemen’s houses, with gardens, and other appurtenances’. He continues ‘The commanding site and charming scenery would alone arrest the attention; but when the visitor feels he stands upon ground which covers the ruins of an ancient city, and sees, here and there, the yet lingering traces of its faded grandeur, he is struck with a double Athenaeum, 30 June 1883, issue 2905, 823, cited in Scott 2017. Scott 2017. 22 Smith 1868a. 23 Smith 1868b. 20 21

117

118

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

motive of admiration and inquiry, and perceives how sensibly and strongly the charms of nature are heightened when they are associated with the memory of the past.’ On their way to the village, they observed the Old Work, ‘a fragment of masonry in an arable field on the left … It has formed, apparently, the western extremity of a temple which would seem to have been arched; the inner side still exhibits the remains of the red paint with which it was ornamented, and the outside is faced with cut stones and rows of tiles; it is upwards of three feet thick, and as far as I can recollect, may be about forty feet in length and twenty in height.’24 Their visit appears to have focused on a now-vanished farmhouse and yard opposite the church, belonging to William Oatley. The tithe map25 shows that Oatley owned a number of the properties in the village and farmed fields in two blocks of land: to the south of the village where it is now known that an auxiliary fort was located, perhaps the first Roman fortification built by the Roman army on its arrival in the area, and a larger block on the east side of the former city and extending out beyond it. Within the yard the visitors found two carved columns that had been brought back to the village for reuse and which may have been found when working in these fields. Both had carved scales on them and, in one case, a lattice pattern, as well as figures which Roach Smith correctly identified as Bacchus with his panther and a winged putti. He was aware that similar carved columns like this were also found in France and Germany and suggested these fragments belonged to a so-called Jupiter Column, one of only two or three examples recorded from Britain. Indeed, in volume five of the Collectanea he records his 1854 visit to the complete Jupiter column standing at Cussy, in the Cote D’Or, part of his account of his extensive travels in France.26 Both Wroxeter fragments now reside in the Shrewsbury Museum and art gallery, alongside a third fragment that I re-identified in the 1990s in the rockery of The Cottage during my stay there. The other carved stones seen and illustrated by Roach Smith were elaborately decorated column capitals which had been recovered from the River Severn adjacent to Mr Oatley’s lands. As Roach Smith remarked these were ‘the relics of fourteen centuries of vandalism, and the wonder is, when we still find them being cut to pieces by masons and builders, that even a vestige should be preserved.’27 Another column, also standing in the yard, was said to be a milestone with a faded inscription, but this has not come down to us. While Roach Smith’s visit was brief, that of his friend and colleague Thomas Wright had more profound impacts.

Smith 1854, 29-30. Apportionment … & Plan, Shropshire Archives SA2656/16 -17. 26 Smith 1861. 27 Smith 1854, 31. 24 25

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Thomas Wright would not these days be considered an archaeologist. Like Roach Smith he was not trained as an excavator and there was little in his early career to suggest that he would embark on a major excavation since his principal early works were concerned with medieval literature and language. His most lasting work in this vein was the two-volume publication A Volume of Vocabularies (1857-1873) which examined education and manners in Medieval England through manuscripts from the tenth to fifteenth centuries. His initial success was brought about through his ‘evident and precocious literary abilities’28 which earned him a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge. Following graduation in 1837, he was elected to the Society of Antiquaries of London and was influenced by John Kemble to study Old English which formed the basis for much of his life’s work on vernacular manuscripts. While the volume of his output was considerable, its quality was very variable and has been described by some as hack-work. He was unusual at the time for a gentleman in that his writing provided his direct source of income and this probably accounts for the somewhat hurried and slap-dash nature of his work since he would only be paid once copy had been supplied. He was also paid for his lectures which he undertook across the country. An example that has come down to us is his lecture at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on 27th September 1854 given on the occasion of the British Archaeological Association meeting in that city celebrating the acquisition of the Faussett Collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities.29 He had written Mayer on 28th March to say that he ‘will try and make a nice popular paper on Anglo-Saxon antiquities.’30 The relationship between the two men was based on Wright’s ability to be able to provide contacts within the archaeological world to Mayer, especially those on the continent, while Mayer was generous in funding Wright’s research and publications, providing the considerable sum of 50 guineas, for instance, for the second volume of Wright’s Vocabularies and a total of 200 guineas for another three publications.31 These subventions were critical to Wright in maintaining his status but after the publication of Uriconium in 1872, Wright’s health deteriorated severely. From descriptions of his condition it seems he had Alzheimer’s disease or some other form of senile dementia and his last years were spent in extreme poverty, a distressing situation for him, his wife, and for his friends.32 Of his capacity for hard work there can be little doubt. Roach Smith commented that Wright had to fill his days and nights with work to meet his commitments and it was observed by some of his contemporaries that this overwork perhaps contributed to his poor mental health later in life. It certainly accounted for Thompson 2004. White 1988, Plate XXXIII. 30 White 1988, 120, the emphasis is Wright’s own. 31 White 1988, 132. 32 Thompson 2004. 28 29

119

120

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

the ‘swarming of errors in transcription’ that were to be found in his works on manuscripts.33 Wright’s archaeological interests were primarily in the Roman period. His 1854 book Wanderings of an Antiquary in Roman Britain offered a popular guide to the antiquities of the period to be found throughout Britain and no doubt fostered his interest in Wroxeter as a potential place for an excavation, although curiously Wroxeter is not actually included in the book. When he was approached by Beriah Botfield, Ludlow’s M.P. in 1858 to initiate work of Wroxeter, he was more than ready to take on the challenge. We have already encountered Wright in the context of what he judged to be his most exciting and newsworthy discovery, the old man in the hypocaust, but his initial discoveries at Wroxeter were in some ways far more dramatic, and eye-catching, than the burials. The work on site began in February 1859,34 an occasion recorded by Dr Henry Johnson who ably assisted Wright throughout the explorations. ‘Until February 3rd, 1859, there were no remains of the ancient city above ground, except the interesting ‘old wall’ already mentioned. On the day which I have just quoted (and it was very memorable day), Mr. T. Wright, several other lovers of Roman antiquities (myself among the number), and three labourers, assembled around the old wall, and we were in some doubt where would be best to commence operations. Fortunately, we decided to begin in the very place where we were then assembled. I will now extract from my journal, kept at the time, a few of the facts and discoveries which we made. … We commenced operations by first digging a deep pit, nine feet from the wall, on its northern side, and afterwards carrying a trench in a direct line to the base of the wall. … We wished to ascertain the nature and depth of the foundations of the wall, and therefore our trench was made deeper and deeper until we came to the very bottom of the wall. I had my hand under the very foundation, which was embedded in red earth. It was fourteen feet below the present surface of the soil. Verily, we thought, the Romans did not build by contract !’35 The account continues with the exploration of the building north of the old work which they gradually realise is a long building, orientated east – west and formed of two narrow corridors separated by one twice as wide, which they interpret as a basilica. They then turned to the other side of the Old Work. ‘We had carried a trench south-wards from the Basilica, when we came upon a strong semi-circular wall two feet thick, ornamented outside with coloured stucco, and inside blackened with smoke. On clearing out the soil, we found that we were in a large hypocaust, 216 feet long, and 14 feet wide across the bow or apse. There were Thompson 2004, with reference to the review in the Quarterly Review of 1848. Wright 1872, i-v. 35 Johnson 1869. 33 34

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 78: Francis Bedford’s 1859 photograph of the western hypocaust, as reconstructed by Henry Johnson following its unfortunate encounter with the Cannock Miners. Image source Wikipedia Commons.

about a hundred square pillars, 2 feet to 2ft. 8in. high. They looked beautiful when first uncovered—so very perfect and so regular, made of red tiles placed one upon another, with a thin layer of red clay between them to render them steady, but no mortar was used.36 In many places the walls and pillars were black with smoke. … The floor covering the pillars was gone, but enough remained in one corner show its construction and its thickness. Larger tiles were placed upon the tops of the pillars, till a sort of flat roof was formed, upon which they laid concrete to the thickness of ten or eighteen inches. The upper surface of the floor was made smooth, and in some cases ornamented with tessellated pavement. The hypocaust which I have now described is part of a long series of the same kind, extending 140 feet in a south-east direction. … there is an archway where the fire-place for heating the hypocaust was. A fire being lighted here, the smoke 36 This observation is interesting in respect of the story of how miners on a day trip from Cannock, Staffs., knocked the tile pillars (pilae) over (see below). If there was no mortar holding the tiles together then they will not have survived long being exposed to the elements. They may have fallen on their own accord.

121

122

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

and heated air travelled among and around the pillars, imparting their heat to the superincumbent floor, and finding their way to the flues constructed in the walls, they would escape by the roof through one or more openings.’37 The discovery of the old man and his companions in the neighbouring room as quoted in the second chapter of this book then follows. The main baths suite, which was never fully uncovered by Wright, and the eastern baths suite are also described by Johnson, with some careful attention to the detail of how the baths were heated: ‘This is long square building, which it is quite certain must have been a hot bath, for the arrangements for heating it are much too effective for any ordinary apartment. This chamber is 25 feet long by 10 feet wide. The floor is still covered with the remains of pillars made of the usual square tiles placed one upon another. Resting upon the top of these, there has been a floor of concrete, part of which remained when I first saw it opened. On one side was the fire-place, neatly arched at the top. Here the fire had been lighted. The heated smoke and flames, after circulating among the pillars, and communicating their heat to the floor above them, were conveyed away by a number of flues very cleverly constructed on the surface of the still remaining wall. Some of flue tiles were found in their places at the time of the excavations, and the traces of them remain to this day. It appeared to me that many flues or chimneys such as I have described had been constructed in this wall, and there is no doubt that such an arrangement would render this chamber very hot. On the other side of this wall of the hypocaust there is very neat square chamber, on the walls of which is some tessellated work, which when first laid open was rather pretty, and the whole of the floor was covered with a very perfect white tessellated pavement. It looks as if there had been a stone seat all round this square room. It was most probably a cold bath to be used after the hot bath. Mr. Wright thinks that the whole of this block of building was a public bath …’38 The work had been carried out at the quietest time of the agricultural year so, as a modern archaeologist, it is a bit shocking to see only eight weeks later how much had been uncovered by Wright’s energetic labourers. By 16th April, when one of his first reports on the excavation appeared in the Illustrated London News,39 the main illustration shows the ruins and hypocausts south of the Old Work had been almost completely uncovered (see Figure 5). The extent of the clearance is confirmed in Francis Bedford’s photograph of the exposed ruins in the same year (Figure 78). The clearance is even more startling given that there was also extensive work on the northern side of the Old Work. Here, trenches were opened out across Johnson 1869. Johnson 1869. 39 Wright 1859. 37 38

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 79: The pen and watercolour drawing made by George Maw in April / May 1859 of the remnants of the mosaics in the north aisle of the baths basilica and the herringbone tile floor in the baths. Image © Shropshire Museums Service SHYMS: 2022.00005.

the field to get some idea of the shape and size of the building. This focus on this north side was necessary because the tenant farmer was keen to get on with sowing a crop of turnips, on account of which the workmen were compelled to backfill as they dug. Agreement had been reached to allow excavations first to the end of March and then to the end of April but Wright’s discovery of areas of Roman herringbone tile flooring and, especially, mosaics, in this field as well as the walls of a large building delayed matters, to the farmer’s mounting anger.40 In the article Wright interprets these elements as representing the remains of two separate buildings separated by a corridor floored in tiles laid in a herringbone pattern. He believed that such floors could only ever be found externally and thus there was an open corridor between the large hall and the buildings south of the Old Work, and that the north face of the Old Work was thus an external wall, not an internal one as it later proved to be. The large hall was thought to perhaps be the forum basilica while the ruins south of the 40

Wright, British Library MSS 33346.

123

124

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 80: A fragment of a floor laid out using mosaic tiles from Maw’s factory at Benthall, Shropshire. This is clearly following the suggested layout in Maw’s catalogue (right). Photos courtesy of and © Hans van Lemmen.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Old Work were thought initially to be a town house but were then realised to be a public bath house. These conclusions long misled those interpreting the site. Problems of interpretation like these may be at the heart of the comments made by George E. Fox, who worked briefly on the site in the 1890s to bring some clarity on what Wright had excavated. At the end of his article he makes a plea for more a professional approach to future work, which can perhaps be read as a sly dig at people like Roach Smith and Wright. ‘It is earnestly to be hoped, if a time ever comes up for further investigation of the site, that those who undertake it will have the technical qualifications necessary for the task. It has been only too often taken for granted that literary knowledge, or an intimate acquaintance with the minor antiquities of the Roman period, are sufficient qualifications for an investigator of the sites of Roman towns or villas. No view could be more erroneous …’41 By the end of April, the tenant’s patience ran out and he threw Wright off the north field, filling in the trenches (but not before carrying on the ancient village tradition of robbing as much stonework as he could). Wright complained to his principal sponsor, the Liverpool Goldsmith, Joseph Mayer, that ‘we have had a tremendous row with that abominable tenant and his horrible field. I wish he were crammed with turnips till he burst!’42 One might suspect that the cause of the problem was the discovery of mosaics which meant that extensive holes were opened to both record the fragments and extricate some of them for the museum, considerable damage being done to the basilica floor in doing so.43 A drawn record of the fragments was made by George Maw, an eminent encaustic tile manufacturer whose factory was established at Benthall in the Ironbridge Gorge in 1852 before relocating to Jackfield, about a mile upstream from his previous location.44 His watercolour survives (Figure 79) but, ever the businessman, seeing the mosaic inspired him to design a new form of tile that imitated a mosaic floor, but which was actually formed of interlocking tiles (Figure 80).45 These proved to be a very popular line, as demonstrated by other designs brought in by a neighbouring tile manufacture, Craven Dunnill, although none were directly based on the designs from Wroxeter. Thomas Wright decided that a high-level intervention was required when dealing with the tenant. He appealed to the owner of the land, the Duke of Cleveland (one of whose subsidiary titles was Lord Barnard) in August 1859 to keep the site open for the public, suggesting that it was ‘a more interesting ruin than a castle or an abbey.’46 The next month, the Duke obliged, making two Fox 1897, 172. Wright British Library MSS 33347, fol.7 (to Joseph Mayer, April 29th). 43 Barker et al. 1997, 44. 44 Maw 1861. Herbert and Huggins 1995, 12-13, where the date is incorrectly given as 1857. 45 I am grateful for the assistance of Hans van Lemmen for supplying details and images of the mosaic tiles. 46 Wright British Library MSS 33347, fol.21 (to Charles Roach Smith, Aug. 21st). 41 42

125

126

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 81: F.W. Fairholt’s etching of a visit to Wroxeter in 1859. An attentive gentleman points to where the Old Man was found while a labourer carries on in the background. Author’s image.

acres of his land available to those involved in running the site, the Wroxeter Excavation Committee, at a low rent. This was perhaps not as generous at it might appear at first sight since the land opened to the public was the unproductive area south of the Old Work where the height of the surviving walls made ploughing impossible. The turnip field to the north of it remained in cultivation until the 1960s. The problems of dealing with the tenant farmer, however irksome, did not distract Wright from his primary purpose of using his considerable energies to publicise his discoveries, and encourage visitors to the site, along with the hope of further donations to the enterprise, as is testified by numerous letters published in papers across the country.47 The Illustrated London News article was but the start and others were soon in on the act, notably Charles Dickens who visited within the next week or two of the ILN article, reporting on his visit for his own newly founded journal, All Year Round, on 14th May. Visiting excavations in Britain was at that time entirely novel. Unless something was found within 47

As, for example, in the Belfast Morning News 12th October 1860.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

a town, few people would have been aware of archaeological discoveries or be able to visit them. Now, as Dickens tells us, anyone who could afford the rail fare could come to Shrewsbury on the recently opened Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway, and then make their way out to Wroxeter on foot or by hired carriage. On his arrival he describes the scene: ‘There is a bright spring sun over head the old wall standing close by looks blank at us; here and there a stray antiquary clambers among the rubbish, careless of dirt stains; an attentive gentleman on the crest of a dirt heap explains Roman antiquities to some young ladies in pink and blue, who have made Wroxeter the business of a morning drive (Figure 81). An intelligent labourer, who seems to be a sort of foreman of the works, waits to disclose to the honorary secretary the contents of a box in which it is his business to deposit each day’s findings of small odds and ends …’.48 Some context to this is given by Henry Johnson who tells us that ‘We had four men constantly employed in digging. They were directed to preserve everything which was found, and keep it for our inspection. Every bone, every bit of metal, pottery, glass, every tile, every fragment of worked stone was laid for our examination. In this way you cannot think what number of curious and odd things were assembled together. Literally a waggon load of bones only was heaped up in the middle of the Roman market place. They were almost entirely the bones of animals, of oxen, sheep, deer, wild boar, horses, and even birds. A few detached human bones were picked up (always unburnt) but no native skeleton except those already mentioned from the hypocaust,’49 The heap of bones is referred to again in Johnson’s account of the excavation of the market-place (today referred to as the macellum): ‘What has been supposed to be a market-place by Mr. Wright is a block of building about 80 feet square. Like the Basilica, it faces the Watling-street-road (which was an old Roman road). There are two gates with steps, one of which is twelve feet wide, and the other a small ordinary doorway. … There is a square court in the centre, partly paved with the herring-bone pattern (see Figure 109). All round this court are small square chambers, believed to be shops. In one was found a large quantity of charcoal; in another a great many bones and horns, some of which had been sawn and cut, and others turned on a lathe. It has hence been conjectured that these were the workshops or the storehouses of artificers in these articles.’50 One who also travelled by train to the site as Dickens had done was Walter White, who in 1860 published a travel book, All Around the Wrekin recounting his visits within the Midlands. He was attracted to visit on seeing a poster in Birmingham boldly advertising ‘Excursion Trains to the Buried City of Wroxeter – the British Pompeii’. Arriving at the site ‘we passed into a turnip field, and saw long heaps of earth, and what looked like bricklayer’s rubbish, stretching in various directions across the young plants: we saw a refreshment tent, a table covered Dickens 1859, 56. Johnson 1869. 50 Johnson 1869. 48 49

127

128

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 82: John Groom’s 1862 photo of the Bell Tent set up as a refreshment point among the spoil heaps. The house behind is 1 & 2 The Ruins, then a freshly built pair of tenant’s houses. Next to it are the Wroxeter farm buildings. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/39.

with fragments of pottery, a Visitors’-Book, and contribution box.’ Passing to the other part of the site, south of the Old Work, they encountered two excavators ‘one of whom gave us intelligent explanations of the progress of the work.51 He and his fellow excursionists were not impressed: ‘to an ordinary visitor the old city would be a very disappointing place … the majority declared themselves ‘sold’ and went off forthwith to the refreshment-tent; some thought it hardly worth while to travel to look at rubbish, and asked where the houses, doors and windows were. ‘How could there be a city without houses?’52 they asked, logically enough (Figure 82). White’s visit wasn’t helped by the fact that many of the interesting discoveries had already been backfilled because of the tenant farmer’s desire to plant. In consequence, the site was a ‘strange mixture of antiquity, agriculture, and ugly disorder.’53 White 1860, 151-2. White 1860, 155. 53 White 1860, 152. 51 52

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

To inform, and perhaps mollify, the visitors who felt they had been shortchanged, Wright wrote a guidebook, available on site and in Shrewsbury where it was published. It was already in its third edition of seven in 1860. Visitors are advised that ‘parties from a distance wishing to visit the ruins of ancient Uriconium, at Wroxeter, will find every comfort and accommodation at the Lion, the Raven, the George and the Crown Hotels, Shrewsbury … Conveyances may be obtained at the Railway Station, Shrewsbury; at any of the above-named Hotels; and at Wick’s or Howell’s Livery Stables.’ It is also suggested that visitors could alight at Upton Magna station ‘from whence it is distant about two miles and a half, a pleasant walk for an active person.’ 54 Visitors were also advised to visit the museum on College Hill in Shrewsbury where the principal discoveries had been taken, paying threepence each for the visit. Walter White had availed himself of this opportunity and commented that ‘having seen the many interesting relics there arranged, things of daily life, the visitor on coming to the city would be able to rebuild and repeople it in imagination.’55 While most visitors were welcome, not all were. Wright was incensed by two incidents that occurred in the 1859 season. In the first, two ‘casual visitors’ (notably not referred to as Gentlemen) poked at some plaster on a wall carrying some graffiti on it with their walking sticks and caused it to fall off. Johnson’s eye-witness account of this event is even more dramatic since it makes it clear that Wright was present when it happened: ‘… on one of the walls at Wroxeter there was some stucco covered with hieroglyphics and scribbling. Just as Mr. Wright looking carefully this, and thought he had made out an intelligible word, the termination of verb ending in ‘avit’ (as amavit), one of those modern Goths and Vandals who are always found among the visitors of such a place, struck the plaster with a stick, and all fell to pieces. A small space only, therefore, has been preserved and copied ; but nothing of any interest can made out.’56 Part of one line survived, which was enough to suggest that it had been written in Latin.57 The other incident is recounted by Wright in his book on the excavation: ‘In the May of the year 1859, while we were temporarily excluded from the field in which the excavations were carried on, it appears that a party of miners from the collieries, who were in the habit of taking a holiday and making an excursion at this time of year, having been attracted by the accounts published in the newspapers, paid their visit to Wroxeter. Not understanding what they saw, and finding nobody there to keep them in order, they amused themselves by throwing down the columns of this hypocaust and breaking to pieces the materials. When … we returned to our work we found this Wright 1860, 5. White 1860, 155. 56 Johnson 1869. 57 Wright and Jackson 1859, 217-8. 54 55

129

130

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

hypocaust a mere heap of broken tiles. Dr Henry Johnson, with great care and labour, had the more perfect tiles picked out, and the columns re-erected, as far as it could be done, by the help of photographs and drawings which had been made before the occurrence of this barbarous piece of vandalism’58 (see Figure 78). It is interesting that I have not been able to trace an account of this event in local newspapers, and it was noted by Johnson himself that the tiles were not held together by mortar. It is quite possible that they fell over of their own accord. So there is perhaps an element of snobbery in the accounts of this incident in that this is how Gentlemen would expect miners to behave. Indeed, Wright’s comment about their behaviour and inability to comprehend the site infantilises them: they are behaving like unsupervised children. While visitors were free to come, an excursion to the site, even from a modest distance, will have been out of the reach of most working people, and few of that class would have had the leisure time, money, or energy in any case. Viewing the excavations was clearly intended for middle-class consumption, which class would be expected to act in a fashion appropriate to their social standing. A lovely example of the experience, and energy, of such a group outing at this time is provided by ‘an occasional contributor’ to the Staffordshire Advertiser in January 1865, recording a visit made on Christmas Day 1864. The day of the ‘Ramble to Wroxeter’ was presumably chosen because it was a rare day off for all, but the more-than-20-mile ramble is more than most of us could manage on Christmas Day. ‘The early train from Birmingham landed us at Shrewsbury in the first rosy glow of the Christmas morning, and after a hasty breakfast at the Raven, we marched merrily along past the quaint gables, which keep green the memory of centuries; over the bridge; under the shadow of Lord Hill’s stately column; and were soon fairly under weigh the high road to Wroxeter. … we trudged blithely onward past the stately park of Attingham, and over the rustic bridge which spans the “reedy Tern” until an inviting lane on our right, led us to the site of Uriconium, the buried city of the Romans. Here we halted, and having with some difficulty discovered the entrance to the enclosure, opened the unpretending wicket, and commenced without delay the work of inspection. At first sight the excavations present a somewhat strange appearance. At the entrance is a huge heap of bones, principally those of animals. In front, and on either side, are massive chambers of all shapes and sizes, broken archways, and narrow passages, strewed with fragments of pottery and heaps of Roman bricks. Nothing remains above ground, save a huge black fragmentary wall, about 60 feet long, 30 feet high, and 4 or 5 feet thick. While we were occupied with these cursory observations, a friendly voice saluted us, and on looking round we saw an illustrious individual with low crowned hat and wooden leg, 58

Wright 1872, 115, footnote.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 83: The enameller’s workshop as recorded in a stereophotograph in 1859. The column and furnace mentioned are evident, as is one of the spoil heaps. The table is the square block of masonry. It is actually the foundation for a support for the vaulted roof. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/38.

limping towards us at full speed, and with the little stock of breath remaining after that exertion, proffered his services as guide. Seeing that any one of our party knew far more of Greek than archaeology, and not being provided with Mr. Wright’s excellent little handbook, we readily accepted the offer of our volunteer, who entered upon his duties without further ceremony. He was a strange sort of character, and imparted his information in such familiar and confidential tone that one might have supposed be had been preserved alive in the city ruins, and was the only one remaining to tell the story of its fall. Taking us first to an apartment about thirty feet square, which is supposed have been a workshop, he pointed out a large pier of masonry which was probably used as table for the workmen. “Towards yonder corner, gentlemen,” he observed, they found a sort of forge or furnace built of red clay, but as hard as flint, with a cavity in the upper part through which you might have thrust your head.” We could detect from his manner that he was quoting from the guidebook which be held in his hand, although he assumed to be the only authority on the subject.

131

132

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

He continued: “As the inner surface of the cavity is completely vitrified, as they call it, and there was much charcoal strewed about, there can no doubt that the furnace had been subjected to very intense heat.” He went on to inform us, in the same style of assumed grandiloquence, that traces had been found of a low wall, on which was supposed to be the lower part of a column, with its base; but Mr. Wright conjectures that it was a stone table for the use of the workmen at the furnace (Figure 83). It is presumed by some that this room was occupied by a worker in glass or metals, but most probably the former, as fine specimens of glass were found scattered about the floor, interspersed with small fragments of metal. … In the middle of the room lies a huge piece of stone column, which antiquarians suppose formed part of a colonnade. After standing for a moment or two absorbed in contemplation, we were beckoned by our guide to advance, and following his steps were led to a portion of uncovered wall, running North and South for upwards of 80 feet, and containing two entrance gateways, one about twelve feet and the other five or six feet wide. The latter was approached by two steps, the lower one being much worn at its south west corner as to lead the conjecture that the crowds of people who passed through this gate came up the street from the south. … These two entrances led into one square apartment, the floor of which was paved with small red bricks, placed edge in the style familiarly known the “herring-bone” pavement, which was much worn, and bore traces of frequent repair. … [This is the macellum]. On either side of this room are four chambers, each about twelve feet square. One of these apartments had been cleared out, and was found to be ten feet deep, having a low transverse wall at the bottom, the object of which remains a mystery. In this room a quantity of charcoal was found, which leads to the supposition that this was a storeroom for that article. One of the other rooms on either side appear to have been a storehouse for bones and horns, some of which had been sawn or cut, and others partly turned in a lathe, suggesting the idea that they belonged to a manufacturer of ornaments. …. At the rear of the court is long narrow inclosure, divided by four transverse walls into compartments, leaving a passage along the eastern side. These compartments have the appearance of having been small shops or stalls, and seem to confirm Mr. Wright’s theory that this building was a public market. Near this spot traces of a reservoir have been discovered, and also a dust chamber. Pointing to the latter our guide coolly observed, “This is where the parties who lived in the adjoining house swept their rubbish,” apparently unconscious of the fact that the “parties” referred to trod those courts some twelve or fourteen centuries ago! Pursuing our investigations came next the massive walls of a building the nature of which remains a matter of conjecture [this is the main suite of the baths]. The floor of this building rather peculiarly constructed. It is composed of cement or concrete two or three feet in thickness, below which, at a depth of nearly a yard, is another floor, formed of flat Roman tiles, and covering a space ten feet wide by thirty feet long. The most natural conjecture is that this was once a water bath. From the mound raised here by the excavators an excellent bird’s-

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

eye view of the whole work can be obtained, of which for a few moments we took advantage. We next proceeded northward a little further, to the excavations nearer to the Old Wall, where fresh features of interest awaited us. An apartment about eight feet square, and paved the “herringbone” fashion, first engaged our attention. Attached to this is a small hypocaust, in which were found the remains of two skeletons. In this room are preserved most wonderfully the lines of flue tiles, up the northern wall, which prove that this room must have been very much heated, and, as an antiquary suggests, was a sudatorium, or “sweating room,” a name which in these later times is given to bank parlours (see Figure 81, foreground). Our loquacious guide was sorely perplexed here at a question naively put by one our party, as to whether this hypocaust was a first or second-class bath, and what were the prices charged by the Romans for admission? After an adroit attempt to evade the question, he was reluctantly compelled to own that our friend’s plummet had at length fathomed his store of information. We came next to a number of passages, connected with which was another hypocaust, differing from the rest in being partly formed of low parallel walls instead of rows of pillars. On the wall of this chamber, when first discovered, was an inscription in large straggling characters, incised with some sharp pointed instrument, and somewhat resembling similar inscriptions which have been found on the walls of Pompeii. Unfortunately, however, some wanton visitors destroyed this valuable relic before any copy was made, and in consequence the world has inevitably lost what gave promise of an interesting discovery. To our left was another hypocaust constructed in the usual way, the floor supported on rows of low columns of square thin bricks. In this room three skeletons were found, one of a person who it would appear died in a crouching position in one of the corners, and two others stretched the ground by the side of the wall. … In a court near this hypocaust were found the remains of a very young child, which is supposed to have been slaughtered in the room above, and thrown out into the place where it was found. The last chamber entered was of moderate dimensions and paved with small white stones about an inch square, and on the wall was some fine Mosaic work, which, however, is fast crumbling to decay. Having completed our tour of the excavations our guide led the way to a wooden shed, the interior of which reminded us of the frontispiece to Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop.59 The floor and walls were completely covered with relics of the city —Roman bricks, coins, hair pins, fibulae, bone-needles, nails, pottery, glass, and other miscellaneous articles. To us the most interesting by far was an urn containing the ashes of a Roman, with a lamp and bottle, which were always enclosed according the religious rites which regulated the burial of the dead. The common appearance of these articles, as compared with others which 59

This is seemingly the only surviving account of what was inside the site museum at this time.

133

134

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

have been discovered, prove that the ashes we saw and handled were those of a comparatively poor citizen. The guide concluded his very efficient services by giving a list of the articles found from the commencement … Bidding adieu to our guide, we strolled once more to the mound, and contemplated the ruins at our feet. Here truly were sermons in stones for all who chose to hear. Around us lay exposed the secrets of our national history in almost its remotest stage. We could tell much of the life and habits of those old Roman-Britains from these strewed and broken fragments; what food sustained their sturdy strength; what trinkets heaved upon the bosoms of their matrons; what coin their misers hoarded; what toys their children sported with; what hopes, engraven on their altars, propelled them toward the life beyond. Casting back our thoughts a dozen centuries, we pictured the city in its olden glory. Crowds were surging through its massive portals, the merry laughter fair haired damsels mingled with the discordant wail of Lazarus at the gate, and over the loud voiced hum merchandise swelled the strains of martial music … Leaving behind us the city of desolation, we sped on briskly, through Upton Magna, to Haughmond hill and Abbey. Here again were on classic ground. It was the scene of Hotspur’s fall, and those woods had echoed with the jests of Falstaff and the laughter of Prince Hal. Hastily scanning the mouldering Priory, we were again on our way, and after another stage of five miles reached Shrewsbury once again in the deepening twilight, and recounted under the shadow of the Raven’s Wing the mirth and marvel of our Christmas pilgrimage.60 The site guide, although a small and handsome volume, was not very substantial and the market demanded something that would satisfy their curiosity about the site further. Wright’s final publication on the site was long delayed – it wasn’t released until 1872 – but the gap was filled by another author, one without close connections to the site. John Corbet Anderson (1827-1907) spent most of his life living in the London suburb of Croydon but his mother’s family, the Corbets, had been based in Shropshire since the conquest.61 Before he moved to Croydon John wrote two books on Shropshire: The Early History and Antiquities of Shropshire (1864) and The Roman City of Uriconium at Wroxeter, Salop (1867). The latter volume is handsomely presented with a red morocco binding and blocked gold lettering while the author has himself provided 12 plates of views and plans of the site and its surroundings. The contents are a reworking of Wright’s own extensive notices of the site, and Corbet Anderson’s own research on the county, but his style is clear and relatively terse in comparison with the Victorian fashion for over-elaborate writing. While not in a position to be able to offer any new information, it is a useful digest although at the end of the book, in a chapter on the cemeteries, there is a long digression into the 60 61

Anon 1865. Shaw 1983, 4.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 84: John Corbet Anderson’s view of the south Shropshire Hills from the highest point of the town, north of the Old Work (visible to the right). Caer Caradoc is the right of the two conical hills, the other being the Lawley. Long Mynd is on the right, Hope Bowdler hill to the left of Lawley and Caradoc (see Figure 71). Author’s image.

arrival of Christianity into Roman Britain which is full of optimistic readings of biblical texts and their supposed connection with these islands (and even more speculatively) to Wroxeter through the names recorded on some of the tombstones. This is clearly a case of wishful thinking rather than actual evidence, but the sentiments are very much in keeping with the spirit of the times. Of perhaps more lasting interest are Corbet Anderson’s musings in the final chapter about his engagement with the site and its wider connection to the landscape: ‘ascend the mound of debris thrown up by the excavators during their recent labours, as from thence one can obtain a fine view of the surrounding scenery (Figure 84). … Here, then, let us pause to reflect upon all that may be learnt from a survey of these dismantled walls, and the relics recovered from their midst.’ He muses on the arrival of Rome, of the introduction of civilization to the area but, echoing Gibbon’s view of the Decline and Fall suggests that ‘unmanned by long submission to a foreign yoke, and its inhabitants enervated probably by luxury, Uriconium was unable to defend herself’. He returns to the present to conclude and, like others before and after him, picks up on the calm and melancholy beauty of the site and its ruins. ‘It is evening. The sun’s glorious orb is sinking slowly behind the western mountains, and his setting rays are casting their golden beams over the landscape … watch how the distant hills gradually change hue, as the shadows of evening close around. The sunlight lingers on the lofty Wrekin, until at length the

135

136

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 85: The base of the tombstone found in 1861, as drawn by Hillary Davies, the talented illustrator who recorded many of the finds from Wright’s excavations. Image © SA: PR/2/551.

mountain seems a cold-looking vast mound. Twilight and its still quietude accords with the train of reflection into which the pilgrim-visitor to the ruins of the Roman city, it may be, has fallen … Into a day-dream such as this the visitor, it may be, has fallen, when starting from his reverie he looks around, and sees through the twilight naught but a mass of ruins – the fragments of a city … the grey skeleton walls of the lonely city stand naked and exposed, as if swept with the besom of destruction.’62 Successful though the excavations by Wright had been, their continued existence was always precarious. Wright was not a man of independent means, so his own living costs had to be met from the costs of the many lectures and writings that he delivered. The money he earned did not fund the excavations which relied instead upon the income from subscribers. Wright was able to get some financial support from wealthier backers, such as the Liverpool goldsmith Joseph Mayer, but the funds generated by visitors to the site were nowhere near enough to defray the costs. He had tried to get the Treasury interested 62

Corbet Anderson 1867, 143-7.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 86: The largest of the spoil heaps at Wroxeter. The wall in the foreground is that of the macellum while behind it is the Old Work, with the Wrekin visible behind the tree. This photograph is a rare record of the mound. Photo perhaps by Francis Haverfield, ca.1908. After Page 1908, fig 12a.

in funding the continuing work once the success had become apparent to all. Not surprisingly, he got a very dusty answer: ‘we are not accustomed to give money for such purposes’ they commented and added that they ‘saw no reason for employing public money on any excavations.’63 Excavations however continued, on the ramparts by the village and on the Middle Crows Ground cemetery where a spectacular discovery was made in 1861 of the base of a legionary eaglestandard bearer’s tombstone with a poetic epitaph (Figure 85).64 The associated cremation urn is, unfortunately, not identifiable. A final season in 1867, back on the baths site, was funded solely by a generous £50 (around £6000 in 2020) donation from Joseph Mayer, the event timed to coincide with the British Archaeological Association Congress held at Ludlow that year. Unfortunately, the discoveries were underwhelming, seeming just to provide more of the same. Sir Baldwin Leighton of Loton visited since he 63 64

Wright BL MSS 33347, fol.44 (letter to Joseph Mayer, Sept. 10 1860). RIB 292 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/292 ; Scarth 1864; Tomlin 2018, 29-30.

137

138

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 87: Melancholic views of the site in the early 20th century. It is not surprising people wrote gloomy poems about the site. One view is from the museum entrance. The random stones are part of the site lapidarium – stray architectural elements encountered in excavating the site (Image © SA, James Mallinson PH/W/38/3/36). The other view shows the small enamel signs to guide the visitor, and the main spoil heap. Author’s collection, photographer unknown.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

was staying with the 6th Lord Berwick at Attingham. He records his visit of August 19th 1867 in his diary: ‘I walked over to Wroxeter one morning where they are continuing the excavations. Although much is said of the discoveries brought to light in the old city, I was on seeing it rather disappointed.65 Roach Smith in contrast wrote enthusiastically of it in the May edition of the Gentleman’s Magazine but made plain a problem that had arisen on the site entirely of the excavation’s own making. When the excavation started in 1859, the soil removed by the farm-labourers under the direction of Henry Johnson was not taken off site. It was instead piled up around to form large mounds (Figure 86). As he comments ‘these massive and fine remains … are deeply covered with earth, and the excavations are necessarily very expensive. The carting away of an enormous mound now becomes necessary, in order to develop fully the entire structures of the extensive square to which the operations have hitherto been confined. In many places people would be found too happy to cart it as manure; but the agriculturalists of the neighbourhood either do not fully estimate its value, or they are well provided with adjuncts to the cultivation of land which usually are costly, and with difficulty procured.’66 The heaps stayed on site, a continuing problem and feature for decades to come. Sustaining the site For those arriving at the site at times when excavations were not being conducted, all that was available to the visitor to experience were the ruins exposed by Wright, and the Old Work, or if they were lucky a guided tour offered by the custodian. Increasingly the site took on a mournful look with trees sprouting on the half-cleared walls and the mounds of spoil developing a verdant cover of bramble, sloe, rosebay willow herb, and hawthorn (Figure 87). Crumbling pieces of tile lay in many of the rooms, the last vestiges of hypocaust pilae stacks while the pink mortar in place on the wall, which when first exposed had carried the imprints of combed box-tiles, weathered away into a pink heap on the floor. The Wroxeter Excavation Committee, which had in 1872 relinquished the site to the Shropshire Archaeological Society, and in whose care the monument resided, had no real income to address these problems. Some evidence of their desperation to secure funds can be deduced from the startling letter reproduced within an article published in the Shrewsbury Chronicle in May 1872, announcing the hand-over of the site: Citizens of Shrewsbury—Within four miles of your doors, lies buried in its own ruins, and the accumulated dust of ages, an ancient city, the home of your forefathers, the parent of your town. From the evidence of its tombstones we have certain proof that it was in existence previous to A D. 70, when the 14th Roman 65 66

I am grateful to Brenda Gittins for supplying this reference. Smith 1868c, 665.

139

140

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Legion, which one time formed its garrison, finally left the shores of Great Britain. To preserve its venerable remains from destruction, to explore their recesses, and investigate their history, is the duty of every patriot, the wish of every scholar, the endeavour of every antiquary. And to you, who are the descendants of the men who lie entombed around them, we appeal to contribute heartily to no engaging work. It is to lift the veil from the footprints of the Caesars, to bring the first century face to face with the nineteenth—the age of the Apostles into the light of our own. Temples and altars, streets and villas, valuable inscriptions, and interesting works of art, are among the spoils that lie buried there. For the credit of your town, forbid that apathy and vandalism should prove their destruction. Aid, then, by your subscription, the small band of earnest antiquaries who are so diligently trying to raise funds for their disentombment. A few years more, and it will be too late. Citizens of Shrewsbury, are you appealed to in vain? Liverpool, May 14th, 1872. [Signed] ANGLO-ROMAN.67 The poor condition of the site evident to all visitors was of deep concern to those who managed it. Two issues can be identified. The first was the deterioration of the walls that had been disinterred (the Old Work, which had never been fully buried, was in generally excellent condition). The second was that the heaps present on the site obstructed understanding of the ruins and hindered its presentation to the public. The significant costs attached to their removal were only met in the 1950s, when the site came under the ownership of the government. Thus, when planning for further excavations elsewhere on the site at the turn of the 20th century was under consideration, agreement was sought from both the landowner and tenant that the trenches would be immediately backfilled once they had been excavated. This caution was explained by the Shropshire Archaeological Society’s Chairman, Thomas Auden, in 1911. The area of excavation ‘the buildings, pavements and so forth, the pavements particularly, unless they were of any particular interest, must be covered up again – it was the best means of preserving them.’68 The issue of conserving the ruins was an issue that was only gradually appreciated. In Wright’s day, there was little real understanding of the need for conservation of ruins that had been buried. The dominant presence of the Old Work on the site may have misled the excavators into thinking that the walls were stronger than they appeared. However, walls that are buried undergo structural changes that are not immediately apparent. The most damaging of these is the deterioration of the mortar that bonded the walls. In an age before concrete had been invented, buildings were held together with lime mortar. Roman lime mortar was very strong: mixed with volcanic 67 68

Shrewsbury Chronicle 17th May 1872. Auden 1911, x.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 88: A late 19th century view taken from a position similar to that adopted by Francis Bedford in 1859 (see Figure 78). Note the deterioration of the walls and hypocaust in just a few decades. Image © SA: PH/W/38/3/22.

sand (pozzolana) and crushed tile it took on concrete-like properties, which is why so many Roman buildings in Rome survive today, and why the vault of the Pantheon is still in place nearly 1900 years after being cast in place. However, when buried the lime mortar in a wall will leach out where it is in contact with the soil.69 The walls in Francis Bedford’s70 photographs of Wroxeter may have looked very solid, but this was not actually the case except in their very core (Figure 88). The problem was exacerbated by the harsh Shropshire winters which caused the moisture in the walls to freeze, expanding the stone and the joints between them along lines of weakness. Especially vulnerable were the wall tops, where soil and water could accumulate and freeze. Also at high risk were the tiles bonding the walls which laminated badly or spalled when water pooled on them. The deterioration affected the hypocaust pilae especially, not helped by the presence of visitors, some in fashionable broad crinoline skirts, wandering through the maze of fragile stacked tiles loosely held together with 69 70

Ashurst 2006. https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/50140/photography/1427/francis_bedford/2

141

142

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 89: Percy W. Taylor’s previously unpublished 1931 plan of the baths site at Wroxeter. Intended for the new site guide by John Morris it was not used in that publication. The mounds are prominent, and their height can be judged by the profiles below the plan. Only the walls in black were visible at this time. Note that the baths basilica is here misidentified as the [Forum] Basilica. Author’s collection.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 90: The forum excavations in 1924, around the time Henry Morton visited. The view is dominated by the tipped light-railway hopper showing a mechanised approach to getting the spoil off the site. Workmen can be seen in the trench beyond the railway while a young boy in knickerbockers and flat cap looks on. After Atkinson 1942, pl.17B.

a dab of mortar or clay. The miners mentioned already may have been at fault in the damage they wrought, but neglect and carelessness on the part of many visitors was a more serious issue. The second problem, the presence of the spoil heaps, was in theory one that was simple to resolve – they just needed to be cleared off-site – but the costs were prohibitive. They are a prominent feature of the 1920s Aerofilms aerial photographs of the site (see Figure 91) and they must have commanded the view of any visitor. While they could be taken advantage of by climbing to their summit (as Corbet Anderson had done) which would allow an appreciation of the lay out of the site, they were not visually very attractive. Whatever their shortcomings, they were a distinctive element of the character of the site in this stage of its history (see Figure 86) so it is important that there is a record of their presence. A measured drawing of them along with the ruins of the baths site and the town’s ramparts was made for a new site guide written by

143

144

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

John Morris by Percy Taylor, a professional surveyor, in 1931 but was never published (Figure 89).71 After 1867, the site returned to its usual quiet existence. Without the impetus of fresh discoveries, it was always going to be difficult to stimulate visitors to come, yet Wroxeter seems to have continued to be a popular outing, perhaps because it could be reached easily from Shrewsbury. This was even more so once cars became more available after the First World War since a visit could then be fitted in on one’s way elsewhere, as was described in Henry Lang Jones’ poem. For those who could afford the expense of running a car and were not reliant on public transport, or walking, driving into the countryside from cities became a popular pastime, an audience catered for by the popular travel books of the era such as the Shell Guides.72 A best-selling series, entitled In Search of …, were those written by the journalist and author, Henry Morton. His description of Wroxeter is in the book In Search of England which was published in 1927 and had already reached its 25th edition by 1938. On his arrival, he ‘came upon men digging a trench’ an activity which, as he says, ‘this generation knows well … and must always attract the eyes of the thoughtful. I observed several wise-looking, spectacled men standing on the parapet of the trench gazing earnestly at each spadeful of earth as it came out … on the edge of the trench lay bits of that sealing-wax red Samian pottery…radiating from the trench were other trenches and deep pits … and, most impressive of all, the roots of a row of stone pillars which once upheld the portico of Uriconium’s public buildings (Figure 90).’73 His conversation with one of the diggers – presumably one of the bespectacled overseers rather than someone actually digging – sets him to thinking about how a Roman official living in the town would have written back to his family in Rome. Dearest Mater, ‘We are making something of these natives. The wild ones we keep in the hills and the tame ones in towns. All the children here now speak Latin, and they all know the story of Romulus and Remus. You remember Marcus, who was at school with me in Rome? He is in Londinium and I hear he is going to marry one of these British girls. You must not call them painted savages, mater dear, for I may marry one myself! They are really lovely, and they get the latest fashion from Rome in ten days. We have a little Jew here who is making a fortune out of the new hair bands which all the girls of Uriconium are buying. Some of the wealthier natives live in really fine villas outside the walls, and talk like senators in the evening, when I often dine with them and show them how to mix Falernian. Life isn’t too Morris 1935. Dobie 2019, 43. 73 Morton 1938, 172-6; quote at 174-5. 71 72

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

bad in spots. Thank the pater for the vine slips, which are not growing too well, for it is so cold here at times … This imaginary letter obviously owes far more to the lived experience of an Englishman who has grown up in the Edwardian Empire and in its private schools than to any understanding of Roman Britain, or the Roman Empire. Its casual racism, and anti-semitism, is a distasteful reminder of the polarised politics of the 1920s and 30s, and of the all-too persistent myth of Empire as a ‘civilizing’ influence on ‘natives’, which ignores the brutal realities of what Empire actually means. Later, Morton went on to observe, in his private diary entry in February 1941: ‘I must say Nazi-ism has some fine qualities’ and ‘I am appalled to discover how many of Hitler’s theories appeal to me.’74 It is hardly surprising that a man like this ended his days living in Apartheid South Africa. More congenial is the account of the visit made by the Egyptologist and popular writer, Arthur Weigall, whose series of articles on ‘Wanderings in Roman Britain’ were later published as a book in 1926 having first appeared in the Daily Mail. A visitor to Wroxeter, he writes, will first encounter evidence for Victorian diggings, ‘The buildings which were thus disclosed were left exposed, and to-day, though they are overgrown with grass and flowers, the walls still reveal the general plan; and the visitor after paying his shilling at the gate of the field in which they stand, may walk from room to room and there may tread the very pavements his Roman ancestors trod. Near the standing wall of the basilica are the public baths, which may be seen today in a fairly well-preserved state and just beside them are the lavatories with a long tank behind them from which the water poured to flush the drains. Not far away are several square buildings which were probably shops and beside one of these is a section of paving made of flat bricks laid in herringbone pattern.’ He then turns to consider the current excavations. ‘Excavations are now proceeding on the west side of Watling Street, where parts of the Great Forum have been uncovered, and a length of the free colonnade which surrounded it have been found with the lower parts of the pillars all in place’ before returning to the main site. ‘On the spot here is a little tin museum and both here and in the museum at Shrewsbury, five miles away, objects found in these excavations and those discovered from time to time are to be seen.’ Inevitably, he then turns to the sad and bloody conclusion to the story: ‘Its final destruction seems to have taken place in AD 582 when the Romanised Britons who had continued to live after the legions had been withdrawn were driven out or massacred by the West Saxons … The modern excavations have provided a gruesome comment on the poet’s75 tragic lines for in one of the hypocausts or underground air passages used for heating the baths they found the skeleton of an old man hunched in the corner clasping a hoard of money. He had evidently crawled down here when wild Saxons broke into the city and 74 75

Bartholomew 2004; lines quoted in Hastings, 2004. i.e. Llywarch Hen, who was discussed elsewhere in the article.

145

146

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 91: One of the Aerofilms views of the site in 1929. The heaps are prominent on the site while in the foreground are some visitors and the pale stones of the now relocated site lapidarium. In front of them lies the newly exposed forum colonnade. A small black car by the site entrance suggests these visitors motored to the site. Image © Historic England EPW028866.

there he had died hugging his bag of 132 coins while the glory that was Rome went up around him in smoke and flame.’76 The excavations on the forum that Morton observed were covered over again except for the colonnade which can be seen prominently in the 1929 Aerofilms photographs of the site paid for by Sir Charles Marston, President of the Shropshire Archaeological Society (Figure 91).77 Visitors can be seen viewing the new addition with their car parked on the road: a man, a woman and a young girl, all peering up at the company’s circling aircraft with, to their right a solitary figure who may be the guide, in a dark suit. If so, this is almost certainly Francis Jackson, the curator of the site museum which is also clearly visible on the baths site (the two long corrugated huts). Behind the visitors, pale rectangular shapes are the ashlar blocks of stone that used to be in the open76 77

Weigall 1926. Morris 1930.

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

Figure 92: Francis Jackson (right) with his friend Charles Vernon Everall, Wroxeter’s tenant farmer, and ‘Catch of the Season’, a salmon caught in the Severn below the house in the 1920s. The building is the still-extant summer house outside the Cottage at Wroxeter. Private collection.

air site lapidarium – the collection of worked stone – which had been retrieved from the river by local archaeologist John Morris and which were thought to be the remains of Wroxeter’s Bridge.78 These now reside in the English Heritage Trust store at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. The site custodian, who lived in the hut behind the museum, did his best to keep the place tidy, as the excavation committee commented in 1881, when authorising the fence to be renewed around the site.79 In the 1930s, the 78 79

Morris 1928, 306. Auden 1881.

147

148

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

custodian was Francis Jackson (Figure 92), who, as the local archaeologist Lilian (‘Lal’) Chitty tells us, ‘used to pick up flint implements on ploughed fields around Wroxeter, including the area between Bell Brook and the Shrewsbury and Norton Roads’ only to ‘give away any specimens to young people visiting the site.’80 He was also popular with young visitors for letting them play games on the white mosaic floor left exposed by the Old Work in the 1930s. The maintenance task was beyond him: it was only formally addressed when the site came into the care of the state immediately after the Second World War. Jackson was far more interested in carrying out small-scale excavations such as that carried out on a pottery kiln in the triangular field adjacent to the north-west corner of the town’s defences, or in fishing with his friend Charles Vernon Everall, the tenant farmer at The Cottage. Given these issues of visibility, a site guide was a necessity for nearly all visitors. Wright’s version, in addition to being quite long and expensive to produce, had also left questions as to the details of how the site had developed over time (what archaeologists call phasing). When the Archaeological Institute had their meeting in Shrewsbury in 1894, they made a small grant to the society to enable ‘partial excavations for clearing up one or two doubtful points in the construction of the baths, other points also being examined in 1896 by means of the same grant.’81 The work was carried out by George E. Fox, one of the archaeologists who had been instrumental in excavating the Roman town at Silchester in Hampshire, work funded by subscription and by the Society of Antiquaries of London.82 These results were published in the Archaeological Journal,83 but he used their findings to inform the new site guide which came out in 1898. This provided a userfriendly account of Wroxeter beginning with a tour of the ruins, each room identified by a number picked out on the map. Without the guide in hand, the numbers would have been meaningless. There is then a brief discussion of the hypocaust system and of the other remains visible on site, although it is noted that ‘the soil from the excavated portion has been heaped over the courtyard and the central division, thus rendering the general arrangement difficult to understand.’84 He then briefly mentions that the ruins the visitor has been surveying is but a small fragment of the much larger town, but this is rendered invisible except for the bank and ditches forming the ramparts. The remainder of the guide launches into an elaborated version of Wright’s vision of destruction of the town and its inhabitants, pulling in poetical and historical references to give the story some context. Chitty 1949, 35-6. Fox 1897, note on p.138. 82 Stevenson 1908. 83 Fox 1897. 84 Fox 1913, 5. The guide went through 10 editions between 1898 and 1931 with little substantive variation in their content. 80 81

Writing and visiting Wroxeter

An old Welsh poem, an elegy still exstant [sic], ascribed to a bard named Llywarch Hen, who is said to have lived in the latter part of the sixth century of our era, describes, in vivid language, the destruction of a city on the Welsh border, and the slaughter of the chief to whom the city then belonged. The chieftain was named Kyndylan the Fair and his town was called by the poet ‘the Weite town in the Woodland.’ It has been sought, with great likelihood, to identify the town mentioned by the old bard, with the Roman city of Uriconium. Again, we learn from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that in the year, 584, the two Saxon chiefs, Ceawlin and Cutha, ‘fought against the Britons in the place which is called Feathen-lea (identified by Dr Guest85with Faddiley in Cheshire) and then was Cutha slain; and Ceawlin took many towns and spoils innumerable.’ One of these towns, it is conjectured, was Uriconium. The period of the poem and of the raid coincide, and both have to do with the same district. Be this as it may, one thing is certain, that the city and its inhabitants perished by fire and sword. Everywhere, when the earth which covers its remains is turned over, it is found to be black from the burning, and plain traces of the massacre of the citizens showed themselves when the ruins, amongst which the visitor strays, were excavated. Skeletons of men, women and children lay amongst the blackened walls. In their terror some of the unhappy people had sought refuge in the hollow floor of the baths. The skeleton of an old man, near whose hand lay the little treasure he hoped to save, was discovered crouched between the pillars of the hypocaust of chamber 5, and not far from him were also the skeletons of two women. The dark and narrow hiding place did not avail to save the fugitives, for the beams of the blazing roofs in their fall blocked all way of escape, and they perished stifled by the smoke of the burning buildings.86 Thus despite Fox’s disapproval of Wright’s methods of excavation noted earlier, he was more than happy to continue pedalling the myth of the destruction of Wroxeter and its associated old man in the hypocaust to the general public.

i.e. Lady Charlotte Guest (1812-1895), translator of The Mabinogion, among other works. The battle referred to is now thought to have been near Bicester, Oxfordshire. 86 Fox 1913, 11-12. This account was in all versions of the site guide until the issuing of Kathleen Kenyon’s more sober version of 1949. 85

149

Archaeology for all The half-century between 1950 and 1999 was a period of unprecedented and sustained activity at Wroxeter, especially on the site of the public baths but also elsewhere in and around the monument. Momentous change was brought about in the mid-1970s by the Department of the Environment’s decision to purchase the majority of the site from its major landowner, Lord Barnard, as a result of which the arable agricultural regime which had been in place for 1600 years ended and the land was converted to the pastoral landscape of today. Work on the baths was focused on turning the existing ruins into something that was more intelligible to the public and in doing so ensuring that the archaeology was properly understood. Unlike most of the archaeology conducted today, the work was state-funded and carried out by people from all walks of life, most of whom were not archaeologists but undertaking the work as a form of working holiday. However, a substantial number (myself included) were students who wanted to learn how to dig or hone their skills alongside experienced practitioners. Before the site’s purchase, a small number of independently minded selftaught archaeologists walked the fields and dug small trenches across the site in a spirit of adventure and exploration. It was a remarkable time and not entirely without its problematic side – much of the work was never properly published or was outright dangerous in how it was conducted – but equally some important discoveries were made. In the closing decade of this period, a last hurrah of activity saw a new model of working in which a small professional team of archaeologists based at the University of Birmingham carried out work within the town and in its hinterland carrying out a programme of 150

Archaeology for all

field survey, geophysics, and key-hole excavation recruiting and using a huge set of volunteers, working alongside professional geophysics teams, keen to take part in the discoveries. Their work resulted, for the first time, in the full characterisation of an entire town in Roman Britain. This chapter tells the story of this momentous time. Consolidation and training The end of the Second World War, with Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and facing a period of austerity that would last for years to come, was also a period of hope epitomised by the Labour landslide election of 1945. There was a determination to create a better and fairer world, and many believed that instrumental in achieving this was a policy of nationalisation of assets to enable them to be managed in the interests of society rather than for a small number of wealthy owners.1 While this policy could be applied in a relatively straight-forward manner to mines, railways and other major industries, and was a founding principle of the National Health Service, it was far less clear cut for things like the ancient monuments of Britain from which little or no profit could be generated. This, however, made it even more of an imperative to protect them in that it was perceived that the best way to safeguard Britain’s heritage was for its monuments to be taken into care by central government, rather than being left to the vagaries of private ownership.2 A programme of works, directed by the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments and administered by a directly employed workforce based on the sites, would carry out their restoration and maintenance. So it was that one of the 14 Inspectors of Ancient Monuments, Paul Baillie-Reynolds, ushered in the new era when he addressed the AGM of the Shropshire Archaeological Society in 1948 on ‘The Future of Wroxeter’. First, he outlined the plan to expose the foundations of all the buildings in the baths insula, after the earlier levels lying underneath had been examined. ‘He warned the Society against expecting early results, and said that there was a shortage of trained masons. When the work was finished, the walls would be consolidated, and the floors, as far as possible, would be at the proper level, and the remainder would be turfed.’3 A more easily effected change was a new site guide, still a thin pamphlet but branded with the Ministry’s crest.4 The text was an edited version of the small pamphlet issued by Kathleen Kenyon in 1937 and published by the Shropshire Archaeological Society which gave an account of her work on the site in 1936 and 1937 (Figure 93).5 Kynaston 2007, 139-42. Thurley 2013, 202-11. 3 Auden 1949, v. 4 Kenyon 1949. 5 Kenyon 1937. 1 2

151

152

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 93: Kathleen Kenyon at Wroxeter in July 1937. She is probably consulting the map to decide where to place the sections she dug across the defences. If so, she is very likely standing close to the junction of the Norton Road and the Horseshoe Lane, north of the main site. Image © SA PH/W/38/3/22.

In mid-November 1952, the News Chronicle journalist, Stanley Baron visited Wroxeter and wrote an article titled ‘John rebuilds a city’. In doing so he gives a vivid picture not just of the work of the then curator, John Roughead, but also of the challenges faced by the Shropshire Archaeological Society in carrying out a very basic care-and-maintenance on the site they had inherited. John Roughead lived with his wife and son in the ‘painted wooden bungalow … standing slap in the middle of a market place deserted for fifteen hundred years (see Figure 100).’6 The market place referred to here is the macellum or market hall which had been partially explored by Thomas Wright without being fully understood. It was an integral part of the baths complex, along with two rooms which Wright had interpreted as shops, one of which he said was for an enameller. These are in fact likely to have been hot-food shops or bars, well-placed for the 6 Baron 1952, pagination unknown. There is no date for the article, but the reverse of the cutting refers to a tank attack undertaken by the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards in Korea, which can only be that undertaken on the night of 18th/19th November (https://military.wikia.org/wiki/5th_Royal_Inniskilling_ Dragoon_Guards).

Archaeology for all

Figure 94: An aerial photograph of Wroxeter showing the ruins with, in the foreground, the cropmarks of a Roman town house, site of Kenyon and Webster’s excavations in 1952 and ‘53. The white rectangles are the concrete bases of World War 2 huts. Image © CUCAP AV53, June 27, 1948.

constant traffic on the adjacent Watling Street and the clientele visiting both macellum and baths. Baron describes the scene: ‘crouching under a canvas canopy keeping out wind and weather that roared and beat with as much force as ever they did in AD 48, he picked out the crumbling cement from a bath-room’s semi-circular walls. This loosened a Roman brick – very much like a flat tile, about 1½in. thick by 18in. by 12in. Cannily he extracted it, turned it about so that the good edge, formerly inside, was brought to the front, then re-cemented it with a mixture of river sand, gravel and lime. “It’s exactly the same cement as the Romans used’ he said. When a brick is too far gone to be used again, John puts in a substitute of the same size and kind. But they are not many.’ John himself recognised the scale of the problem: ‘If I lived to be 100 and six generations of my family all turned masons we’d still have work to do.’ An aerial photograph, taken by J. K. St Joseph (‘Holy Joe’) of the Cambridge University Committee for Aerial Archaeology in the summer of 1948 shows the site as it looked then – still very dilapidated but with additional concrete platforms for huts left behind by the small wartime searchlight garrison (Figure 94).

153

154

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

The concrete platforms were not the only reminder of wartime. In the fields closer to the village was evidence of a more dramatic episode – the bombing of Wroxeter, on 12th March 1941 – visible as a single surviving crater in the glebe field. An eyewitness account of the event survives in the county archives in the form a letter written to Henrietta Auden, Secretary of the Shropshire Archaeological Society by Francis Jackson, custodian of the site. His account reveals some surprising details about the raid: March 16th 1941 Wroxeter, Shrewsbury Dear Miss Auden, I expect you have probably heard we had our first visit of German bombers here last Wednesday evening [i.e. 12th March]. I was out in the road watching the German bombers passing over when one bomber made a dive out of a cloud. He was very low down, just skimming the museum. He dropped four heavy bombs one falling on the road by the cottages, the other three in the vicarage [i.e. glebe] field. No-one was hurt one soldier being taken to hospital with shell shock. The tents [of the searchlight battery crew who camped in the glebe fields] were missed by 50 yards. One window in the museum is smashed. A considerable amount of masonry fell from the Great Wall. I have had to rearrange my cases in the museum. Everything was tumbled over and thrown about. Not much being broken. The craters revealed nothing of interest except broken Roman pottery. One of them is filled with water. Mr Everall’s lawn and house was covered by falling stones and bomb splinters [Brian Everall, then 15, delighted describing to his nieces ever-after how he was blown out of bed by the explosions]. I have a fine specimen of bomb casing on show in the museum. It fell in the road near me as I was watching the show. It seems strange the military authorities should wish to destroy Wroxeter. Their camp is in the midst of the village quite surrounded by houses with empty fields for miles around. The basilica wall is the finest in England, but they intend to break it down. Of course, these visits of German bombers are unpleasant and noisy, but I much prefer them to those of Miss Kenyon. With kind regard, Yours sincerely, Francis Jackson.7 I was told of this event in the 1990s by Roy Rogers, the postmistress’ husband and, not quite believing it had happened, went to look for the crater he assured me survived on the glebe lands, which it still does. The startling throw-away comment at the end of the letter reminds us that the general perception of 7

Jackson 1941 SA 6000/18561.

Archaeology for all

Kathleen Kenyon was as une dame formidable. Jackson’s reluctance to engage with her was shared by many in the Archaeological Society and the student diggers from her 1952 excavation who directly admitted as much when I asked them about it. Partly this was to do with her reluctance to suffer fools gladly, but one suspects that it may also have been a reflection on her life choice not to marry and to live with another woman. The subject is much discussed, and these days who really cares what the nature of their relationship was, but should not distract us from her real qualities as a successful excavator, publisher, and don.8 Her fearsome reputation may be much more to do with how hard it was for any woman to prosper in her chosen profession in a world where men held all the control levers for promotion and grants, even though she was from a landed gentry background and had the aid and support of her father, Sir George Kenyon, Director of the British Museum from 1909-1931. Certainly, her nephew Simon Kenyon-Slaney told me that she was kind and gentle to her family. Work was initially slow to get underway on the ruins but 1952 was, in retrospect, a momentous year for Wroxeter. Work began in earnest on the site with a new team of workers being recruited to aid John Roughead’s efforts. These were the directly employed workforce promised by BaillieReynolds who began work on clearing the huge spoil heaps and consolidating the walls. Their practices for the latter evolved into something more radical than John’s methods. They adopted cement, coloured to match the mortar on site, but unfortunately far too hard for the soft red Keele Beds sandstone used by the Romans. The result in places has been severe erosion of the fabric of the walls in the following 60 years; they would have done better to listen to John whose use of lime mortar was the correct approach. Similarly, instead of carefully reusing tiles, new ones were made that matched the dimensions but not the colour of the originals. The new tiles were much harder too, more appropriate for use with cement perhaps but significantly altering the colour palette of the site. These new tiles can be spotted at ground level in the walls of the current site so must mean that in places entire wall facings were taken down and rebuilt in facsimile. To supplement this stone source, the workmen accessed a heap of stones recovered from the excavations and used these as a quarry for repairing the walls. While the stones are thus authentic to the site, the end result can be highly misleading (see Figure 112).9 It was an approach that received criticism even at the time. In a letter written in 1948 by James Lees-Milne, the acerbic architectural historian who worked with the National Davis 2008, 83-4. This biography gives a balanced and rounded account of K.K., a good corrective to her image. 9 This stone heap was in latter days situated just south of the chain link fence, near the gate into the field. While it was mostly cleared away, it still partly survives, a trap to mislead archaeologists of the future. 8

155

156

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 95: The iron column needlessly supporting the Old Work at the turn of the 20th century. Image © SA, Mallinson 607 PH/W/38/3/31. For the ugly concrete post doing the same job, see Figure 98.

Trust to negotiate the acquisition of country houses for them, he criticises the conservation approach adopted on archaeological sites in which ‘workmen … take every stone down, and obviously they do not necessarily put them back in the same order’.10 The goal here was to follow the then-current practice to recreate the exact appearance of the site as it was when first acquired by the state.11 Full or even partial reconstruction of the site was anathema, in line with the William Morris and Philip Webb penned ‘Manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings’ (SPAB), published in 1877.12 Richard Morris has commented that William Morris and John Ruskin, another leading light in SPAB, viewed the manifesto as having ‘at its heart … the idea that buildings and monuments of earlier ages evoke melancholy, an emotion then held to be purer and deeper than joy and to be a stimulant to imaginative consciousness.’13 As we have seen from the writings, paintings and poetry inspired by a melancholic Wroxeter, this does have more than a grain of truth to it. 10 Letter quoted by Jason Wood in Esmonde Cleary, Wood and Durham 2022, 14. Lees-Milne was writing about Chedworth Roman villa so the practice was not confined to Ministry workmen. 11 Thompson 1981. 12 https://www.spab.org.uk/about-us/spab-manifesto 13 Morris 2013, 66

Archaeology for all

Figure 96: Graham Webster, surveying in obviously inclement summer weather in September 1952. His Vespa is nowhere in sight. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook).

Particular concern was directed at the Old Work which, however, was basically sound; it only needed repointing, which occurred in 1964 when the wall was scaffolded for the purpose. A crack had for years been visible in the middle of the doorway (it is still there but now patched with cement). It prompted the insertion of first a cast iron column to support the wall (Figure 95), which was then replaced by an ugly cast concrete monolith sometime in the early 20th century. This was left in place by the Ministry’s men, but for good measure they dug a hole at the southern end of the Old Work and needlessly underpinned the end with concrete.14 The concrete pillar was finally removed in the 1960s when 14

Barker et al. 1997, 33, fig.35.

157

158

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

it was pointed out that there was a gap between its top and the Old Work: it was supporting fresh air. The other Wroxeter event of 1952 was the initiation of a training excavation from 6th-20th September on the Roman town house immediately south of the baths that had been photographed by St Joseph in 1948.15 The director of the excavations was Kathleen Kenyon, who had dug on the baths site and in the old turnip field in 1936-7, but she recruited Graham Webster of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, as her assistant (Figure 96). The excavations were run as a training dig based at nearby Attingham Park, at that time the base for the Attingham Park summer schools run by Sir George Trevelyan on behalf of the Shropshire Adult College, who held the post of Warden there.16 He was an extraordinary character, a pioneering educationalist seen by some as one of the founders of the New Age movement, but his principal vision at Attingham was the provision of a broad range of Adult Education programmes, obviously including the archaeology summer schools run in conjunction with the University of Birmingham Extra Mural Department. Returning from Jericho to run the excavation Kenyon commented that she was confronted ‘with a howling mob of 70 students, all complete beginners, in pouring rain.’17 In fact, 63 attended in the first week and 70 in the second. Two of its attendees were Mr F. Wyatt and Mrs E.F. Wyatt who compiled a scrapbook of their experiences – the cutting by Stanley Baron quoted above is one example of its contents.18 Also on the team were an enthusiastic group of pupils from Priory School led by their classics teacher, Bernard Wilmott and including Gareth WynJones and Peter Reynolds later a noted experimental archaeologist, who, not having much truck with the ‘rotten Romans’19 despite a career initially as a Classics teacher, went on to found Butser Iron-Age farm in Hampshire.20 Photos show them in the trenches, but also building a human pyramid outside the custodian’s house (Figure 97). As one of their number tells me ‘we enjoyed talking to two local characters who worked on the site; Alf [Crow], who ran the ticket office and enjoyed comparing us with idiots in that we were spending our holidays labouring at the site and even paying for the priviledge (sic.). One of his mates was George, who prided himself on being able to build Roman walls’.21 The schoolboys camped under the trees at Attingham park when not digging and composed ‘irreverent ditties’ Sladdin 1953; Kenyon 1980. https://www.sirgeorgetrevelyan.org.uk/attingham/ (Accessed 25/7/20). 17 Davis 2008, 135. 18 The scrapbook is currently in the possession of the author. 19 Aston 2001. 20 Reynolds 1979. 21 Gareth Wyn Jones, in litt. Oct. 2020 (author’s collection). I wonder if George was in fact john Roughead, although there was a George on the maintenance team in the 1960s. 15 16

Archaeology for all

Figure 97: The Priory schoolchildren at Wroxeter, 1952. Top: a posed photo taken for the Shrewsbury Chronicle showing the Priory boys surveying. Gareth Wyn Jones is second from the right. Middle: The human pyramid – Peter Reynolds is bottom row, centre. Beyond are the custodian’s house (right) and museum (left). Bottom: lunch on the spoil heap. Mr Wilmott is looking directly at the camera; the students are apparently lustily singing one of their ditties. Digital scans supplied by G. WynJones, 2021.

159

160

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

gently mocking those running the dig while eating their packed lunches on Wright’s spoil heaps. ‘One of these ran as follows (to the tune of Waltzing Matilda): Once a jolly Webster came to Uriconium On his little Vespa – a learner was he And he sang as he dug and hunted on that Roman site, I’ve got a matchstick, Miss Kenyon, with me (followed by the chorus in four-part harmony) I’ve got a matchstick, I’ve got a matchstick ….etc.22 We had a ditty for Dr. Kenyon too, which I have forgotten except for the line ‘She keeps it in her bottom drawer’ – a scurrilous reference to where she tucked her handkerchief when not in use!’23 The new excavation prompted the visit of a ‘Special Correspondent’ from the Manchester Guardian whose report – another cutting – was published on 18th September 1952. As ever, the dig had to be squeezed into the time after harvesting, but before the ploughing and seeding for the new season. The journalist surveys the diggers enthusiastically cleaning Roman pottery and, more alarmingly, inspected around 50 coins that were ‘being brightened up in the cleaning hut with a citric acid wash.’, not a procedure that would be used today. The Guardian’s accompanying photographer24 took a number of photos of the dig, two of which were used in the article but also another one that usefully records the freshly consolidated masonry of the baths, new mortar gleaming whitely when not covered by sacking and with the workmen’s tools and jackets scattered about (Figure 98). The site has already gained the familiar appearance of a Ministry of Works site: consolidated ruins set within manicured lawns. The result was not favoured by all. The writer and artist Jean Peace, visiting one late February day from Stafford, commented that ‘Viroconium … lies as secure from the rough winds as the bones of its people. I stood on a neat square of well-kept grass in the centre of the white town in the valley. The Ministry of Work’s green huts and the custodian’s squat bungalow obscured the view and spoiled the vision. I turned my back on them and looked across lawns and thick low walls at various levels towards the ’fine upstanding fragment of masonry’ called the Old Work of Wroxeter, an enduring county name to describe exactly the strong Roman arches, the buttresses and the course of red tiles laid regularly among the rough massive stones … The wind blew bitterly across the Shropshire plain, across the flooding Severn river. The white Ministry of Works’ leaflet flapped in my cold hands as I tried to turn the pages and discover where Wyn Jones told the author that the matchstick was used by Graham when advising students on how to clean pottery without marking the surfaces. 23 Wyn Jones 2020. 24 Unidentified in the article but suggested to be Tom Stuttard by The Guardian’s current archivist, Richard Nelsson in an email to the author on 10th December 2021. 22

Archaeology for all

Figure 98: The Manchester Guardian photographer’s view of the freshly consolidated ruins at Wroxeter in September 1952. The impact of the Ministry of Works is already apparent. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook).

I was upon a baffling plan which spelled the words HYPOCAVST, FOVNTADATIONS and SVPERSTRVCTVRE, with the Roman V … The Wrekin, seen from within the broken walls of the Roman city, rising high and grey over the Old Work, had a watchful quality … I could feel the hostile presence of the Cornovii still there. Their hard suspicious way with strangers can still be encountered all about the plain.’25 Christopher Woodward echoes such bleak assessment of the effects of consolidation. He has commented on his visit to the cleaned and consolidated magnificent ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome where he was warned off straying from the designated path: ‘I want to tell them that a ruin has two values. It has an objective value as an assemblage of brick and stone, and it has a subjective value as an inspiration to artists. … If the archaeologists had arrived before Shelley there would be no Prometheus Unbound.’26 The Wyatts (Figure 99) fortunately kept everything for their scrapbook so we know too that they returned to Attingham on two separate occasions. The first occasion was in November 1954 for a reunion weekend of lectures provided jointly by the Shropshire Adult College and the Department of Extra-Mural 25 26

Peace 1966, 20. Woodward 2001, 69.

161

162

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 99: The Wyatts excavating at Wroxeter. Their digging attire is notably formal, even for the time. The Priory schoolboy behind them gives a more accurate idea of what the new generation of diggers usually wore. Author’s collection (ex Wyatt scrapbook).

Studies which included lectures on Mithras by Donald Dudley and Discoveries in London, delivered by W.F. Grimes, who had only weeks before found the Temple of Mithras in the City, now reopened as the London Mithraeum in the Bloomberg building. (The Wyatts had visited that excavation too and taken some photographs which have been passed on to the Museum of London.) Two lectures were contributed by Kathleen Kenyon, on the Iron Age in Shropshire, and on Jericho where she had just embarked on her ground-breaking discoveries. She then co-presented a lecture on the discoveries at Wroxeter in 1952-3 with Graham Webster, still at that time Curator of the Grosvenor

Archaeology for all

Figure 100: A view of the custodian’s house (with the chimney), the site museum behind it, and the entrance booth taken in the late 1950s, as indicated by the freshly consolidated ruins to the right and the poplars by the colonnade which have rapidly grown. The spoil heaps have also (finally) been removed. Extreme right is 1 & 2 The Ruins, then still in use as tenants’ houses. Author’s collection.

Museum, Chester, who had been her able assistant on the excavations (see Figure 96). Soon after this event, he was recruited by Donald Dudley to become Tutor in Roman Archaeology in the Department at Birmingham and would go on to run the Wroxeter Training excavation for a further 26 years.27 It is in this role that he reappears for the second event the Wyatts attended, another reunion lecture, this time in February 1957. This course was much more geared to Roman Britain and culminated at 2pm on Sunday 10th February in a ‘solemn pilgrimage to Wroxeter to view the dump now conspicuous by its absence and the newly, splendidly arranged, museum’ (Figure 100). The numbers attending the training excavations run by first Kathleen Kenyon and then by Graham Webster tell of the much broader societal interest and engagement in archaeology by the public in the aftermath of the war. It was manifest in the astonishing queues to view the Temple of Mithras in bombedout London, and in the foundation in 1944 of the Council for British Archaeology which still provides a voice for amateur and professional archaeologists alike.28 27 28

Webster 2002, 1. The term amateur here is used in the sense of those who undertake archaeology without being employed

163

164

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 101: Philip Barker (second from right) with University of Birmingham Extra Mural colleague Stan Stanford (extreme left) and Shropshire associates, including Ernie Jenks (extreme right). Taken during the Smethcott Castle excavation, 1956-8. Image courtesy of the Barker family.

The CBA’s annual Calendar of Excavations provided a forum for advertising for diggers and many joined, especially those run by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works / Department of Environment in the 1960s and ’70s that paid diggers a small wage for working on their excavations. The popularity of archaeology was reflected too in the growth of the county archaeological societies, many of which had been founded in the Victorian era but whose numbers of members increased markedly in the post-war decades. Some of the larger and well-funded societies ran their own excavations, and even archaeological sites, as was the case with the Sussex Archaeological Society who still own and run the Fishbourne Roman Palace site (among others).29 While Shropshire’s Archaeological and Historical Society could not compete financially with counties like Sussex it nonetheless had a robust membership some of whom actively engaged in practical archaeology. The quality of work could be highly variable though ranging from the inspiring and innovative Philip Barker, art teacher at Priory Grammar School in Shrewsbury (Figure in the sector, as opposed to those who earn a living from it. The word avocational is sometimes used to describe the same group. On the CBA, see https://new.archaeologyuk.org/about-us/ 29 https://sussexpast.co.uk/about-us

Archaeology for all

101),30 who (like Graham Webster) was largely an auto-didact when it came to archaeology, through to the more variable work produced by other local archaeologists. At Wroxeter, the most energetic of these local archaeologists was John Houghton. The Enthusiasts John Houghton M.D. was a consultant at Royal Salop Infirmary and other hospitals but in the 1950s he had been one of Graham’s students on the Extra-Mural courses and excavations.31 He set up the Roman Research Group which included other local like-minded researchers, including John Pagett of Wellington, Malcolm Dutton, Beth Bishop from Cirencester and Ernie Jenks of Bayston Hill. Members of the same group also traced Roman roads across the county. Houghton’s work at Wroxeter was extensive and varied. In the mid1950s he commissioned Malcolm Aitkin, who designed the first magnetometer for archaeological survey, to use the instrument to search for a tile kiln on the alluvial flood plain below the river cliff at Wroxeter,32 he salvaged a pottery kiln at the confluence of the rivers Tern and Severn, close to the 1798 discovery of the glass urns. He dug a Roman cistern close to the eastern rampart, trenched the site of a town house by the south-east gate, and investigated a glassworks and road on what had been William Oatley’s farm in Wroxeter village, a site next to Topsy Cottage. He also investigated the last remnants of the Middle Crows Ground cemetery, proving that by the 1970s it had been ploughed away. At the time this work needed no permissions to be carried out – only the agreement of the tenant farmer and landowner. The group also carried out extensive field walking of the fields overlying the town, reporting their finds (but not in a systematic way) to Graham Webster.33 I saw his last excavation at Wroxeter in 1976: an attempt to locate the putative harbour south of the Wroxeter ford and close to the auxiliary fort.34 It was a hair-raising experience even for one as green as I was. Although it was dug in the drought year, and the River Severn was very low, the trench was cut into the river silts with little shoring, the only way into the site being steps cut into the silt in the manner used by Kenyon to access her Jericho trenches. The sides did not collapse or flood, but he had been less fortunate in 1963 when he and the historian and Shrewsbury School Librarian James Lawson were trapped when a trench they were digging close to the Bell Brook collapsed in on them. John was buried up to his waist, an horrific experience made worse by the belief that his colleague On Phil’s early career in Shropshire, see Lawson et al 2006, and White 2006. White 2006, 166-7 – references are provided there to his other excavations. 32 Houghton 1961; White, Gaffney and Gaffney 2013, 6. 33 Notebooks of some of the discoveries were kept by Malcolm Dutton and are now in the Shropshire Museum archive. 34 Houghton 1977. 30 31

165

166

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

was likely dead in the trench below him. Fortunately, Jill Lawson, James’ wife, who had been away from the site returned and was able to raise the alarm. Even more fortunately, James had survived in an air pocket and was unharmed, although understandably he has never set foot in an excavation trench again.35 As archaeologists we sometimes grumble about health and safety regulations, but they are there for a reason. Many of John’s excavations were never adequately published by him. His record keeping was minimal and the finds, idiosyncratically and enigmatically labelled, were difficult to interpret so much of their context was lost. This was not unusual for the period since he had no formal training in archaeology and, in any case, there was no established way of recording excavations. Each excavator developed their own methods as they saw fit, some better than others.36 Later, after the Department of the Environment had put an end to his excavations on the site, John was a regular visitor at Phil and Graham’s excavations at Wroxeter where he would cause alarm among the staff by his habit of stomping towards Phil leaning on his walking stick (a legacy of his 1963 accident) to talk to him regardless of the fragility of the surfaces he was crossing and the presence of designated paths. In parallel with the enthusiastic diggers were the aerial archaeologists who did so much to discover whole archaeological landscapes, as well as much of the plan of Wroxeter, from the air. Mention has already been made of J.K. St Joseph, but he was not included in this group since he was employed by the Cambridge University Committee for Aerial Photography (CUCAP). More typical were Jim Pickering, Derrick Riley, and, for Wroxeter especially, Arnold Baker (Figures 102 and 103). All were colourful characters typical of their generation. Jim Pickering was a wartime fighter pilot – he had flown Hurricanes and Sea Gladiators in the Siege of Malta – but saw active service throughout the war. He continued as an RAF Volunteer Reserve pilot until he was 60, given exceptional dispensation by the RAF to do so. As an archaeological pilot, it has been speculated that his motivation to do this work was his love of flying, the realisation of the rate of destruction of the archaeological landscape through agriculture and quarrying, especially on the lighter sands and gravels, and the thrill of the hunt (Figure 104).37 Derrick Riley had aspired to be an archaeologist as early as 1932 but after wartime service on Whitleys, Wellingtons, and Mosquitos with Bomber Command he moved into the steel industry. When he took early retirement in 1977 he set about carrying out extensive programmes of aerial reconnaissance in eastern England and in Jordan, employed as a Lecturer at the University of Sheffield.38 Arnold Baker had worked for the Defence Research Establishment Shropshire Star July 1963. Some account of the unpublished excavations can be found in Ellis and White 2006. 37 Hartley 2016. For a summary biography, see http://www.hinckleypastpresent.org/jamespickering.html 38 https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100421615 35 36

Archaeology for all

Figure 102: Arnold Baker, standing beside his RAF surplus DH82a Tiger Moth and Series 1 Land Rover in the 1950s. Photographer and date unknown; image from Baker 1992.

Figure 103: A classic Arnold Baker oblique, taken in 1975 (SJ563083-201). The house on the left is The Cottage while the baths site is just visible in the top right corner. The triangular field filled with cropmarks are the buildings excavated 1912-14 by Bushe-Fox – the white square is the temple uncovered in 1914 (see Figure 34). Author’s collection.

167

168

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 104: A photo by Jim Pickering of the excavations underway in 1964. The box-trenches dug by Graham Webster are evident, as are the partly consolidated ruins of the site with the Old Work under scaffold. The modern huts on the left are those provided by the University of Birmingham to host the student excavations. On the upper right the full extent of Wroxeter Farm can be seen, along with the Wroxeter Post Office on the opposite corner. Image © SA: PH/W/38/1/6.

on the perfection of Airborne Intercept radar, i.e. radar fitted to night fighters, based initially at Worth Matravers in Dorset but hastily moved to Malvern in 1942 after the Bruneval Raid had demonstrated the vulnerability of locating radar sites on the coast.39 Soberingly, before the move, he had witnessed the destruction of an enemy bomber in one of the first successful trials of the equipment.40 After the war, Arnold learnt to fly and being based at Malvern, the terrain of Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire became his principal research areas.41 The commendable enthusiasm of the post-war generation’s engagement in archaeology was in some respects a double-edged sword. As we have seen, Johnson 1978, 98. A. Baker, pers. comm. March 2009. 41 White, Gaffney and Gaffney 2013, 5; Baker 1992. 39 40

Archaeology for all

Figure 105: A view of diggers on Graham’s site at Wroxeter in 1964 or 5. Among them must be prisoners from HMP Drake Hall, hence the presence of a Warder (centre). Photograph by Sheila Broomfield in Author’s collection.

before Baillie-Reynold’s promise could be realised, remedial work had to be carried out. This was well underway in 1952, but immediately over the fence, on the training excavation being run by Kenyon and Webster, Graham Webster spotted a problem and an opportunity. The problem was that the reconstruction of walls, and the clearance of debris to rebuild them, was damaging the underlying archaeology.42 Plainly, the assumption had been that the site’s history was known, that there was no need for further archaeological work because it had already been carried out. He was able to persuade the Inspector that this was not the case, and that rather than the public purse funding excavations, he could take them on as a training excavation: the diggers would help to cover the costs. The agreement of the Ministry of Works was to provide logistical support and funds to employ a parallel workforce to operate in those weeks to help support the students on the training excavation, including on occasion prisoners from HMP Drake Hall, an open-prison in Staffordshire (Figure 105). The arrangement was an important recognition that works related to consolidation and presentation of a monument to the public might 42

Webster 2002, 13; White 2006, 167.

169

170

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 106: The University of Birmingham brochure produced to commemorate the opening of the Sir Charles Foyle Centre at Wroxeter, and the Field Studies Centre at Preston Montford, Shrewsbury. Author’s collection.

Archaeology for all

Figure 107: A view by Charles Daniels, one of Graham Webster’s supervisors, of the trying conditions of the 1966 excavation in the piscina area. Note the propped-up walls and shoring holding back the spoil. Charles Daniels archive.

also legitimately have a research element to them as well.43 The University of Birmingham played its part in encouraging the establishment of a field centre, named after Sir Charles Foyle, who had funded the construction of two timber huts to act as the training excavation headquarters. The buildings were opened by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1958, recognising his celebrity status, but also fitting due to his pre-Great War involvement with the site (Figure 106).44 The down-side to the decision to embark on an archaeological programme of research alongside consolidation was that it inevitably slowed down the timetable, particularly since this was an open-ended excavation in terms of its timing. There was no project design through which, to a costed budget and fixed timetable, the site would be progressed to a successful completion. Nonetheless, work continued steadily on the site, focusing on the baths and, from the 1960s, exposing the main suite. As fresh archaeology was uncovered a programme of consolidation of the site ruins was enacted by the site team so the newly exposed ruins did not suffer from the deterioration that was seen in Ellis 2000, 6-7. The use of prisoners on excavations was still common into the 1970s – I worked with some at Coppergate in York in 1979. 44 University of Birmingham 1958. 43

171

172

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 108: A photograph by Charles Daniels of the main praefurnium of the baths as first uncovered in 1967, and its consolidated state today. While the work is radical in its impact, it was also necessary in that the poor state of the masonry in the upper photograph shows how fragile these remains were. Charles Daniels Archive A1201.68 and author, August 2020.

Archaeology for all

the 19th century. Undertaking excavation while the site was being consolidated did pose severe logistical challenges (Figure 107). Furthermore, while this consolidation was essential it was also quite aggressive to the surviving remains and has led in the end to something quite bland and clearly modern, as can be seen from comparison between photographs of what was excavated afresh in the 1960s and what it looks like now (Figure 108). In consequence, much of the character and charm of the old site was lost. From 1966, work expanded to the north, into the old turnip field, the catalyst for this being an excavation carried out in advance of the construction of a new custodian’s bungalow. When Phil Barker found the remains of an ephemeral building on the site, and in the same year observed what appeared to be footprint of a huge building in the large trench opened on the floor area of the basilica, he successfully persuaded the Inspectors that the whole of the baths basilica area needed to be treated with a great deal more circumspection.45 Thus, from 1966 until 1985, when Graham Webster retired and his excavation ended, two excavations were run at Wroxeter for five-week long seasons, financed almost in their entirety by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works (MPBW) which then became the Department of the Environment in 1970.46 This was a major research, and financial, investment which had an undoubted intellectual impact on Romano-British studies. The discovery of the legionary fortress beneath the Roman city by Graham Webster in 1975, and the late sequence of occupation recognised by Phil Barker at around the same time were seminal events in changing attitudes and assumptions about RomanoBritish archaeology (especially in the case of Barker’s excavation, even though the exact date and nature of the late occupation is still debated).47 The digging teams continued to be varied and enthusiastic, ranging from Prince Edward (in 1984) to university students, Americans engaged in gap-year work as well as the locals who generally tended to gravitate towards Graham’s site where they had long been established (Figures 109 and 110). What they often held in common was that they were not professional archaeologists, although there were many archaeological students among their number. The presence of 150 people on the site every year for five weeks over two decades also had an economic impact. The survival of the village’s post office, and nearby pubs, for instance, was made possible by the trade brought in by the regular presence of the excavation.48

Barker et al. 1997, 2-6. A concise summary of the evolution of the government bodies is provided here: https://discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C12264465 The MPBW came into existence in 1962. 47 Barker et al. 1997; Ellis 2000; Webster 2002. 48 Everill and White 2011. 45 46

173

174

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 109: The traditional group photo of the excavation team for the Baths Basilica site in 1984 with, in the left centre, Prince Edward (above the X). To his left is his tutor, Dr Kate Pretty, Deputy Director of the site. Many of the others present returned to the excavation year after year. Photo by Sidney Renow (who is holding the X). Author’s collection.

An enlightened intervention The government expenditure, and commitment to Wroxeter from the late 1960s, gained considerable further energy from an unanticipated development in the early years of the 1970s. A distinction that few visitors to the site are aware of is that the monument is owned by the State but is administered jointly by English Heritage Trust and Historic England, with the former directly managing the area visited by the public. The exceptions to this are the areas privately owned in and around the village, and fields in the north-western part of the monument that belong to the National Trust-owned Berwick Estate at Attingham Park.49 This latter division is historic. Since at least the 18th century, the site was divided between the Berwick Estate and the neighbouring Duke of Cleveland’s Estate (which became the Raby Estate of Lord Barnard when the title of the Duke of Cleveland lapsed). The latter owns extensive lands running 49

White, Marriot and Reid 2010 figure 2.1.

Archaeology for all

Figure 110: The Macellum excavation in 1975. The custodian’s house, site museum and poplars have gone. The team are focused on the remains in the herringbone-tiled courtyard. The two men at the back, in hats, are Tim Strickland, Graham’s senior site supervisor and Prof Tony Barratt formerly of University of British Colombia. Author’s collection via Frank and Nancy Ball; photo by Graham Webster.

from Wroxeter all the way to the Wrekin. Wroxeter was a valuable part of this estate since it was widely recognised that it was very productive agricultural land. In the early 1970s, there was a growing awareness that the continued farming at the site was causing damage and that the best option would be to purchase the site to protect it. The Department of the Environment negotiated with John Vane, 11th Baron Barnard, and the site of the town was sold to the state, the deal being finalised in early 1974.50 Following agreement with the Everalls, the tenant farmers, the active ploughing of the site was phased out after the mid-1970s and the site was turned over to pasture thus preventing the underlying archaeology from further damage by increasingly heavy and efficient farm machinery. Included within the deal was ownership of a number of buildings: houses in the village that had been built by the Raby estate for its tenants and workers as well as the model farm complex opposite the baths and its adjacent cottage, 1 & 2 The Ruins (see Figure 104). 50

Toms 1973.

175

176

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 111: The plan for a new Wroxeter, as envisaged in the 1976 DoE feasability study. It was never agreed or implemented and will never be realised in this format. Note the new (and improbable) line for the B4380 Shrewsbury to Ironbridge road curving around the northern half of the city. The proposed extension of the display area would have closed the road running down towards the village, which is disingenuously not shown on this map but occupies the southern end of the plan, adjacent to the area marked Private. After P. White 1976.

Archaeology for all

Having acquired the site, the Department of the Environment (within which the Inspectorate was situated), commissioned a feasibility study on how the site might be developed in future. The final report, which was sent out for limited consultation, makes startling reading today (Figure 111).51 The model farm and its associated cottages were to be converted to become respectively a museum and a headquarters for the new developments, with the cottages knocked together to provide accommodation for the curator. The modern road running through the heart of the site, the modern-day successor to Watling Street was to be closed and removed allowing the centre of the Roman town to be fully exposed. With the baths completely uncovered and consolidated, the forum and the town houses excavated by Atkinson and Bushe-Fox respectively were to be dis-interred and prepared for public display. The overall effect would have been an archaeological park exposing much of the historic core of the city. The rest of the city was to be made more accessible by diverting the B4380 Ironbridge road around the northern perimeter of the site allowing visitors to ramble more freely, and safely, across the site. Opposition in the village was, not surprisingly, strong since there were a number of businesses, principally agricultural, that relied on the modern road through the site, but the costs would have been very high too. Astonishingly, the idea was not new. In October 1860 the Eddoes Journal and Advertiser reprinted the following observation from the Daily Telegraph: “We feel assured, therefore, that if a parliamentary grant were to be made for carrying on and completing the excavations at Uriconium, walling round the city, and restoring it as far as possible to its ancient condition, it would be viewed with warm approval by the country. … In order to give all that remains of Uriconium to the public, arrangements could surely made for making the high road skirt its ancient walls, instead of traversing, as it is now said to do, the middle of the Forum, so as to render it impracticable to throw open that centre of ancient municipal life.’52 In response to the 1970s feasibility study, local government commented that it would generate too many visitors, putting undue pressure on a rural area. This now reads rather strangely in an era when Attingham Park, less than a mile way, currently gets a half a million visitors per annum.53 The proposal required a level of commitment from government in terms of management of infrastructure and investment in archaeology that, increasingly, could not be relied upon, and especially so after the election of Margaret Thatcher’s administration in 1979. The pendulum of state management of heritage sites had reached its furthest swing – the trend now would be entirely in the opposite direction.54 Funding continued on the baths site, and 1 & 2 The Ruins were converted, not to become White 1976. Eddoes Journal 31/10/1860. 53 https://www.shropshirestar.com/entertainment/attractions/2019/03/11/visitor-figures-soar-to-half-amillion-at-attingham-park/ 54 Thurley 2013, 249-50. 51 52

177

178

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

the curator’s house but the headquarters of the excavation and post-excavation team until that project was completed in 1993.

Figure 112: Mal, one of the Directly Employed Labour force, constructing one of the missing walls of the macellum on a foundation of crushed stone in May 1989. The stone has been retrieved from the site stone heap kept for just this purpose. Author’s photo May 1989.

With the retirement from the University of Birmingham first of Graham Webster in 1980 and then Philip Barker in 1986, archaeological work on the baths site was clearly coming to an end although the last full season for both sites was 1985 and the training excavation was run on the baths basilica site until 1990. The final touches were put to the consolidation of the baths and macellum, including the laying out of walls that had been completely robbed out to make the resulting plan more intelligible (Figure 112).

The same strategy was adopted on the baths basilica site. Phil Barker had, towards the end of the excavation, attempted to persuade English Heritage, as they had now become, to turn the exposed floor of the basilica into a visitor attraction by covering it with a modern steel-and-glass building with a glass floor through which the underlying archaeology would be visible. There is no doubt that any such solution would have been visually very intrusive in the landscape, and especially so on the Old Work which would have somehow had to have been incorporated into the new structure (Figure 113). Such a solution would also have been very expensive and might well have posed significant technical and environmental challenges, such as algal growth on the exposed surfaces. In the end it was far simpler, quicker, and cheaper, to backfill the site and then cover it with the coloured gravels that proved to be the favoured interpretive model for the site. Pink cement discs marking the positions of columns in the basilica which, along with the natural slope of the site, made the resulting presentation

Archaeology for all

Figure 113: The spectacular steel-and-glass baths cover building at Xanten, Germany. A replica in modern materials of the Roman town bathhouse whose plan is very similar to that at Wroxeter. This image captures the building before the museum was added to the left of this structure. This is similar in concept to Phil Barker’s suggestion for a cover building at Wroxeter. Author’s photo, April 1999.

of the basilica in particular look a bit like an airport runway. As part of the final presentation, the site museum was refurbished by creating a new shop attached to the existing museum – a sign of the more commercial aspect to the new identity as English Heritage. A taped guided tour was introduced, along with newly commissioned reconstructions of the site by the artist Ivan Lapper. The presentational promises made by Paul Baillie-Reynolds almost fifty years before, in the 1940s, had been fulfilled. Putting Wroxeter in context In our many discussions held on site during the excavations of the baths basilica, favourite among Phil’s questions was ‘Where did the wealth to build Wroxeter come from?’ Rather than looking for the deus ex machina explanation of a passing benevolent Emperor, his attention focused on Wroxeter’s setting. As a medievalist, Phil was aware that the wealth of Shrewsbury in the Middle Ages had come from wool and cattle – he recalled from his days at the Priory School that the cattle were still driven through Shrewsbury’s streets to market,

179

180

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

and that the tannery was immediately behind the school.55 He speculated that Wroxeter’s wealth too likely came from agriculture. In the 1990s the Wroxeter Hinterland Project (1994-7) was set up to investigate the possibility. As a project, it was a sign of things to come in that it was funded not by government but by the Leverhulme Trust, a charitable organisation that funds University research. However, the conditions of the award specifically rule out any archaeological fieldwork. Nonetheless, Simon Buteux and Vince Gaffney, both of the University of Birmingham Field Archaeology Unit (BUFAU) who had been successful in winning the project funding, both wished there to be a fieldwork element to the project. Indeed, it was essential in that fieldwork would generate the data necessary for the enhancement of the project’s Geographical Information System (GIS) database which was otherwise reliant on the rather patchy existing data. What was needed was a systematic collection of data to the same standard which would then enable the existing data to be interpreted more coherently. Vince and Simon had a bet that Vince could raise the necessary funding entirely through charitable donations. By dint of the writing of a myriad of begging letters to numerous organisations, Vince won the bet and achieved enough funding to enable the fieldwork to take place. The staff costs were covered by the Leverhulme grant which enabled the employment of an archaeologist (myself) to carry out the fieldwork and my colleague, Martijn van Leusen was appointed as the GIS specialist who would process the data and produce the GIS modelling. While I was super keen to do the work, I needed help to do the fieldwork and so we set about recruiting volunteers from the locale. By the end of the project, we had 400 names in the database. Not all of these were active fieldwalkers since it is a strenuous activity in often demanding, wintry conditions but all contributed to the collective effort (Figure 114). By the end of the project we had covered nine square kilometres of Shropshire countryside in a box that extended for 30 by 40km with Wroxeter as its centre. We also did a number of small-scale excavations on key sites, the largest of which was on the villa at Whitley Grange. This was the reward for those volunteers who had undertaken the fieldwalking over winter. The resulting database and analysis allowed Helen Goodchild to calculate the theoretical population of Wroxeter based on its productive land, and analysis of soil types against land use suggested that there was a bias towards pastoral agriculture in the immediate vicinity of Wroxeter, which gave some support to Phil’s suggestions.56 At the heart of the question of how Wroxeter’s population was supported by food production was the critical issue of just how much of the town was 55 56

These tanneries have in their turn now been excavated: Logan et al. 2022. All the results are published in Gaffney and White 2007.

Archaeology for all

Figure 114: The work of the Wroxeter Hinterland project, clockwise from top left. Volunteers carrying out the resistivity survey; Bessie White (my mum), Jenny Smith, and Jon Guite potwashing in the kitchen of No.2 The Ruins; Corvedale Schoolchildren fieldwalking at Atcham, Shropshire; volunteers excavating the mosaic at Whitley Grange Roman villa – Jenny Smith extreme left. Author’s photos 1996-7.

occupied. Clearly, if the town was sparsely settled, as the plan of the town suggested it was, then there would not be a great demand on the land around the settlement. If, however, the town was densely settled then the reverse was true – it would have a huge impact on the surrounding countryside and would be drawing in resources from near and far. Within the three-year life of the Wroxeter Hinterland Project it was seemingly impossible to carry out the necessary work, but Vince was able to stage another coup that made the work possible. His brother, Chris Gaffney, ran a geophysics company (GSB Prospection) in association with John Gator and between them they were able to assemble a team of geophysicists from Britain and around the world who carried out a diverse set of geophysical surveys of the town. Included within this project was a volunteer resistivity survey led by one of our volunteers, Jon Guite, who also processed the results. At the heart of this work was the ambition to carry out the first full gradiometry survey of an entire Roman town in Britain using the resources of the English Heritage Geophysical Team and GSB Prospection. The results were stunning, demonstrating conclusively

181

182

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

that the town had been densely settled in its heyday and enabling for the first time a full characterisation of the town and some analysis of its chronological and spatial development.57 The work was also instrumental in demonstrating large-scale application of geophysics to a complex set of urban remains, a path now successfully trodden by many others in the UK and on the continent.58 Following on from the Hinterland Project, commercially funded excavations were carried out in advance of the upgrading of Wroxeter village’s water main in 1999. The results of these small-scale excavations helped to provide critical insights at regular intervals into the archaeological strata from north to south across the entire town aiding our interpretation of the geophysics.59 Due to the commercial nature of the work, the use of volunteers was not permitted, in keeping with much of the archaeological work now carried out across Britain.

Gaffney et al. 2000; White, Gaffney and Gaffney 2013. For instance, Creighton with Fry 2016 and Ferraby and Millett 2020. 59 White, Gaffney and Gaffney 2013, 32-85. 57 58

Wroxeter’s people The purpose of this chapter is to consider the relationship that the people who lived in Wroxeter had with the abandoned city that lay beneath their fields. The focus will be on how they perceived this buried city, and how it affected their lives. We then look at the evidence for a handful of people who we know lived in Wroxeter when it was a Roman city and what these few tell us of the town and its population, before concluding with a brief consideration of those visiting the site recorded in the site’s visitor books of the late 19th century. Locals and their stories After the desertion and burial of the town, the local people in Wroxeter village, fully aware of buried remains under their fields, had no ready explanation of what had caused it to be buried. All, whether villager or visitor, assumed that it had been violently burnt down, a belief no doubt arising from the dark humic nature of the worm-turned soil. Bones encountered, whether human or animal, are likely to have been thought to be those of the unfortunates caught up in the sack. Stories arose to explain the circumstances of the attack, and how the disaster had completely overtaken the town. Among the most vivid is that retold by Thomas Wright in his book Uriconium : ‘According to local legend the city of Uriconium was destroyed by sparrows – for when the assailants found it impossible to break through the walls of the town, they collected all the sparrows in the country, tied lighted matches to their tails, and let them fly, and they all settled on the thatched roofs of the houses, and thus set fire to the whole town, and the enemy entered in the midst of the confusion.’1 In an earlier version of this story, it was 1

Wright 1872, note, p.80, along with the verse quoted below

183

184

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

suggested that the enemy was the Danes and that the sparrows were the souls of monks or hermits from the Wrekin.2 Even more fanciful is the story that Wright also retells, at some length, of a History of Fulk Fitz-Warine. In it, William I, surveying his new kingdom, camped opposite to the site of the town and asked a local how it had been abandoned. The tale, which clearly drew on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, involved Brutus, a knight called Coineus from Cornwall and others, descended from the lineage of Troy. These knights had attacked a giant, Geogmagog, who inhabited the region and defeated him. The city was then rebuilt but then the devil came one night and took it all away again. Hearing this, the king’s champion, Payn Peverel came to the city at night, fought with the devil who lived there and protected the giant’s treasure of gold hidden in a secret place under the city. The devil is naturally defeated and driven away as soon as the champion brings out the cross he carries with him.3 While stories of giants and knights might seem fanciful and preposterous to us today, we do well to recall that people had no real memory of who created these monuments in their landscapes. Stonehenge, famously, was a building magically transported from Ireland and reconstructed on Salisbury Plain by Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account4 while earthworks of forts on hilltops across Britain could be attributed variously to Caesar, the Danes, or more vaguely to the British, according to the fashion of the time. However, the notion of a giant’s buried treasure is the least surprising element of the Fulk Fitz-Warine story for it is common to believe that untold riches lie not just at Wroxeter but potentially at any deserted site. Wright records a common verse reflecting this belief recited by the locals (Bell Brook is the stream that crosses the site and was the town’s water supply): Near the brook of Bell, There is a well Which is richer than any man can tell. This belief is certainly a long-standing one. In 1287, a manuscript held in the collection at Worcester Cathedral recorded a story of a young man confronted by an enchanter who commanded him to show him where buried treasure was located. Such stories might have been in the mind of some locals who were brought before the King’s Bench in 1292 after they had been caught digging for treasure at Wroxeter. They were thrown into prison and brought for trial but they were acquitted and released when they pointed out that while they had Hartshorne 1841, 116 Wright 1872, 77-80 4 Chippendale 2012, 22-4 2 3

Wroxeter’s people

indeed been looking for treasure, they hadn’t found any so had not broken the law.5 They were indeed fortunate to escape punishment. Despite this, there is one tale of a successful discovery of treasure at Wroxeter. It involves a wheelwright’s wife in Wroxeter called ‘Betty Fox, or Mother Fox, as she was commonly called … She was possessed with the desire of finding a buried treasure at Uriconium, and was continually hunting for it by day and dreaming of it by night. At last one night she dreamt that there was a crock of money buried near an alder-bush in the bank on one side of the lane from Wroxeter to Uckington. She woke and told her husband, but he only called her a fool and bade her go to sleep again. She did so, and dreamt the same dream. Then she could rest no longer, but got up, and set out spade in hand for the place she had seen in her dream. She had not dug long under the alder-bush when her spade shattered a Roman earthen-ware vessel, and out of it rolled as many as four hundred silver coins. Quickly Mother Fox collected these in her apron, and hurried home, where she greeted her husband by saying, “Well, fool or no fool, I’ve found the coins!” and she poured them out into a ‘twopenny dish’ before his eyes. Purchasers were quickly found for them, and it is said that Betty made as much as thirty pounds by her lucky dream.’ Her good chance had an unfortunate effect on her son who ‘was after this employed on the excavations at Uriconium, but he cannot have been a very satisfactory servant. He was often found digging in some entirely different spot from that where he had been directed to work, and when asked why he had not obeyed orders, it always turned out that he had dreamt of finding a treasure somewhere else, and had acted on the warning!’6 Needless to say, I have been unable to trace any more authoritative record of this discovery, which sounds more like wishful thinking than fact. The more canny inhabitants had a way of getting others to do their work of treasure-seeking. Dr William Stukeley reported to the Society of Antiquaries in 1725 that the local schoolmaster used to get his pupils to walk Wroxeter’s ploughed fields after rainfall and collect any ‘Dinders, as they call Roman moneys,’ that might be lying about. It was said that enough silver coins had been collected for him to make a tankard out of them.7 Opportunities to carry out exploratory digs for treasure no doubt abounded but few will have had the energy, resources and time to do so, and in any case a clause in Wroxeter’s tenancy agreements required that any such discoveries be rendered to the landowner.8 Cultivating the fields is an unremitting task and Wroxeter’s soil was so fertile that large-scale disturbance would not have been tolerated for long: alongside a brief description of the Old Work, one of the first accurate Wright 1872, 83-4. Burne 1883, 263-4. 7 Scarth 1859, 69. 8 Hartshorne 1841, 127. 5 6

185

186

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 115: Cropmarks of the roads at Wroxeter appearing in the field south of the baths in a drought year. These marks are in the same location seen by Bushe-Fox in 1912. The grass in shallow soil above the road surface has dried out quicker than the grass on either side. Author’s photo, July 1995.

descriptions made of it, William Camden in the late 16th century recorded that ‘the plot where the city stood … yields the largest crop of barley’.9 The certainty of the potential for good harvests outweighed any thought of a dedicated search for some mythical buried treasure. Those doing the cultivation were very aware of what lay beneath the fields, as is shown by the field names recorded on the 1834 tithe map.10 Black Ground, for example, was one of the fields I crossed on my way to work from the Cottage while several are variants on the term Old Works. At the edges of the town, where the ramparts are more obvious, the fields refer to the Walls. Those who ploughed the fields will have been very aware of the varying depth of the ruins. Even today, one can see a linear bank in what was Shop Leasows. This is the shallowly buried line of the Roman road running north – south from the Bell Brook towards the Old Work, a road that persisted from the foundation of the town to its end. Its metalled surface can be no more than 10cm below ground, as is shown by the fact that it is one of the first cropmarks to appear 9 10

Gibson 1695, 543. Apportionment … and Plan; Shropshire Archives SA2656/16 -17.

Wroxeter’s people

Figure 116: The full-face portrait coin of Carausius as illustrated in Corbet Anderson’s book on Uriconium in 1867. Author’s image.

in a hot summer causing the shallow soil to dry out at a faster rate that the deeper soil to either side of it. In a later age, Bushe-Fox noted the cropmarks of roads appearing in ripening corn in a field opposite to that he was digging in and marked these lines on his plan of the city (Figure 115). 11 Any ploughman worth his salt would know to lift the share at such points to avoid blunting it on the underlying hard-packed stone and gravel. Equally, as we have seen, we know that those working the fields were aware that objects continually turned up in the furrow and washed out on the surface: pottery, tile, mortared stone but also more enigmatic objects such as glass or metal brooches. Coins were found in such profusion that they were called Wroxeter dinders, a word that Hartshorne records in his list of dialect words that form the appendix to his 1841 work Salopia Antiqua.12 Charles Dickens, whose visit to the site was noted in an earlier chapter, gave a typically journalistic version of this local quirk. ‘The dullest ploughboy working here has on his lips a form of the old Roman word for money. He picks up denarii and calls them dinders. Let him work in what field he may within the walls of Uriconium, it is but a common thing for the ploughman to find six or seven dinders in a morning before dinner. All the people hereabouts have dinders in their cottages – may have them by the pint – and there was a time, I believe, when the antiquary could, without any difficulty, purchase a handful for a shilling. It was here that one of our best Roman antiquaries got that unique coin with a full-faced portrait of Carausius, now in the British Museum (Figure 116).13 I can believe it to be Bushe-Fox 1913, 3 & pl.XVII. Hartshorne 1841, 393-4. 13 The same coin can be seen in this catalogue image: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/ object/C_1856-1220-1 I am grateful to Sam Moorhead for supplying this link. 11 12

187

188

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 117: The north wall of Wroxeter St Andrews. The large stones in the centre of the wall form the surviving wall of an Anglo-Saxon church. A small rounded-headed blocked window can also be made out between the two larger (and clearly later) windows. A large grey stone lying at ground level below the blocked window displays a lewis slot. Author’s photo, June 1995.

true that, after it was given him, he turned aside into a hedge to reassure himself that it was really so choice a treasure, and brushed tears of emotion from his eyes to look at it.’ In conversation with another local he heard of an unsuccessful attempt at seeking treasure: ‘“There’s a field there,” said a labourer to me, “where we once struck the plough on a great stone. We dug it about, and put the plough horses to it, and fetched more, and couldn’t stir it. So we let it be. But we do think there’s something precious underneath that stone.’14 As a slight digression, Carausius and his coins also make their mark in another discovery from Wroxeter. In 1925, a coin bearing the then unattested mintmark15 BRI was found in Atkinson’s excavations. Another example, with a different design on the reverse was noted coincidentally in the same year in a coin-dealer’s tray in London. In a numismatic article two readings were suggested. The first that BRI stood for Britannia, the second that BRI might be read as being an abbreviation for Viroconium or Uriconium (reflecting a 14 Dickens 1859, 55. The coin is Roman Imperial Coinage vol.5.2, Carausius 460, pl.XVIII,1 although this volume is currently being extensively revised by Sam Moorhead of the British Museum. 15 The letters at the base of the reverse.

Wroxeter’s people

‘vulgarism’ of late Roman spoken Latin in which B is substituted for V).16 If the second suggestion were correct it would designate Wroxeter as a mint during this reign. No other evidence has been found to support this suggestion of a mint operating at Wroxeter at this, or any other time, and thus the meaning BRI[tannia] is fully accepted, appropriate for an Emperor based in Britain.17 While riches were presumably rarely found or sought, the fact that there was valuable stone within easy reach, if you knew where to dig, was the primary source of interest in the site for local people. We can see this most clearly in the fabric of the Church of St Andrew in the village, and for that matter in a number of other churches in the vicinity including St Eata’s, Atcham, and St Mary and St Andrew’s, Condover.18 St Andrew’s is at first glance an unremarkable church but the churchyard entrance with its heavy cast-iron gates held by two large stone Roman columns crowned with weathered capitals (see Figure 60)19 tell us straight away where the villager’s quarry was located. The imposing entrance is relatively recent, having only been put in place in 1868. Walk to the north side and you will see that the central section of the wall is built of large blocks of sandstone, red or grey in colour, some of which have rectangular slots cut in their centre (Figure 117). These are lewis holes – a tapered slot cut into blocks of stone to hold a temporary iron ring that can then be used to lift the stone into place using a simple shear-legs crane. Lewis slots should not, therefore, be visible since they must lie on the upper surface of any stone; the Wroxeter stones have clearly been up-ended when reused. A small rectangular blocked window can be seen in this wall and is clearly contemporary with it. At the top a slight projecting course of masonry marks the original roofline. This wall is entirely built of large blocks looted from some important building in the Roman city and, stylistically, there is little to date it other than its window , although it is evidently earlier than the continuation of the wall to its east, away from the tower, which has a prominent dog-tooth carved string course, larger round-headed lancet windows above and, on the other side of the church, an elaborately carved Romanesque (Norman) doorway.20 The earlier, central section of the wall is known to be Anglo-Saxon in date from the shape of the window and the style of masonry. It may date to the 10th or 11th century and is probably the church that was standing here at the time of the compilation of Domesday Book, in 1086. At that point the church is recorded Tomlin 2018, 239, citing another example that swops c for g, as in modern Welsh. Atkinson 1942, 304-5, pl. 62, A5. Webb 1933, 435. I am indebted to Sam Moorhead for bringing this discussion to my attention. 18 Newman and Pevsner 2006, 124-5; 229. 19 The capitals are said to be those illustrated by Roach Smith (1854, pl.VIII). This is not unlikely given that the farm they were visiting was directly opposite the churchyard gate. 20 Newman and Pevsner 2006, 718-20. 16 17

189

190

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 118: The stone screen erected from Roman fragments in garden of The Grange probably sometime in the late 19th century. Author’s photo, August 2010.

as having four priests, a large number considering that there were only a manor house and seven other households, and four small-holders and their families. At the time of King William, the Manor was held by Reginald, Sheriff under Earl Roger de Montgomery but then passed to the Fitz Alan family. In 1155, Richard Fitz Alan donated the church and its parish to Haughmond Abbey, which lies around four miles to the north, and it was presumably then that the east (chancel) end was rebuilt, doubling the area of the church. This too is full of Roman masonry, albeit cut down to a smaller size rather than being used as unmodified blocks. The manor house has never been investigated although its site is known: it lies across on the other side of the road from the church, tucked into the southern end of the Roman city where a small stream joins the river Severn. This allowed the manor house to create some fish-ponds in its grounds. In the 13th century, John Fitz Alan died here; his widow’s will of 1283 records that the mill and fish-ponds at Wroxeter were worth £12 9s 2d a year. A rental of 1350 provides us with the first name of a villager – Johannes at Walle – who presumably farmed by or on the city ramparts, or even by the Old Work, and records that the village had grown to 33 households, perhaps its peak population as it is at this time that the church was virtually doubled in

Wroxeter’s people

Figure 119: A massive piece of Roman masonry in the wall of the drive way of The Grange, next to St Andrews. Its upper surface is composed of in situ facing stones which will have been the face of the wall. The thickness of this piece is thus around a metre, the same as the Old Work, so it is quite likely this is the derivation of this fragment. Author’s photo, August 2021.

size again.21 It is probable that much of the stone for this work was new rather than being looted from the buried remains of the city since the tower, which belongs to much the same period, is clearly of freshly quarried Grinshill stone, a stone-type not used by the Roman masons. The same stone was used for the figural panels in the upper storey of the tower which must have been added after the reformation since these almost certainly derive from Haughmond Abbey, a neat reversal of the relationship between the two institutions. The church is thus a physical testament to both the faith of the villagers, but also their knowledge of local resources that could be put to good use. While this stone robbing is undocumented, it must have been a fairly constant feature so that whenever there was need of stone for building work in the village or in its field walls, the villagers knew where to find it. As a result, uniquely for the locality, Wroxeter’s walls are mostly built of stone rather than being 21

White and Barker 1997, 145-8

191

192

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

hedgerows. The most idiosyncratic use is surely the stone screen assembled in the garden of The Grange by an unrecorded incumbent of the parish, although it must have been in place by 1894 given the following observation made in an article about visiting Wroxeter: ‘and in the garden of the house on the south side of the church may be seen a cold-looking but very classical bower of ancient sculptured stones’.22 This is just about visible from the churchyard: a low wall on which are three columns bridged by ashlar slabs arranged as Vs over them (Figure 118). The same house also has an impressive garden wall between the churchyard and drive of The Grange revetted by massive Roman masonry including what is almost certainly a huge block of masonry that must have come from the Old Work or from the room of which the Old Work was the north wall (Figure 119).23 One of the more destructive of the stone robbers was the principal tenant for Lord Barnard, Edward Stanier who lived in The Cottage before the Everalls. This is the same man who Wright argued with about the use of the turnip field. It has already been noted that he carried out robbing of some major stones uncovered by Wright during his exploration of the baths basilica. The principal stone threshold for two of the doorways out of the basilica, for instance were taken at this time.24 Stanier was responsible for the construction of Wroxeter Farm, the buildings opposite the road from the museum and the former forge.25 There is a considerable quantity of Roman stone in the walls of these buildings, most notably (and obviously) in the wall directly facing the current museum doorway and thus facing onto Watling Street as it led down to the village. So long as the verge is not too overgrown, any visitor can spot an upside-down gutter stone and many large blocks of masonry. This wall and its continuation facing the lane running between the farm buildings and 1 & 2 The Ruins were initially the walls of an open yard that was later converted into a shippen by heightening the walls with brick and placing a curved corrugated iron roof over it. Inside the shippen the mass of Roman masonry is even more impressive (Figure 120). This yard wall originally had curved coping stones on it, as can still be seen on the other side of the lane in the wall forming the garden of 1 & 2 The Ruins. These coping stones were said to have been formed by splitting columns in half longitudinally, the shafts lying in ‘considerable numbers ... in rows’ in the area where the buildings were being put up.26 This particular discovery was not otherwise observed so may be apocryphal, but within the yard, excavation of the floor uncovered the base of a colonnade that was seen and recorded by Sir Henry Dryden during a visit in 1854 whose account survives in Wellington Journal 3rd November 1894. I would stress here that these features are on private property and visitors should not attempt access. 24 Barker et al. 1997, 41 25 White and Hislop 2002. It is hoped that this report will be made available in the near future as an article in the Transactions of the Shropshire Historical and Archaeological Society. 26 Scarth 1859, 68 22 23

Wroxeter’s people

Figure 120: Wroxeter farm shippen yard wall, inside the building. The course of massive masonry lies at exterior ground level so the wall depth below gives the amount of soil removed to create the yard. Virtually all of this stone is Roman. After White and Hislop 2002, pl.18.

the Northamptonshire Archives and was published by Wright.27 The distinctive square bases of this colonnade were inevitably removed and put to use elsewhere: two hold up the columns of the churchyard gate, while more have been ignominiously up-ended, hollowed out and turned into plant holders at The Cottage, Stanier’s house (Figure 121). The existence of the colonnade likely points to the location of a major public building, almost certainly the main temple for the town, so the account of the numerous columns found while building Wroxeter Farm may not be entirely fanciful. Not all discoveries of stonework went unrecorded. The first building recorded by an antiquary at the site was in 1701 when John Lyster wrote a letter to the Philosophical Society of London recording a discovery made at the site that year.28 A Mr Bennet, tenant of the land there, had found that one part of his field lying to the north of the Old Work remained sterile despite his improving it with 27 Wright 1860, 205-6. Wright gives the date as 1855, but Dryden’s own notes record his visit as being in August 1854, in the company of the indefatigable Mr Wood, Roach Smith’s companion on a similar visit (Northants. Record Office, Dryden Papers D(CA) 505. 28 Lyster 1706

193

194

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 121: One of the square stone bases imaginatively repurposed as a plant holder by Stanier. It was found when excavating the shippen yard of Wroxeter farm in 1854. Author’s photo, June 1995.

manure and regardless of the fertility of the rest of the field. He sent workmen to dig who, initially digging in the wrong place had found some walls ‘buried in their own rubbish’. Redirected to the correct location, they found a doorway leading into a room. From the description, it was clear that this was an intact heated room, or hypocaust (Figure 122). The account of the construction of the room is illustrated by four plans showing the foundation, the floor standing on top of the hypocaust pilae, and the final flooring of opus signinum (a mortar with crushed tile in it). The fourth illustration is a perspective view showing the pilae in situ in the room with a lining of hollow tubes tiles that would have carried the heat up the wall to heat the interior of the room. A stoke-hole is shown to the side. In other words, the illustrations document the dismantling of this room while it was being robbed for its building stone. This was hardly the first time such robbing had been done, and nor was it the last, but it was the first time that the process had been recorded. The loss was mitigated by a cork model that was made of the find, which certainly survived into the 19th century.

Wroxeter’s people

Figure 122: John Lyster’s drawing of the bath house found, and dismantled for its stone, in 1701. The first record of a Roman building in Wroxeter. After Lyster, 1706.

Eighty years later, in an almost carbon-copy account of the first discovery, but this time just to the north of the village, a Mr Clayton ‘having occasion for some stone to rebuild a smith’s shop lately burnt down, and knowing by the dryness of the ground that there were ruins at no great depth beneath the surface of the field near his house, began to dig and soon came to a floor and small bath.’29 This time, a request was made to the landowner to expose the whole building so it could be recorded by the County Surveyor, who happened to be Thomas Telford (Figure 123). His splendid isometric drawing and plan were published in Archaeologia in 1789, and then again more handsomely in the Atlas for the Life of Thomas Telford published after his death, in 1838.30 Even this building, despite its illustrious recorder, was promptly dismantled and reused. As antiquarian interest in the site developed through the 19th century the frequent discoveries made by villagers were increasingly recorded. So it is that in October 1827 when a man was digging a hole in Mrs Upton’s garden at the northern end of the village to hod potatoes in (i.e. overwinter the crop in 29 30

Leighton 1789, 324 Rickman 1838

195

196

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 123: Thomas Telford’s handsome isometric perspective engraving of the bath house uncovered at Wroxeter. After Rickman, 1838, pl.10.

a shallow hole) he discovered a damaged mosaic (Figure 124).31 A record was made of the find, but never published, the illustration eventually making its way to Mr Watton, a local newspaper proprietor who kept a scrap book of local discoveries. It was later said by Thomas Wright to have been ‘torn to pieces by visitors’32 but the contemporary accounts do not say so and no pieces of it have come to light. A good record was made of what was, unsurprisingly, a mosaic damaged by garden activities over the years even though it was not published at the time. Antiquarians also recorded other items found from time to time – statuettes and pottery fragments for instance are recorded in a number of manuscripts. These were presumably sold on by Wroxeter’s villagers and this may have provided a small but uncertain income for them. The ready market for antiquities is, of course, even greater today and villagers do make occasional discoveries of considerable interest. Among the more 31 Cosh & White 2006; Cosh & Neal 2010, 316-8 (Mosaic 481.3). The word hod is recorded as a Shropshire dialect word in Hartshorne’s Salopia Antiqua (1841, 465): ‘HOD, a heap, a tump of potatoes, which being covered first with short straw, and then with soil, are protected during the winter.’ 32 Wright 1872, 198

Wroxeter’s people

Figure 124: A hand-coloured lithograph of the mosaic found in the garden of a villager in Wroxeter in 1827. There is a letter from Thomas Wright pasted onto it to confirm its authenticity as a record of the mosaic. (Photo courtesy of Debbie Klemperer, formerly of the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent).

197

198

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

notable recent examples is an Etruscan brooch that may have been brought to the site as an heirloom by one of the early legionaries who came from Northern Italy.33 The reporting of this find, which was made while gardening, to the Portable Antiquities Scheme is a text-book example of how discoveries should be handled today. The whole area of the town, and the Roman fort to the south of the village, is protected as a Scheduled Area meaning that it is completely illegal to metal detect in these areas. Sadly, there is evidence that a small minority of metal detectorists are illegally targeting the site not to add to the knowledge of its history but purely to enrich themselves. The fact that the site has not been ploughed for nearly 50 years means that the earthworm activity will have taken most objects deeper into the soil hopefully offering some measure of protection to the site and its archaeology. The people of Wroxeter In writing about the people of Wroxeter it would be odd not to consider the few Romans who we know lived and died in Wroxeter, although the sources we can draw upon to do so are extremely limited. One of the more recent discoveries is a single letter identified in London which originated in Wroxeter sometime between AD 65-95 written by a man called Intervinaris to a man whose name is not complete but ends […]nor son of Gessinus. The lector and translator, Roger Tomlin, suggests from the ending that the recipient’s name may have been Greek in origin – perhaps Antenor or Nicanor while the surname is similar to others recorded as the names of potters producing samian ware in Gaul. Intervinaris is not otherwise known as a person’s name.34 All we have, therefore, is the recipient’s address and the name of the sender, and we know nothing of the contents of the letter. Six other individuals, all roughly contemporary with Intervinaris, are identified on five tombstones found in and around Wroxeter. All but one were found in the town’s cemetery, which lay either side of Watling Street35 as it entered the town on the north-east corner although the tombstones were found in a field to the south of the road known as Middle Crows Ground. The exception was found in 1783 close by the village forge, located about half a mile up the road from the village, presumably so it could capture the passing trade on the toll road to Ironbridge. This tombstone has the following inscription: Tiberius Claudius Tirintius, trooper of the […] Cohort of Thracians, aged 57 of […] years service, is buried here.36 While not complete, the tombstone shows the deceased https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/493638 (HESH-F631B8) Tomlin 2016, 104-5 Stylus tablet 35 These days this stretch of the road is known as Horseshoe Lane as it leads to the Horseshoe pub on the old A5. 36 RIB 291 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/291; Scarth 1864; Tomlin (2018) , 23-4. 33 34

Wroxeter’s people

as a cavalryman trampling the enemy underfoot, a stock motif for cavalrymen at this date (Figure 125). Roger Tomlin is able to flesh out more details about this man. His name, a Latin form of the Greek name Tirynthius, suggests he was Greek-speaking which would make sense as his unit, perhaps the First Cohort, had been raised in Thrace, now part of Bulgaria. We do not know his year of death, but he received his citizenship from either the Emperor Claudius or Nero and will have received this probably after 25 years’ service. It is likely that he enlisted in around AD 26, when there was a revolt in Thrace that was put down by legionaries and loyal auxiliaries, Tirintius probably Figure 125: The tombstone of Tirintinus, as among them. It is thus quite once displayed in the Rowley’s House Museum, likely that he arrived in Britain Shrewsbury (now in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery). Author’s photo, March 1993. with Claudius’ invasion in AD 43 and died around 20 years later at Wroxeter where he may have served in the small auxiliary fort located south of the modern village which is thought to be earlier than the fortress that forms the nucleus for the Roman town.37 The next four individuals are all citizen soldiers serving in two legions: the 14th and the 20th. The former of these was the legion that founded Wroxeter in around AD 57, its previous base being at Mainz before it was used in the Claudian conquest. As is typical for legionaries of this date, all but one of the men are from northern Italy (Lombardy), the exception being Valerius from Lyons, the Roman colony of Lugdunum.38 Of the others, the first, Marcus Petronius, is from Vicenza and was a standard bearer. His epitaph reads: M. St Joseph 1951. RIB 296 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/296 His tombstone was later cut down for re-use so we do not know his cognomen.

37 38

199

200

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 126: Three Wroxeter tombstones as depicted in the original publication by John Ward. That in the middle is of Placida and Deuccus. Author’s image.

Petronius, son of Lucius, of the Menenia voting-tribe, from Vicetia (Vicenza), aged 38, solder of the 14 legion Gemina, served 18 years, was a standard-bearer, is buried here (Figure 126).39 His colleague, Titus Flaminius was another standard bearer, this time carrying the legion’s eagle standard (aquila). Although only his hob-nailbooted feet survive on his tombstone, his extra pay and standing have allowed him to indulge in a moralising epitaph: Titus Flaminius, son of Titus, of the Pollian voting-tribe, from Faventia, aged 45, of 22 years service, a soldier of the 14 legion Gemina. I served as the eagle-bearer, now here I am. Read this and be happy, whether more or less, in your lifetime. The gods prohibit you from the wine-grape and water when you enter Tartarus. Live honourably while your star gives you time for life (see Figure 85).40 Tomlin comments that these men, like Tirintius, will have come ashore with 39 40

RIB 294 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/294; Ward 1755; Tomlin 2018, , 30-1 RIB292 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/292; Tomlin 2018, , 29-30

Wroxeter’s people

Figure 127: Alan Duncan’s imaginative reconstruction of Agricola leaving Wroxeter’s fortress at the head of the 20th Legion on his campaign in Wales, AD 78. Image © Shropshire Museum Service.

Claudius’ invasion troops in AD 43. The last soldier, Gaius Mannius Secundus, is the sole known member of the 20th legion who were stationed at Wroxeter after the Boudican revolt (Figure 126). He too had re-enlisted, under the patronage (beneficium) of a senior officer, the legionary legate. At this date, the legate may well have been Gnaeus Julius Agricola who was appointed commander of the legion in AD 70.41 His epitaph reads: G. Mannius Secundus, son of Gaius, of the Pollia voting-tribe, from Pollentia, soldier of the 20th legion, aged 52. with 31 years of service; 41

Hanson 1991, 38

201

202

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

seconded to the staff of the legionary legate [benficarius legati praetorii].42 Although we have no physical evidence for Agricola at Wroxeter (at least, not yet), it is quite likely that he returned to the site of his earlier command when he was appointed governor of Britain in AD 78, with a remit to conquer the northern half of Britain. As his son-in-law Cornelius Tacitus tells us in his biography Agricola, his first year was spent campaigning in North Wales, specifically in the conquest of Anglesey, before then turning his attention northwards. The dense cluster of marching camps north of Wroxeter43 might well be evidence of the overwhelming force assembled by Agricola for these campaigns and it is tempting to visualise Agricola heading out of the north gate of Wroxeter’s fortress as he set out at the head of his army (Figure 127). Of the last two inhabitants of Wroxeter at this early date, we can say very little. While nothing on their tombstone suggests they have military connections, the mere fact that they have a tombstone at all does indicate that they had some relationship to the army since the only working masons at Wroxeter at this early date will have been within the army (see Figure 126). The simple tombstone records a woman, Placida, and a male relative, Deuccus, perhaps a son or nephew on two adjacent panels of the monument (a third panel is blank). The epitaph reads: To the spirits of the departed: Placida, aged 55; (set up) under the charge of her husband in the 30th year (of marriage). To the spirits of the departed; Deuccus, aged 15; (set up) under the charge of his brother.44 If Placida’s husband were a soldier, the length of marriage is probably recognition of the legalisation of a relationship entered into probably while he was still serving.45 The marriage will have been recognised after his retirement. Placida may have been from the locality, but if so her name was changed to something blandly conventional and Latin – Placida means Charming, Pleasing, or Dear. It is equally possible that she had once been enslaved and was thus another immigrant in origin. There is one last individual we can talk of who lived in Roman Wroxeter, this time in the mid-2nd century, about the time that the town’s baths and forum had been opened to the public. His name was Mansuetus and he was a native of Trier, in modern-day Germany. His tribe, the Treveri, were notably loyal to Rome and many of their menfolk enlisted in the Roman Army as auxiliaries, as had Mansuetus. He served in the 2nd cohort of the Dalmatians, as we are told on his honorary discharge certificate which is dated 14th April 135.46 The certificate is a thin sheet of bronze originally of two leaves and about the size RIB 293 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/293; Tomlin 2018, , 45-6 Welfare and Swan 1979, fig 126. 44 RIB 295 https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/295 45 Soldiers could not marry while in service with the army but could legalise any relationship and children when they retired. 46 Atkinson 1942, 185-93. 42 43

Wroxeter’s people

of a paperback book inscribed with a legal text confirming the identity of the holder. It confirms Roman citizenship for him, his spouse and children and was thus an important document. This example was found in what was thought to be the record office or archives (tabularium) in the forum. Although we can’t be certain that Mansuetus lived in Wroxeter, it is highly unlikely that he would have left his certificate far from where he lived. A second metal document that has been published as a record of people living at Wroxeter is a more complex tale, and ultimately does not tell us about someone from Wroxeter at all. In 1905, an article was published in the Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society entitled ‘A fourth century Christian letter from [?] Uriconium’.47 This publishes a translation of a lead ‘curse tablet’ that had been found early in 1880 beneath the King’s Bath at Bath. Various people had tried to read it but the librarian at the Bodleian, Oxford, E. W. B. Nicholson, proposed the following reading: [Obverse] Nigrae Visin(s)iu(s) (? Gratia) dni Ihcv Xti & tvis. Mariti Vitia Vinisia (memo)ravit Simili Vili. (? Tu vale in Ihcv &) oni vi (? Tva I contra). Ni ivstis arenis (? Vita abundius invidias)

[Obverse] Visinius to Nigra (? The grace) of the Lord Jesus Christ to thine also. Thy husband’s faults Vinisia has related to Vilius’s Similis. (Do thou be strong in Jesus and) with all the strength (? in thee go counter). Unless in just conflicts (‘arenas’) (? Avoid jealousies more abundantly).

[Reverse] Inimicvs Xti Biliconum Viriconio misit ut sumatis ovili & si canem Arii. Tu luce mora Xpm Xps Gerit A(p)ulicus has lanas

[Reverse] Christ’s enemy has sent Bilonicus from Viroconium that ye may take (him) into the sheepfold, although a dog of Arius. Do thou pray Christ for light. Xps A(p)ulicus carries these sheets.

The commentary on this text suggests that its writer, Vinisius, may have been living in Viroconium and could have been an ecclesiastic of some kind. As we saw in an earlier chapter, this is not improbable but in this particular case the 47

Fletcher 1905, i-ii

203

204

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

text is purely an invention. It would be easy to cast scorn on Nicholson’s efforts, but it is worth saying that when this document was found there were very few curse tablets known, and even though more are now discovered, they are still exceptionally hard to decipher. Even the great early 20th century Roman period scholar Francis Haverfield (celebrated in the preface to Lang-Jones’ Songs of a Buried City) and himself a noted expert on inscriptions had rejected this particular text as illegible, while not accepting Nicholson’s translation.48 The surface of these tablets is often not smooth, and the marks can be faint and poorly formed depending upon the ability of the writer and their linguistic skills. Very few modern scholars can read them successfully but one who can read more than most is Roger Tomlin whom we encountered earlier on in this section. Following the excavation of deposits in the sacred spring at Bath due to an outbreak of legionella in the late 1970s, nearly 150 of these tablets were recovered. Earlier discoveries like the one under consideration here were also re-examined and, with the exceptional level of ability that Roger Tomlin had developed due to working on this large corpus he was able to realise that this tablet, now re-numbered 100, was found to have a completely different text, despite the original document being lost and having to work solely from photographs taken by the Bodleian. Tomlin comments that because Nicholson was unfamiliar with Latin cursive handwriting, and with the handwriting style of the later Roman period, known as New Roman Cursive, whose letter forms can be different from earlier periods, Nicholson had read the text upside down, and thus the letter and its contents must be rejected.49 The one piece of late or post-Roman evidence for people at Wroxeter that we can point to is the tombstone of Cunorix, discussed in an earlier chapter (see Figure 21). Although no body was found in association with the discovery given that the tombstone was ploughed up, its location on the town rampart rather than in the adjacent cemetery in Middle Crows Ground might suggest that the town was abandoned by this date. However, it could equally have been set up on the rampart of a still-occupied, but shrunken, settlement. His name and the form of the inscription – CVNORIX MACVS MAQVI CO[L]IN[I] – ‘Hound-king, son of son of the Holly’ demonstrates an Irish origin and dates to the early sixth century on current linguistic understanding.50 It is telling that there is no overt, or covert, Christian symbolism on the monument. No representation of the Chi-Rho or cross, nor of a formula such as Hic Iacet (Here Lies) that might denote Christian beliefs, unlike many stones of the same era from Wales or the Tomlin 1988, 236-7 (Tab Sul 100). Cunliffe 1988, 1-4; Tomlin 1988 59-60 & 84-94, where handwriting is discussed. Nicholson’s story is given more detail in Tomlin 2018, 382-3. 50 Bryant and Parsons 2012, 319. 48 49

Wroxeter’s people

south-western Britain.51 This makes it more likely than not that the presence of Cunorix in or perhaps around the Wroxeter area is for his prowess as a warlord rather than a holy man. Its existence also alerts us to the fact that someone somewhere in the area knew how to write, and that others were still around to read the inscription. In considering what we know of this handful of Wroxeter’s inhabitants, it is telling that they are all migrants, albeit arriving in Britain as serving soldiers or their dependants. To them, proving status was vital in competing with the local elite, and in demonstrating their importance within the town. No doubt their clothing and language also set them apart from their fellow citizens and gave them a certain cachet. The vast bulk of Wroxeter’s thousands of people, however, even their elite, are anonymous to us. Interestingly, very similar conclusions can be drawn from those who took the trouble to record their visit to Wroxeter between 1871 and 1897 in its three surviving Visitor’s Books, now preserved in Shropshire Archives.52 The visitor books were introduced to the site when the Shropshire Archaeological Society took responsibility for its curation and administration. In the frontispiece of the second volume is written the following injunction: ‘Visitors are requested to enter their names and address with the date of their visit in this book. April 1878.’53 From the dates given in the book, the site seems always to have been open all year round, a situation no doubt made easier by the fact that the custodian lived there and thus may well have been willing to open the site up when required by impromptu visitors. Visitors are recorded from virtually every corner of the globe but with a definite flavour of Empire – if you were to have plotted the overseas visitor’s locations on an Edwardian map, most of the dots would have been in areas coloured pink: Jamaica, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand all figure prominently alongside visitors from the USA (New York, Boston, Chicago), and Europe, including Germany, France, and Italy (Rome, Venice). Every corner of the United Kingdom is seemingly represented too – Liverpool, Belfast, Edinburgh, Isle of Wight, London, Cardiff, Birmingham – although inevitably the majority of placenames are predominantly local (Shrewsbury and Shropshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire). Among the locals visiting are Gertrude and Grace Maw from Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge, along with other members of their family, but not George who had recorded the mosaics in 1859.54 Another George, this time George Meredith, of Leighton Lodge, is an evocative name as this is Mary Webb’s father, although Thomas 1981, 271-4; Okasha 1993. SA 6001/185, 186, 187. 53 SA 6001/186. 54 11th April 1878 51 52

205

206

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

at the date of his visit, on 27th August 1878, she had not been born as her birthday was on 25th March 1881. Nonetheless, it was a regular spot for the family to visit as Mary herself records visits there, inspiring her poetry.55 From Shrewsbury, presumably on an improving visit, came John Lewis Della Porta, son of the founder of the department store Della Porta’s of Shrewsbury, a firm that survived until its takeover in 1975 by House of Fraser.56 Educational visits, still the mainstay of the site, are recorded on multiple occasions over the years by Dr W. Cranage founder of the Old Hall School, Wellington. His son, David, was a noted church architectural historian who published a seven-volume work on Shropshire churches that is still an invaluable reference work, as can be judged by his entry on St Andrew’s Wroxeter.57 Other notable entries from the same year include Sir Henry and Lady Peck, Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell, Lord and Lady Claude Hamilton and Colonel and Lady Follett with Lady Evelyn Kennedy, as well as H. Slack, Dean of [Pieter]Maritzburg in [Kwazulu]Natal. The Colonel was not the only soldier to be recorded at Wroxeter in 1878. On 4th July, Edmund Edgeham, G. Ward and W. Fortescue identify themselves as ‘17th Lancers on the [way to the] March of Presentation, Aldershot’. When looking through the record of signatures and addresses one entry leaps out from the page in this particular volume (Figure 128). It is prefaced unexpectedly by four bars of music confidently written into the book. Beneath, in a bold hand, is the following sentence: ‘C. Flavell Hayward visited this festive spot Aug. 29th 1883; was much edified. Wolverhampton.’ This records the visit by Charles Flavell Hayward born in 1863 in Wolverhampton. Hayward was a noted violinist from a musical family who is best known today for his poem ‘A Soldiers Song’ (1884) which was set to music by his friend and fellow violinist, Edward Elgar, his Opus 5. It is a typical piece of Empire bravado that became very popular during the Boer War when it was retitled as ‘A War Song’ (Figure 129): A SOLDIER’S SONG / A WAR SONG Hear the whiz of the shot as it flies, Hear the rush of the shell in the skies, Hear the bayonet’s clash, ringing bright, See the flash of the steel as they fight, Hear the conqueror’s shout ! As the foe’s put to rout ! Hear the cry of despair That is rending the air – Now the neigh of a horse, now the bugle’s loud blast. See! anger and pain, passion and shame, Coles 1998, 12 https://www.housefraserarchive.ac.uk/company/?id=c1667 57 Cranage 1905 55 56

Wroxeter’s people

Figure 128: C. Flavell Hayward’s entry into the Wroxeter visitor book. Image © SA 6001/186 f.60r.

207

208

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 129: The cover of the music for Flavell Hayward and Elgar’s ‘A War Song’ (1903). Wikipedia commons.

Wroxeter’s people

A struggle for life, a thirst for fame. Ah ! Glory or death, for true hearts and brave, Honour in life, or rest in a grave. Now the warfare is o’er, life is past, Now in peace lie the dead, still at last ; Bronzed and brown, wan and pale, side by side, Side by side, as they fought, fell and died ; There they lie, rank and pride, Rags and wealth, proved and tried. Youth and age, fear and trust, Scarred and scorched, in the dust ; Gone for ever their pain, anger, passion, and shame, Gone! tumult and smoke, conflict and din, Gone, anguish and trouble, sorrow and sin, Ah ! Glory or death, for true hearts and brave, Honour in life, or rest in a grave. More detail of Flavell Hayward is provided in his obituary in The Mercury, Hobart, Tasmania 25th September 1906 following his death in Adelaide at the early age of 44. ‘He principally devoted his energies to composition, and particularly orchestration, and composed three grand operas, two comic operas, and published over 100 detached pieces, principally orchestral, together with solos for violin and vocal, concerted numbers and songs. One of his songs had a sale of over 50,000 copies, whilst one or two of his violin solos have had large sales … He was the possessor of the Chas. Reade ‘Strad’ violin and played on this instrument regularly.’58 Altogether, around 350 visitors recorded their names in the book between the beginning of April and the end of November 1878, but on many occasions, it is clear that they are accompanied by a party rather than visiting the site alone. Of course, this number does not account for those who chose not to enter their names so the actual number visiting is, of course, unknowable. However, what is striking from the details that are recorded is that those travelling furthest seem to be diligent in recording the fact, reflecting perhaps the effort they have made to get there. This is a relatively small proportion though and many are locals. All who do sign are, however, likely to be relatively well-to-do and have a certain social standing. The reason for thinking so is the very fact that they could write. The handwriting, almost without exception, is well-executed copperplate, just like my father’s who was taught in a London elementary school in 1920s Upper Norwood to write beautifully. He was a beneficiary of the 1870 Education Act and its successors which had committed the government 58

Obituaries Australia: https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/hayward-charles-flavell-15224 2nd Sept 2021

209

210

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 130: Ellen, Lady Berwick, with her husband, Richard, 7th Lord Berwick and a shooting party which may have included the Head Gardener, George Pearson, who recorded his visit to Wroxeter in the visitor book in 1884. Unknown photographer, 1880s. Attingham Collection. © National Trust.

to providing education for children in England and Wales, with the Act being extended to Scotland in 1872.59 Clearly, no-one signing this book in 1878 had benefitted from the Act and must, therefore, have been privately educated, or was an auto-didact. Walking onto site and signing a Visitor’s Book at this time is thus a social statement, and of course makes it clear to whoever else signs the book, or who looks through it, who it is that has visited. The ability to read and write was at the time recognised as a powerful political and social tool and so access was controlled by politicians. Logically, it followed that access to education was thus a way to challenge, and perhaps break, the class system.60 Visiting Wroxeter was evidently a social statement for some, but equally those who could not sign the book, or who did not feel confident enough to do so, would benefit from the self-improving act of engaging with the past that a visit to the ruins would engender. Some evidence for the loosening of the strict https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/ overview/1870educationact/ 60 Rose 2002, 20-9 59

Wroxeter’s people

hierarchy of mid-Victorian Britain can be detected in the final volume of the Visitor’s Book, covering the years 1884-1897. The handwriting deteriorates, or at least is much more varied in competence, and evidence for social mobility certainly increases, as for example with the entries on the 25th and 27th August 1885 for two teams rowing to London and Worcester respectively61 and the visits of the Clarion Cycling Club of Birmingham on 11th August 1895 and the Manchester Bicycle Club in April 1896.62 Dignitaries continued to visit too, including the first recorded visits by the Noel-Hills of Attingham Hall in the person of Ellen, wife of 7th Lord Berwick on 21st January 1889 in company with a Major Stanley and Francis Saint. This was followed by other visits, notably on 9th September 1890 in company with her niece and nephew, Mary and Thomas, the future 8th Lord Berwick, and on Easter Sunday 1892 in company.63 It was not just the owners of the hall who came visiting: three members of the Pearson family who give their address as Attingham, Shrewsbury, record the visit of George Pearson, Attingham’s Head Gardener at the time. He sometimes accompanied 7th Lord Berwick on his game shoots on the estate, as recorded on a contemporary photograph (Figure 130).64 Sadly, the people who set out the book to be signed did not request that visitors record their impressions of the ruins so quite what any of these visitors made of them is unknown, except for the uplifting comment made by Charles Flavell Hayward, who ‘was much edified’ by his trip to Wroxeter. One account recording a visitor’s impressions from this time has come down to us, the visit of Charles Edwardes who wrote a piece for the Chamber’s Journal that then found its way into a local newspaper. ‘This somewhat paltry little assemblage of wall-fragments and the basements of houses and baths, as now it is seen, gets wondrous dignity from its association with Wrekin … From Wellington and Shrewsbury it is about equidistant: some six miles. The Salop air is supremely good: it is fine open country, and the Wrekin is an object that holds the attention all the way. … The little nucleus of the Roman city uncovered is kept under strict control. The blacksmith has the key of the gate, and of course there is a fee, though not a fixed one. One must not expect such learned or even fluent ‘ciceroni’ here as at Pompeii, where the simple visitor is astounded by his guide’s show of erudition. But there is charm about the well-intentioned talk of the village wiseacre, good in its way as that of the finished antiquary’s. He mixes things up delightfully, and, like as not, points to a heap of ox and deer bones as human remains, and gazes at you to see if you shudder as you ought. Such terrible outlandish terms as ‘sudatorium’ and ‘hypocaust’ he takes at a canter, and is much averse to repeat. But he is SA 6001/187, fol.6.r SA 6001/187 fol.42v & 47v. respectively. 63 SA 6001/187 fol.16.v, 24.v, and 30.r respectively. I am grateful for Saraid Jones of the National Trust at Attingham Park for identifying George Pearson, and for supplying the images of Lord and Lady Berwick. 64 SA 6001/187, fol.5.v, visiting on 17th August 1884. 61 62

211

212

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

a good-natured fellow at heart, and quite willing to enjoy a pipe, sitting on a crumbling fragment of house-wall while you make notes or take photographs (including his) by the half-hour. .... Just a corner of the city has been opened out: that is all. … Little remains to be said about this defunct city. The man who visits it and does not take his imagination with him will be disappointed in it, in spite of the little area of white mosaic flooring and the herringbone tile pattern, about which the guide may be expected to say few words. These are the most impressive details of Wroxeter’s remains as seen at Wroxeter; and in themselves they are not thrilling. Yet the place deserves to be visited, even as the surrounding fields deserve to be somewhat systematically explored.65

65

Wellington Journal 3rd November 1894.

Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century ‘First impressions were “can’t believe we booked for this when you can see it all from the road”.’1 I am happy to say that, despite this first impression, this particular family said they had a good visit to Wroxeter and were impressed by the ruins and the information available about the site. TripAdvisor entries do, of course, have to be taken with a pinch of salt since they are not peer-reviewed and are very dependent on what happened on a particular day. This view does, however, reflect on my own experience of Wroxeter, as well as those I suspect of the many artists, writers and poets whose work we have been looking at. However, the thing you gradually realise about Wroxeter is that you can’t appreciate it just by seeing it from the road. Although its setting is not visually spectacular, and its ruins can be bettered on many Roman sites across Europe, and the vast majority of the town is shrouded in pasture, the more you look, the more you will discover. This is particularly the case if you are able or allowed to wander a bit further in the town, away from the manicured ruins. For decades now those responsible for the site have been struggling to think of ways to allow visitors to explore the site of the Roman town safely and experience more of it, even if there are no more ruins to see on the surface (Figure 131). The main issue is the B4380 which cuts across the site and carries fast-moving vehicles for which there are no safe crossing points. This is a pity because getting out into the landscape does give one a sense of being suspended in time, there being little modern visible from the main high point of the site. At the moment, the best way to get a sense of the time-depth at Wroxeter is to wander down the road to the village. This is always worthwhile as the churchyard, and its church, are a 1

Family, Tripadvisor, Aug. 2020.

213

214

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 131: The author leading a guided tour of Wroxeter to a part of the site not normally open to the public. It has been a long-term aim to open up more of the site to the general public. August 2019.

Figure 132: The consolidated and rebuilt walls of a Roman building at Reinheim, Saarland. If you look carefully at the wall in the centre you can see that the lower part is the original wall. The rest has been built up to stabilise it and make sense of the plan of the building. This is a standard approach in Germany to excavated archaeological sites but is very different to the style in Britain. Author’s photo, October 2007.

Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century

particular haven of peace and tranquillity, as they should be. Other plans exist that may offer more variety to a visit to Wroxeter in the future, which may encourage return visits, but if we really want to get visitors to the site in large numbers, the surest way to do so is by digging again. I made the point earlier that I believed the poets and writers were inspired by Wroxeter’s melancholy air that pervades any site with tumbled ruins that are slightly overgrown or careworn, but it is certainly true that they were also inspired to visit in the first place because there was a sense of discovery, that a dig was going on, or had just gone on, and that there was something new and different to see. Those who run Pompeii today realise this heritage management trick very well. Every now and then they uncover a little more of the buried city to expose yet more frescos, or bodies for the millions of visitors. One can only be envious of their riches, but there is plenty already to see there so it could be argued that there is no real pressing need to expose fresh material when such riches are already on display and are in desperate need of conservation.2 Yet people always want to see more, and to get a sense of seeing something new that few have experienced before. This is human nature, so it is hardly surprising that I am continuously asked (even though I have no hand in the decision-making about the site) when digging will start again. Yet producing more of the same will lead to disillusionment – Thomas Wright’s 1867 excavation is a case in point. Nothing special or different was added to the discoveries made previously and so those visiting felt they knew what they were seeing already. Excavation for excavation’s sake is thus not necessarily the answer either. The answer to the question of why we don’t dig can be answered in two ways. First is that digging is very expensive, and as we have seen the digging is just the beginning of the process, not its end. You have to interpret and write up the excavation to capture the information you have gathered, which takes time and (above all) effort and commitment. If you want to display the ruins you have uncovered to the public, you have to spend a lot of money in conservation, and the end result is often a very modern set of walls that don’t actually look like ruins at all. Archaeologically, this is fine so long as you have recorded what’s there first, but the effect can be a bit misleading, as the resulting effect can look completely new (Figure 132).3 You also have to consider that the site has to be maintained, the on-going costs for which can be crippling if problems are allowed to accumulate (effectively this is the problem at Pompeii and https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/818; https://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/hcp The image shows a consolidated site that straddles the French/German border so is usually called Bliesbruck/Reinheim, although in Roman times it was obviously one place. It is now an archaeological park http://www.archeo57.com/index.php/en/discover/bliesbruck-reinheim. 2 3

215

216

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Herculaneum). Getting funds for repairs to existing ruins is always going to be difficult but is essential if we want people to visit. This is, I suspect, the reason why German sites are so ruthlessly conserved – the resulting fabric is a lot cheaper to maintain in the long run. But the second answer is to respond with the questions Where? And Why? At a generous estimate, about 5% of the site has been excavated, epitomised by the fact that of the 48 town insulae, only three have been dug extensively, nearly all focused on one of the town’s main public buildings.4 Virtually nothing is known of ordinary houses, or where people worked, or a myriad of other features that would illuminate our understanding of the town. So, do you excavate a house, or a temple, or a whole city-block (called an insula)? All will give you answers to specific questions, but it is worth pointing out that the excavation of a quarter of the area of the directly comparable insula IX at Silchester in Hampshire by Professor Mike Fulford and his team from the University of Reading took 17 years (1997-2014) to execute and has resulted in four massive volumes with one still pending, albeit published at commendable speed.5 The knowledge gain has been enormous, but one suspects so too was the cost. In this case, the total excavation means that there is nothing left to consolidate and present to the public, which gives you an idea of just how destructive archaeology should be if it is done properly – an archaeologist’s aim is to remove all trace of human activity. A more serious question is: Why are we excavating, given that digging is an inherently destructive process? This is why Historic England, English Heritage, and the National Trust are so concerned not to undertake further work at Wroxeter. Unless you have a very good reason to dig on a protected (‘scheduled’) site, you shouldn’t do so since it is a wholly damaging process. What you need to do is to think of a good enough set of research questions that will justify the irreparable damage to the archaeology of the site. It follows that the best areas to excavate and present to the public at Wroxeter would be those that have already been extensively dug, such as its forum. I would certainly argue that, given the damage that Atkinson’s excavation did to the forum site, it would benefit us to re-examine his work and see if a century of archaeological advances can give answers to the many questions posed by his findings (Figure 133), not least through scientific dating. And if you are digging to answer questions about the forum, displaying it to the public as an end result would be fantastic – it would be the only complete and visitable municipal forum-baths complex in north-western Europe. In the current age, a valid response might be that we don’t need to dig. We could just present the site as a digital reconstruction with visitors wandering 4 5

White, Gaffney and Gaffney 2013, 88. Fulford et al. 2020, 3-10 give the background.

Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century

Figure 133: Two of Atkinson’s workmen digging the forum. In the background is the fence of 1 & 2 The Ruins, and to the left, the sheep fold behind the farm buildings (Image © SA PH/W/38/3/51). The image indicates that the ruins are relatively shallowly buried and would be relatively easy to present to the public.

about with a futuristic headset wowed by a Virtual Reality reconstruction of the lost city. This may happen at some point in the future, but it is at the moment unrealistic. To present an entire city would need the input of a large number of designers and digital savants, and huge processing power that is unrealistic to imagine being available anytime soon in the Shropshire countryside. More pertinently, what would you tell the designers to show? Since so little of Wroxeter has been excavated, what you would be presenting is educated guesswork of potentially highly dubious accuracy. Even if you were able to do this convincingly, in full consultation with archaeologists, as might be achieved with a more limited VR of the public baths and forum for example (which we do know about in detail), the pace with which hard-and soft-ware is updated would likely render the creation redundant very swiftly. This was the fate of an early VR Wroxeter Fortress that we launched on-site in the late 1990s. It worked well until there was a software update that meant that the digital plug-in no longer worked.

217

218

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 134: The display inside Shrewsbury Tourist Information Centre. Plenty of lovely images of Shropshire, but none of them of Wroxeter. Author’s photos, December 2021, with the consent of staff.

Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century

Figure 135: Goss Crested Ware souvenir of Wroxeter. The crest is of Shrewsbury – the Three Loggerheads over a ribbon with Floreat Salopia. Height of vessel 69mm. Image © Shropshire Museum Service, SHRMS: 2018.00170.

However we look to present the site in the future, the unfortunate outcome of the lack of work on the site for getting on for 30 years now is that its profile among the general public has ebbed away. A short-term boost was provided by the construction of the villa in 2010 which saw a 177% increase in visitor numbers to 57,278 in 2011,6 but the increase was not sustained – it was not in the top 150 sites in the Association for Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA)’s table for 2012. The lack of profile is seen today most tellingly in the Tourist Information Centres to be found in Shrewsbury, Telford, and throughout the West Midlands (Figure 134). Wroxeter’s Old Work barely registers as an image in such places, unlike the iconic Iron Bridge (now spectacularly repainted in its original colour), or Stokesay and Ludlow Castles, or the Shropshire Hills AONB, or the buildings of Shrewsbury and the other towns of the county. (This is why I commissioned a new artwork by local artist Lyn Evans for the cover.) All are, of course, deserving of their fame and are singularly lovely sites and places, but Wroxeter has become a bit of a Cinderella. It wasn’t always so, of course, as we have seen. Historic postcards of the site abound and of course are still available at the site shop, along with other souvenirs. There was even a little miniature memento inspired by the site that was produced by W. H. Goss in its collection of crested ware souvenirs (Figure 135),7 most probably in the inter-war period. https://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=597 I am grateful to Emma-Kate Lanyon of Shropshire Museums Service for bringing this piece to my attention and supplying an image of it.

6 7

219

220

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Figure 136: The orientation display panel in the reception area of Attingham Park. Wroxeter Roman City is visible in the bottom right corner – the purple line of the estate boundary goes across the northwest corner of the monument. Author’s photo, June 2009.

As a visitor attraction, Wroxeter appears to have fallen into an unfortunate Catch-22-type situation; without visitors there will be limited investment in the site, but without investment in the site, visitors are unlikely to wish to visit. What is needed is a broader vision of what Wroxeter is and how it could be used to explore our past, and future. When I co-ordinated the team that drew up the Conservation Statement for Wroxeter8 more than a decade ago, we tried to think of a strategy based on a broad overview of the site, as the process encourages you to do.9 We had lots of ideas and tried them out on the local community. While they are not all being implemented, at least people are thinking about the site again. What I would stress is that we don’t need to dig up lots of the Roman town. It is perfectly safe where it is, but we can use the land that has been damaged in the past to tell a broader story than we can at the moment. For that reason, I think we should excavate both the forum and the buildings that Bushe-Fox excavated, as Peter White recommended in his https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/wroxcons_eh_2012/downloads.cfm The literature on the Conservation Management Plan (CMP) process is extensive, but the Burra Charter website gives an excellent overview. A link is provided on this website: https://www.environment.sa.gov.au/ topics/heritage/conserving-our-heritage/burra-charter 8 9

Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century

Figure 137: The Grassy Town forlorn, and its rent and mournful wall … with acknowledgement to the shade of Mary Webb. Author’s photo, July 2020.

1976 plan, but we shouldn’t be adding in huge complications such as closing roads in and around the village. Such a work programme would take decades, but would really bring people in, and why not allow them to participate as they used to in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s? I suspect one of the reasons why people do metal detecting legally, and illegally, across Britain is not just the thrill of discovery but because they are interested in the past and see archaeology as a bit of a closed shop that they are not allowed to participate in. A Big Dig project at Wroxeter would provide so much energy and excitement around the site and be a fantastic way to bring employment to an area that is predominantly rural. Engaging with visitors like this has been key to the growth in visitors at Attingham Park, a site that is directly attached to Wroxeter (Figure 136). Ideally, visitors should be able to flow from the one heritage site to the other, and then build in visits to Shrewsbury, Ironbridge World Heritage Site, or any other of the many heritage sites in Shropshire or the West Midlands. I would make one final point about Wroxeter and its potential. For 400 years or so, Wroxeter was a bustling Roman site – a fortress and then a major town thronging with people – but for more than one-and-a-half millennia since it has been farmland. It was farmland too for a millennium before the Roman

221

222

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

town was even built.10 Now it can no longer be ploughed and sown with crops. The most you can do is graze sheep on it (cattle are too heavy and damage the site, especially around the Bell Brook). Nature will adapt, given the time and space to do so, and as a major area of increasingly naturalised grassland, species will colonise, especially if we encourage them (Figure 137). Wild animals will return – when I was fieldwalking in nearby fields 25 years ago you used to startle hares, larks, and lapwings from their concealment in the crops. I know they used to be seen in Wroxeter’s fields and perhaps they would come back. The land has no chemical fertilizers on it and hasn’t had for 50 years so I believe we should encourage Wroxeter’s landscape to be respected for what it increasingly is; a lovely, unspoilt part of Shropshire. Who knows, if the wildlife and flora return, perhaps the artists, poets and writers will be inspired again.

10

White, Gaffney and Gaffney 2013, 158-60.

References Archival sources All newspaper accounts provided in the text, with the exception of those listed below, were identified and sourced from the digitised holdings of the British Newspaper Archive: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ Apportionment of the rent-charge in lieu of tithes in the Parish of Wroxeter in the County of Salop (1840); Plan of the Parish of Wroxeter in the County of Salop (1842) Shropshire Archives: SA2656/16 -17. Jackson, F. 1941 Letter to Miss Auden, Shropshire Archives: 6000/18561. Mitchell, S. 1860 ‘A day with the Romans at Wroxeter’ Manuscript, Shropshire Archives: MI8894/1. Mytton Papers Notes on Churches etc. Vol. VII University of Birmingham Cadbury Research Library (XMYT The Mytton Papers 261). Weigall, A. 1926 ‘Wanderings in Roman Britain. The White City in the Valley XXIII The Tragedy of Wroxeter’ Newpaper cutting from The Daily Mail August 6th 1926. Shropshire Archives: SA C.62.4 LS 25490/1. Wright, T. Collection of Unpublished Letters British Library Addl. Mss. 33346 & 33347. Wroxeter Roman site. Managed by Shropshire and North Wales Natural History and Antiquarian Society. Visitors Book 1871-1877. Shropshire Archives: 6001/185. Wroxeter Roman site. Managed by Shropshire and North Wales Natural History and Antiquarian Society. Visitors Book 1878-1884. Shropshire Archives: 6001/186.

223

224

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Wroxeter Roman site. Managed by Shropshire and North Wales Natural History and Antiquarian Society. Visitors Book 1884-1897. Shropshire Archives: 6001/187. Published sources Alcock, L. 1971 Arthur’s Britain. London: Allen Lane. Alcock, L. 2003 Kings & Warriors, Craftsmen and Priests in Northern Britain AD 550850. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Monograph Series. Andrews, F. 1925 ‘Local self-government in Roman Britain. Important discoveries at Wroxeter (Viroconium).’ Illustrated London News, Sept. 19, 1925, 518-20, 532-3. Anon 1865 ‘A Ramble to Wroxeter’ The Staffordshire Advertiser 28/01/1865, p.3. Anon 1881 Catalogue of the Museum of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society on College Hill, Shrewsbury. Adnitt & Naunton, Shrewsbury. Ashurst, J. 2006 Conservation of Ruins. London: Routledge. Aston, M. 2001 ‘Peter Reynolds.’ The Guardian 05/10/2001. (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/oct/05/guardianobituaries. humanities) Atkinson, D. 1942 Report on Excavations at Wroxeter (the Roman City of Viroconium) in the County of Salop 1923 – 1927. Oxford University Press. Attingham Re-discovered https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/attingham-park/ features/the-re-discovered-project (Accessed 3/7/20). Attingham Re-Discovered Through the Roof (archive blog): https:// attinghamparkmansion.wordpress.com/category/through-the-roof/ (Accessed 3/7/20) Attingham Park 2012 No.29: The Farmer, The-Soldier, The-Sailor, and The Diplomat. Introducing the Less Eminent Lord Berwicks. (Archive blog) https:// attinghamparkmansion.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/andys-diary-the-farmer-thesoldier-the-sailor-and-the-diplomat-introducing-the-less-eminent-lord-berwicks/ (Accessed 11/01/2021). Auden, T. 1881 ‘The Ruins at Wroxeter’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 4, ix. Auden, T. 1911 ‘The proposed excavations at Uriconium. Shrewsbury’s Old Houses’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 34, vi-xi. Auden, H. M. 1949 ‘Annual Meeting 1948’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 53.1, v-vi. Baker, A. 1992 Air Archaeology in the Valley of the River Severn. Unpbl. PhD Thesis, University of Southampton. Barker, P. A. 1975 ‘Excavations on the site the Baths Basilica at Wroxeter 19661974: An Interim Report.’ Britannia 6, 106-117. Barker, P. A., White, R. H., Pretty, K. M., Bird H., and Corbishley, M. J. 1997 The Baths Basilica Wroxeter. Excavations 1966-90. London: English Heritage Archaeological Report 8. Baron, S. 1952 ‘John Rebuilds a City.’ News Chronicle; day and page unknown, but ca. 19th November.

References

Bartholomew, M. 2004 In Search of H. V. Morton. London: Methuen. Bassett, S. R. 1992 ‘Medieval ecclesiastical organisation in the vicinity of Wroxeter and its British antecedents.’ Journal of the British Archaeological Association 145, 1–28. Battersby, H. 2018 ‘The Reverend Edward Williams.’ Salopian Recorder 91, 2-3. https://friendsofshropshirearchives.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/ salopan-recorder-no-91.pdf (accessed 17/7/20). Baugh, G. C. 2004 ‘Hartshorne, Charles Henry.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online version: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/12504). Francis Bedford Collection: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/50140/ photography/1427/francis_bedford/2 (Accessed 3/7/20). Birley, A. R. 1997 Hadrian. The Restless Emperor. London: Routledge. Boatwright, M. T. 2000 Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire. Princeton University Press. Boon, G. C. 1986 ‘Giraldus Cambrensis and the ruins of Caerleon, 1188.’ IN D. Zienkiewicz The Legionary Fortress Baths at Caerleon. The Buildings. Cardiff: National Museum of Wales, 269-71. Bowman, A., Thomas, J.D. and Tomlin, R.S.O. (eds.) 2010 ‘The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses IV, Part 1) Britannia 41, 187-224. Bradley, S. A. J. (trs. & ed.) 1991 Anglo-Saxon Poetry. London: Everyman Library. British Archaeological Association: History https://thebaa.org/about/historyof-the-baa/ (Accessed 3/7/20). Burkhardt, F. et al. (eds.) 2017 The Correspondence of Charles Darwin Volume 25, 1877. Cambridge University Press. Burne, C. S. (ed.) 1883 Shropshire Folk Lore: A sheaf of Gleanings, Volume 1. London: Trübner & Co. Bushe-Fox, J.P. 1913 Excavations on the Site of the Roman Town at Wroxeter Shropshire, in 1912 Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 1. Bushe-Fox, J.P. 1914 Second Report on the Excavations on the Site of the Roman Town at Wroxeter Shropshire 1913 Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 2. Bushe-Fox, J.P. 1916 Third Report on the Excavations on the Site of the Roman Town at Wroxeter Shropshire 1914 Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 4. Bryant, R. M. 2012 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture. Volume X: The Western Midlands. London: British Academy. Bryant, R. M. and Parsons, D. N. 2012 ‘Wroxeter (Roman Town)’ IN R. Bryant. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture. Volume X: The Western Midlands. London: British Academy. Carver, M. 2019 Formative Britain. An archaeology of Britain, fifth to eleventh century AD. London: Routledge. Charles-Edwards, T.M. 2013 Wales and the Britons 350-1064 Oxford University Press. Chippendale, C. 2012 Stonehenge Complete 4th edn. London: Thames & Hudson.

225

226

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Chitty, L. 1949 ‘Flint implements recently found in Shropshire, south of the Severn’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 53.1, 24-36. Coles, G. M. (ed.) 1977 Mary Webb. Collected Prose and Poems – a Selection of Uncollected and Unpublished Work Shrewsbury: Wildings & Wirral: Headland. Coles, G. M. 1998 The Flower of Light. A Biography of Mary Webb Wirral: Headland. Coles, G.M. 2005 Selected Poems of Mary Webb (3rd edn.) Wirral: Headland. Collis, J. ‘The urban revolution: Martin Biddle’s excavations in Winchester, 1961-71’ IN J. Schofield (ed.) Great Excavations. Shaping the Archaeological Profession. Oxford: Oxbow, 74-86. Cool, H.E.M. 2014 ‘Which ‘Romans’; What ‘Home’? The myth of the ‘End’ of Roman Britain IN Haarer, F.K. (ed.) AD 410: The History and Archaeology of Late and Post-Roman Britain. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 13-22. Corbet Anderson, J. 1867 The Roman City of Uriconium at Wroxeter, Salop: illustrative of the history and social life of our Romano-British Forefathers London: Russell Smith. Cosh, S.R. and Neal, D.S. 2010 Roman Mosaics of Britain Volume IV: Western Britain. London: Society of Antiquaries. Cosh, S.R. and White, R.H. 2006 ‘A Re-discovered Mosaic from Insula XXVI’ in Wroxeter Archaeology. Excavation and Research on the Defences and in the Town, 1968-1992 in P. Ellis and R.H. White eds., Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 78 (for 2003), 141-7. Cranage, D. H. S. 1905 An Architectural Account of the Churches of Shropshire Part. III The Franchise of Wenlock, The Hundred of Overs. Shrewsbury: Hobson & Co. Creighton, J. with Fry, R. 2016 Silchester: changing visions of a Roman town. London: Britannia Monograph 28. Crummy, P. 1997 City of Victory: the story of Colchester – Britain’s first Roman town Colchester Archaeological Trust. Cunliffe, B. 1988 ‘The context of the votive deposit.’ IN B. Cunliffe (ed.) The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath. Volume 2 The Finds from the Sacred Spring. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 16, 1-4. Daniell, D. (ed.) 1982 The Best Short Stories of John Buchan volume 2. London: Granada publishing. Darwin, C. 1945 Darwin on Humus and the Earthworm. The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits. With an introduction by Sir Albert Howard. London: Faber & Faber. Davis, M.C. 2008 Dame Kathleen Kenyon. Digging up the Holy Land Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Dickens, C. 1859 ‘Rome and Turnips.’ All the Year Round May 14, 1859, 53-8. Dobie, J. 2019 Illustrating the Past. Artists’ interpretation of ancient places. London: Historic England. Dunbabin, K.M.D. 2003 The Roman Banquet. Images of Conviviality Cambridge University Press. Eck, W. and Förster, G. 1999 ‘A Triumphal Arch for Hadrian near Tel Shalem in the Beth Shean Valley Journal of Roman Archaeology 12, 294-313.

References

Edmondson, J. 2015 ‘Inscribing Roman Texts. Officinae, Layout and Carving Techniques.’ In Bruun, C. & Edmundson, J. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy Oxford University Press, 111-30. Edwards, N. 2009, ‘Rethinking the Pillar of Eliseg’, Antiquaries Journal 89, 143–77. Ellis P. (ed.), 2000 The Roman Baths and Macellum at Wroxeter. Excavations by Graham Webster 1955-85. London: English Heritage Excavation Reports 9. Esmonde Cleary, S., Wood, J. and Durham, E. 2022 Chedworth Roman Villa. Excavations and RE-imaginings from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Centuries. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies and the National Trust; Britannia Monograph 35. Everill, P and White, R.H. 2011 ‘Philip Barker’s Wroxeter’ IN J. Schofield (ed.) Great Excavations. Shaping the Archaeological Profession. Oxford: Oxbow, 167180. Ferraby, R. and Millett, M. 2020 Isurium Brigantum. An Archaeological Survey of Roman Aldborough. Research Report of the Society of Antiquaries of London No.81. Fleming, R. 2010 Britain after Rome. The Fall and Rise 400 to 1070. Penguin History of Britain 2, London: Allen Lane. Fleming, R. 2021 The Material Fall of Roman Britain 300-525 CE. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Fletcher, W.G.D. 1905 ‘A Fourth Century Christian Letter from [?] Uriconium’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 28, i-ii. Fox, C. 1938 The Personality of Britain. Its influence on inhabitant and invader in prehistoric and early historic times (3rd edn.). Cardiff: National Museum of Wales. Fox, G.E. 1897 ‘Uriconium’ Archaeological Journal 54, 123-73. Fox, G.E. 1898 A Guide to the Roman City of Uriconium at Wroxeter, Shropshire (1st edn to 1916; 2nd edn. 1920) Shrewsbury: Adnitt & Naunton & Wildings. Fulford, M., Clarke, A, Durham, E. and Pankhurst, N. 2020 Silchester Insula IX: The Claudio-Neronian Occupation of the Iron Age Oppidum. London: Britannia Monograph Series 33. Gaffney, C.F., Gater, J.A., Linford, P., Gaffney, V.L. and White, R.H. 2000 ‘Largescale Systematic Fluxgate Gradiometry at the Roman City of Wroxeter’ Archaeological Prospection 7.2, 81-99. Gaffney, V.L. and White, R.H. 2007 Wroxeter, the Cornovii, and the Urban Process. Final Report on the Wroxeter Hinterland Project 1994-1997. Volume 1. Researching the Hinterland Portsmouth R.I. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 68. Garner, D. (J. Collins ed.) 2016 Hillforts of the Cheshire Ridge. Investigations undertaken by the Habitats and Hillforts Landscape Partnership Scheme, 2009-2012 Oxford: Archaeopress. Gelling, M. with Foxall, H.D.G. 1990 The Place Names of Shropshire Part 1. The Major Names of Shropshire English Place Name Society Vol. 52/53. Gibson, E. 1695 Camden’s Britannia. Newly translated from Latin into English. London. Grasby, R. D. 2013 Processes in the Making of Roman Inscriptions. Oxford.

227

228

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Halsall, G. 2013 Worlds of Arthur. Facts and Fictions of the Dark Age. Oxford University Press. Hammill, F. 2001 ‘Cold Comfort Farm, D. H. Lawrence and English Literary Culture Between the Wars.’ Modern Fiction Studies 47.4, 831-54. Hammon, A. 2011 ‘Understanding the Romano-British-Early Medieval Transition: A Zooarchaeological Perspective from Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) Britannia 42, 275–305. Hanson, W. S. 1991 Agricola and the Conquest of the North. London: Batsford. Hartley, E., Hawkes, J., Henig, M. and Mee, F. (eds.) 2006 Constantine the Great. York’s Roman Emperor York: Yorkshire Museum Trust. Hartley, R.F. 2016 ‘James Pickering and the search for cropmarks in Shropshire’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 91, 117-24. Hartshorne, C.H. 1841 Salopia Antiqua, or an Enquiry from Personal Survey into the ‘Druidical’, military, and other early remains in Shropshire and the North Welsh borders; with observations upon the Names of Places, and a Glossary of Words used in the County of Salop. Cambridge University Press. Hastings, M. 2004 ‘A very English hypocrite’ Sunday Telegraph 9th May. https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3616573/A-very-English-hypocrite. html Hawkes, J. 1982 Mortimer Wheeler. Adventurer in Archaeology London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Herbert, T. and Huggins, K. 1995 The Decorative Tile London: Phaidon. Higgins, C. 2013 Under Another Sky. Journeys in Roman Britain London: Jonathan Cape. Hill, D. 1981 An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England Oxford. Blackwell. Hooke, D. 2011 ‘The post-Roman and the early medieval periods in the west midlands: a potential archaeological agenda’ In Watt, S. (ed.) The Archaeology of the West Midlands. A Framework for Research, 149-72. Oxford: Oxbow. Houghton, A.W.G. 1961 ‘A Roman Tilery and Brickfield at Ismore Coppice, Wroxeter’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, 57.1, 7-12. Houghton, A.W.G. 1977 ‘The Auxiliary Roman Fort at Wroxeter – an interim report.’ West Midlands Archaeological News Sheet 20, 41-3. Housman, A. E. 1896 A Shropshire Lad. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Hyde, R. 1994 A Prospect of Britain. The Town Panoramas of Samuel and Nathaniel Buck London, Pavillion. Johnson, B. 1978 The Secret War. London: BBC Publications. Johnson, H. 1869 ‘Uriconium: the buried city of Wroxeter’ Worcestershire Chronicle 10th February, p.2. Kennedy, A. 2017 ‘Samuel and Nathaniel Buck – past and present in the national landscape.’ CCL article, available at https://www.bl.uk/picturing-places/ articles/samuel-and-nathaniel-buck-past-and-present-in-the-nationallandscape Kenyon, K.M. 1937 Excavations at Viroconium (Wroxeter) 1937 Shrewsbury: Shropshire Archaeological Society. Kenyon, K.M. 1940 ‘Excavations at Viroconium, 1936-7’ Archaeologia 88, 175-224.

References

Kenyon, K.M. 1949 Wroxeter Roman City Viroconium (Shropshire) London: HMSO. Kenyon, K.M. 1980 ‘Excavations at Viroconium in Insula 9, 1952-3’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 60 (1975-6), 5-75. Kidd, D. 1977 ‘Charles Roach Smith and his Museum of London Antiquities’, British Museum Yearbook 2, 105–35. Kynaston, D. 2007 Austerity Britain 1945-51 London: Bloomsbury. Lane, A. 2014 ‘Wroxeter and the end of Roman Britain’ Antiquity 88/340, 501–15. Lang Jones, H. 1913 Songs of a Buried City London: J.M. Dent. Lawson, J., Preshous, D. and Smyth, J. 2006 ‘Philip Barker. Distinguished and Influential Field Archaeologist.’ South -West Shropshire Historical and Archaeological Society Journal 17, 13-7. Available at http://swshas.org.uk/ Journals/2006_SWSHASJournal.pdf Leighton, F. 1789 ‘Memoir concerning the Roman Baths discovered, in the year 1788, at Wroxeter, the ancient Uriconium or Viroconium.’ Archaeologia 9, 323-8. Logan, W., Rátkai, S., O’Brien, C., Gidney, L., Forsyth-Magee, H. and HamiltonDyer, S. 2022 ‘The Excavation of Medieval and later Tanneries along Barker Street and St Austin’s Street, Shrewsbury, 2017.’ Transactions of the Shropshire Historical and Archaeological Society 97, 1-60. Lyster, J. 1706 ‘A Description of a Roman Sudatory, or Hypocaustum, found at Wroxeter in Shropshire, Anno 1701.’ Philosophical Transactions 25 (no.306), 2226-7. Mackreth D. F. (ed.) 2000 ‘The nineteenth-century excavations in the baths insula by Thomas Wright and others’ IN Ellis, P. (ed.), 347–75. Maas, H. (ed.) 1971 The Letters of A.E. Housman. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. Matthew, H. C. G. 2005 ‘Hill, William Noel-, 3rd Baron Berwick Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13316 Maw, G. 1861 ‘The Pavements of Uriconium’ Journal of the British Archaeological Association 17, 100-110. Morris, J. 1978 Age of Arthur Chichester: Phillimore. Morris, J.A. 1928 ‘Roman Bridge at Wroxeter.’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, 44. 304-6. Morris, J. A. 1930 ‘Aero-Films of the Excavations at Wroxeter’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 45 (1929-30), ix. Morris, J.A. 1935 A Guide to the Roman City of Uriconium at Wroxeter, Shropshire. Shrewsbury: Wildings. Morris, R. 2013 Time’s Anvil. England, Archaeology and the Imagination. London: Phoenix. Morris, S. 2015 ‘Girtin, Thomas’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https:// doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10777 Morrison, R. and Roberts, D.S. 2012 Thomas De Quincey: New Theoretical and Critical Directions London: Routledge. Morton, H. V. 1938 In Search of England. (25th Edn.) London: Methuen. Murray, J. 1879 Murray’s Handbook for Shropshire and Cheshire London: John Murray.

229

230

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Newman, J. and Pevsner, N. 2006 The Buildings of England. Shropshire (2nd edn.) New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Okasha, E. 1993 Corpus of Early Christian Inscribed Stones (Studies in the Early History of Britain). Leicester University Press. Opper, T. 2008 Hadrian. Empire and Conflict. London: British Museum Press. Otter, W. 1825 The Life and Remains of Edward Daniel Clarke, vol.I, 131-32. Owen, H. 1965 Journey from Obscurity: Wilfred Owen 1893 – 1918. Memoirs of the Owen Family Vol. III War Oxford. Page, W. (ed.) 1908 Victoria County History of Shropshire. Volume 1. London; Constable. Painter, K. 2013 ‘Hacksilber: a means of exchange?’ IN F. Hunter & K. Painter (eds.) Late Roman Silver. The Traprain Treasure in Context. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries Scotland, 215-42. Peace, J. M. 1966 ‘Viroconium, The Old Work’ in Sweet Vernal. A Collection of Country Journeys. London: Jonathan Cape, 19-21. Pearson, W. 1807 Select Views of the Antiquities of Shropshire: with a descriptive account of each building. London. Penney, S. and Shotter, D.C.A. 1996 ‘Further inscribed Roman salt pans from Shavington, Cheshire’ Britannia 27, 360-5. Penney, S. and Shotter, D.C.A. 2000 An inscribed Roman salt pan from Shavington, Cheshire’ Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 76, 53-61. Phillips, G. and Keatman, P. 1993 King Arthur. The true Story. London: Arrow. Pitts, M. 2015 Digging for Richard III: How archaeology found the king (2nd edn.). London: Thames & Hudson. Thomas Prytharch https://www.antiques-atlas.com/antique/thomas_ prytherch_1864-1926_wcolour_lord_burleigh/as237a658 (Accessed 3/7/20). Quartermaine, J., Trinder, B. and Turner, R. 2003 Thomas Telford’s Holyhead Road. The A5 in north Wales. York: Council for British Archaeology Research Reports 135. Ray, K. and Bapty, I. 2016 Offa’s Dyke. Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth-Century Britain Oxford: Windgather Press. Reynolds, P. J. 1979 Iron-Age Farm. The Butser Experiment. London: British Museum Press. Rhodes, M. 1992 Some Aspects of the Contribution to British Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith (1806–1890), Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London (https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10124134/) . Rickman, J. (ed.) 1838 Life of Thomas Telford Civil Engineer. Written by himself: containing a descriptive narrative of his professional labours: with a folio Atlas of Copper Plates, 22-5, Appendix A. Rose, J. 2002 The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes Yale University Press. Rowland, J. 1990 Early Welsh Saga Poetry. A Study and Edition of the Englynion. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. St Joseph, J.K. 1951 ‘Roman Forts on Watling Street near Penkridge and Wroxeter’ Transactions of the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society 69, 50-6.

References

Scarth, H.M. 1859 ‘Notices of Wroxeter, the Roman Uriconium, in Shropshire’ Archaeological Journal 16, 53-70. Scarth, H. M. 1864 ‘Report on the progress of the excavations at Wroxeter, the Roman Uriconium, since July 1860’ Archaeological Journal 21, 130-7. Scott, S. 2017 ‘Gratefully dedicated to the subscribers’: The archaeological publishing projects and achievements of Charles Roach Smith Internet Archaeology 45 https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.45.6 Shaw, M. 1983 ‘Collectors and Collections No.4. John Corbet Anderson’ Croyden Natural History and Scientific Society, Archaeology Section. Newsletter 59 (Oct. 1983), 3-6. Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society (SHANS) 1899 ‘Annual Report: Exploration of Uriconium’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 22, vii-xv. Shropshire Star 1963 ‘Trench cave-in traps 2’ July 1963. Sladdin, E. 1953 ‘Wroxeter Summer School in Archaeology’ Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society 54.2, 339. Sloan, K. (ed.) 2004 Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century. British Museum Press. Smith, C. R. 1854 ‘Roman Sculptures found at Wroxeter.’ Collectanea Antiqua, Etchings and Notices of Ancient Remains, Illustrative of the Habits, Customs, and History of Past Ages Vol. 3, 29-32. Smith, C. R. 1861 ‘The Roman Column at Cussy, in the Côte D’Or.’ Collectanea Antiqua, Etchings and Notices of Ancient Remains, Illustrative of the Habits, Customs, and History of Past Ages Vol. 5, 207-18. Smith, C. R. 1868a ‘Chester: its Roman Remains’ Collectanea Antiqua, Etchings and Notices of Ancient Remains, Illustrative of the Habits, Customs, and History of Past Ages Vol. 6, 28-47. Smith, C. R. 1868b ‘Dax’ Collectanea Antiqua, Etchings and Notices of Ancient Remains, Illustrative of the Habits, Customs, and History of Past Ages Vol. 6, 226-40. Smith, C. R. 1868c ‘Antiquarian Notes’ The Gentleman’s Magazine 138.1, 664-666. Sorrell, M. (ed.) 1981 Reconstructing the past. London: Batsford. Sorrell, J. and Sorrell, M. 2018 Alan Sorrell. The Man who Created Roman Britain Oxford: Oxbow. Speed. G. 2014 Towns in the Dark? Urban Transformations from Late Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Archaeopress. Stallworthy, J. 1974 Wilfred Owen London: Chatto and Windus. Stallworthy, J. (ed.) 1990 The Poems of Wilfred Owen London: Chatto and Windus. Stallworthy, J. (ed.) 1994 Wilfred Owen. The War Poems London: Chatto and Windus. Stevenson, M. 1908 ‘George Edward Fox, Hon. M.A. Oxon., F.S.A.’ Antiquaries Journal 65, 338-9. Sweet, R. 2004 Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth Century Britain Hambledon: Continuum. Sweet, R. 2017 ‘Antiquarianism and ruins’ IN D. Townshend, M. Carter and P. Lindfield (eds.) Writing Britain’s Ruins London: British Library, 43-75. Sutcliff, R. 1961 Dawn Wind. Oxford University Press.

231

232

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Thomas, C. 1981 Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500 London: Batsford. Thompson, M. W. 1981 Ruins: Their Preservation and Display London: British Museum Press. Thompson, M. W. 2004 ‘Wright, Thomas (1810-1877).’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/30063 Thornbury, W. 1877 The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Founded on Letters and Papers furnished by his friends and Fellow-Academicians London: Chatto & Windus. Thurley, S. 2013 Men from the Ministry. How Britain Saved its Heritage New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Tomlin, R. S. O. 1988 ‘The Curse Tablets.’ IN B. Cunliffe (ed.) The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath. Volume 2 The Finds from the Sacred Spring. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 16, 59-266. Tomlin, R. S. O. 2016 Roman London’s first voices. Writing tablets from the Bloomberg excavations, 2010-14. London: Museum of London Archaeology Monograph 72. Tomlin, R. S. O. 2018 Britannia Romana. Roman Inscriptions & Roman Britain Oxford: Oxbow. Toms, G. 1973 ‘The Future of Wroxeter’ Shropshire News Letter 44, 1-3 Trinder, B. 2003 ‘The turnpike roads in North Wales and the coming of Thomas Telford’s road.’ IN Quartermaine, J., Trinder, B. and Turner, R. 2003 Thomas Telford’s Holyhead Road. The A5 in north Wales. York: Council for British Archaeology Research Reports 135, 8-16. Trinder, B. 2005 ‘The Most Extraordinary District in the World’. Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale. An anthology of visitors’ impressions of Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale and the Shropshire Coalfield. Chichester: Philimore (3rd edn.). Trinder, B. 2016 The Industrial Archaeology of Shropshire (2nd edn.) Logaston Press. Uglow, J. 2003 The Lunar Men. The Friends Who Made the Future 1730-1810. London: Faber & Faber. ‘Urban, S.’ 1798 ‘Shrewsbury Feb.7’ [Discovery of glass urns] Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, 68, 162. ‘Urban, S.’ 1813 ‘Shrewsbury Oct.14’ [Parkes engraving] Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, 83, 9. University of Birmingham 1958 Opening … of the Charles Henry Foyle Archaeological Centre … Privately printed brochure. Wacher, J. 1975 The Towns of Roman Britain (1st edn) London: Batsford. Wallace, C. 1994 ‘Donald Atkinson’ Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society 112, 167-176. Ward, J. 1755 ‘An Account of four Roman Inscriptions cut upon three large Stones, found in a ploughed field near Wroxeter in Shropshire, in the year 1752: with some Observations upon them.’ Philosophical Transactions 49.1, 196-205. Watson, M. 2002 Shropshire. An Archaeological Guide. Shrewsbury: Shropshire Books. Webb, P.H. 1933 Roman Imperial Coinage Volume V Part 2, Probus to Amandus London: Spink & Son.

References

Webster, G. 1980 ‘A note on new discoveries at Viroconium (Wroxeter) which may have a bearing on Hadrian’s frontier policy in Britain’ IN W.S. Hanson and L.J.F. Keppie (eds.) Roman Frontier Studies 1979 Oxford: BAR International Series 71(i), 291-96. Webster, G. 1988a ‘Wroxeter (Viroconium) IN G. Webster (ed.) Fortress into City. The Consolidation of Roman Britain, First Century AD. London: Batsford, 120-144. Webster, G. 1988b ‘Conclusion’ IN A. Burl (ed.) From Roman town to Norman Castle. Essays in honour of Philip Barker. University of Birmingham Extra-Mural Department Occ. Paper, 74-6. Webster, G. 1991 Archaeologist at Large. London: Batsford. Webster, G. 1993 ‘The City of Viroconium (Wroxeter): its military origins and expansion under Hadrian’ IN S. Greep (ed.) Roman Towns: The Wheeler Inheritance. A review of 50 years’ research York: Council for British Archaeology Research Report 93, 50-55. Webster, G. (ed. J. Chadderton) 2002 The Legionary Fortress at Wroxeter London: English Heritage Archaeological Report 19. Welfare, H. and Swan, V. 1995 Roman Camps in England. The Field Archaeology. London: H.M.S.O. Wells, R. 1988 ‘Letter re Housman’s copy of Murray’s Guide to Shropshire and Cheshire’ Times Literary Supplement 15th Sept. 1988. Wheeler, R.E.M. 1955 Still Digging. Adventures in Archaeology London: Michael Joseph. White, P. 1976 Wroxeter Roman City. Feasibility Study of Proposed Development Unpublished DoE Consultation Document. White, R.H. 1988 ‘Mayer and British Archaeology’ IN M. Gibson and S.M. Wright (eds.) Joseph Mayer of Liverpool 1803-1886. Society of Antiquaries Occ. Papers (NS) 11, 118-136. White, R.H. 1999 ‘The evolution of the baths complex at Wroxeter, Shropshire.’ IN DeLaine, J. and Johnston, D.E. (eds.), Roman Baths and Bathing. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Roman Baths held at Bath, England, 30 March – 4 April 1992. Part 2: Design and Context. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 37.2. Portsmouth R.I, 278-91. White, R. H. 2006 ‘Afterword: excavating Wroxeter at the end of the twentieth century’ in Wroxeter Archaeology. Excavation and Research on the Defences and in the Town, 1968-1992 in P. Ellis and R.H. White eds., Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 78 (for 2003), 165-9. White, R.H. 2007 Britannia Prima. Britain’s Last Roman Province. Stroud: Tempus. White, R.H. and Barker, P.A. 1997 Wroxeter. Life and Death of a Roman City Stroud: Tempus / History Press. White, R.H., Gaffney, C. and Gaffney, V.L. 2013 Wroxeter, the Cornovii, and the Urban Process. Final Report on the Wroxeter Hinterland Project 1994-1997. Volume 2: Characterising the City Oxford: Archaeopress. White, R.H. and Hislop, M. 2002 Summary Report on an Archaeological Evaluation and Building Record at Wroxeter Farm, Shropshire. BUFAU Report 893.2.

233

234

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

White, R.H., Marriot, J. and Reid, M. 2010 Wroxeter Roman City: Conservation Plan and Gazetteer English Heritage / University of Birmingham (available at https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/wroxcons_eh_2012/) White, W. 1860 All Around the Wrekin (2nd edn.) London: Chapman & Hall. Wikipedia Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7 /7d/Excavation_at_Uriconium_by_Francis_Bedford2.jpg Willaston School [H Lang Jones]: http://www.willastonweb.co.uk/article-1031willaston_school_nantwich.html (Accessed 3/7/20). Williams, H. 1997 ‘Ancient Landscapes and the Dead: The Reuse of Prehistoric and Roman Monuments as Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites.’ Medieval Archaeology 41, 1-32. Woodward, C. 2001 In Ruins. London: Vintage Random House. Wright R. P. and Jackson, K. H. 1968 ‘A late inscription from Wroxeter’ Antiquaries Journal 48, 296–300. Wright, T. 1859 ‘Excavations of a Roman Town at Wroxeter.’ Illustrated London News, April 16, 1859, 386. Wright, T. 1860 Guide to the Ruins of Uriconium (3rd edn.). Shrewsbury: Sandford. Wright, T. 1872 Uriconium; A Historical Account of the Ancient Roman City and of the Excavations made upon its site at Wroxeter, in Shropshire, forming a sketch of the condition and history of the Welsh Border during the Roman period. London and Shrewsbury: Sandford. Wright, T. and Jackson, H. 1859 ‘Report of the Excavations at Wroxeter’ Archaeologia Cambrensis 3rd Ser. 5, 207-18. Zienkiewicz, D. J. 1986 ‘The Medieval Demolition’ IN J. D. Zienkiewicz The Legionary Fortress Baths at Caerleon. The Buildings Cardiff, 262-8.

Index Numbers in bold refer to Figures Agricola, Gnaeus Julius, Roman Senator and General: 201-202, 127 Amwythig (Welsh name for Shrewsbury): 47 Atkinson, Donald, Professor : 17, 19, 21-23, 41, 55, 64, 97, 177, 188, 216, 6, 90, 133 Attingham Park / Attingham Hall: 5, 21, 56, 72-78, 130, 139, 158, 161, 174, 177, 211, 221, 40, 41, 42, 130, 136 Baillie-Reynolds, Paul, Inspector of Ancient Monuments: 151, 155, 169, 179 Baker, Arnold: 4, 166, 168, 102, 103 Barker, Philip (Phil): 1-2, 5, 26-28, 164, 166, 173, 178-179, 13, 20, 101, 113 Barnard, Lord (Duke of Cleveland): 5, 84, 91, 125-6, 150, 174, 192; see Vane for individuals Baschurch / Berth at Baschurch: 34, 47, 16, 25 Bedford, Francis: 91, 122, 141, 78, 88 Bell Brook: 148, 165, 184, 186, 222 Benthall, Shropshire: 83, 125, 80 Berwick, Lady Ellen: 211, 130 Berwick, Lord: ― Noel Hill, 1st : 72 ― Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd : 72, 74-76 ― William Noel Hill, 3rd : 76-77 ― William Noel-Hill, 6th: 139 ― Richard Noel-Hill, 7th : 211, 130 ― Thomas Noel-Hill , 8th: 21, 211 Bird, Heather: 2 Botfield, Beriah, M.P.: 13, 120 Britannia Prima (Roman province): 39-41

British Archaeological Association: 116, 119, 137 Buchan, John: 108, 110-111 Bushe-Fox, J.P., Inspector of Ancient Monuments: 51-52, 55, 57, 64, 106-107, 177, 187, 220, 28, 30, 34, 103, 115 Buteux, Simon: 180 Caerleon: 19, 45, 16 Caerwent: 51, 54 Caer Caradoc (Church Stretton): 106, 84 Camden, William: 70, 186 Cannock miners: 121 (fn), 129-130, 78 Chester (Deva): 19, 36, 44, 49, 72, 107, 117, 158, 162, 16 Coalbrookdale: 72, 95, 205 Corbet Anderson, John : 134-136, 143, 84, 116 Corbishley, Mike: 2, 13 Council for British Archaeology (CBA): 163-164 Cranage, Dr W.: 206 Cronk Hill: 76, 43 Crow, Alf, Curator: 158, 2 Cunitius, clericus: 43-44, 22 Cunorix: 41-42, 204-205, 21 Cynddylan, king of Powys: 33-34, 47, 109, 149 Daniels, Charles: 4, 107, 108 Darwin, Charles: 112-115, 75 Dawn Wind [book by Rosemary Sutcliff]: 109, 73 Degannwy: 24 Department of the Environment (DoE): 3, 150, 164, 166, 173, 175, 177, 111 Deuccus, citizen of Wroxeter: 63, 202, 126 235

236

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Dickens, Charles: 126-127, 133, 187188 Dinders (dialect word): 185, 187 Directly Employed Labour team at Wroxeter (George, Mal, Reg, Ray): 2, 151, 155, 158, 171, 173, 112 Elgar, Edward: 206, 129 English Heritage: 2, 4-5, 12, 91, 93, 104, 147, 174, 178-179, 181, 216 Englynion: see Welsh lyric poetry Everall family (Anne, Brian, Charles, Chris, Sue): 2, 5, 148, 154, 175, 192, 54, 92 Everall, Mary: 89 Extra-Mural Department, University of Birmingham: 1, 26, 158, 161, 163, 165, 172, 101, 104, 106 Fairholt, Fredrick William: 115, 81 Flaminius, Titus, Standard Bearer, citizen of Wroxeter: 109, 200, 85 Flavell Hayward, Charles: 206, 209, 211, 128, 129 Forestier, Sir Amédée: 97, 102, 63, 64 Fox, George: 52, 125, 148 Gaffney, Vince: 180-181 Gill, Eric: 23, 11 Girtin, Thomas: 77-80, 44 Gwynedd (early medieval Welsh kingdom): 36, 49, 16, 24 Hadrian, Emperor: 17, 19, 21-25 Hartshorne, Charles Henry: 82-86, 187, 196 (fn), 49, 50, 51 Haughmond Abbey: 134, 190-191 Heledd, princess of Powys: 33-4, 3637 Historic England: 5, 174, 216 Houghton, John M.D.: 165-166 Housman, A.E.: 4-5, 49-51, 26 Hulme, Alfred J.: 5, 95-97, 61 Hulton, Teresa, Wife of 8th Lord Berwick: 21 Illustrated London News: 14, 23, 89, 97, 122, 126, 5, 63, 64

Inspector / Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments: 28, 51, 98, 151, 169, 177, 28 Intervinaris, citizen of Wroxeter: 198 Ironbridge: 3, 56, 62, 72, 125, 177, 198, 206, 221, 3, 111 Jackson, Francis: 146, 148, 154-155, 92 Jenks, Ernie: 165, 101 Johnson, Dr Henry: 15-16, 114, 120122, 127, 129-130, 139, 78 Jones, Henry Lang: 51, 53-56, 31 Judd, Edwin (artist): 35 Kenyon, Katherine: 23, 151, 154-155, 158, 160, 162-163, 165, 169, 93, 94 Kindersley, David: 21-23, 10 Kyndylan: See Cynddylan Lapper, Ivan: 100, 102-104, 106, 179, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69 Lawley, Shropshire: 106, 84 Lawson, James: 165-166 Linley, Shropshire: 110-111 Mansuetus, veteran, citizen of Wroxeter: 202-203 Maw, George: 125, 205, 79, 80 Mayer, Joseph: 119, 125, 136-137 Mercia, Anglo-Saxon kingdom: 3638, 40, 47, 16 Meredith, George: 205-206 Ministry of Works / Ministry of Public Buildings and Works: 27, 67, 160, 164, 169, 173, 98 Morris, John: 144, 147 Morton, Henry V.: 144-146, 90 Mytton, William: 70, 39 Nash, John: 75-76, 43 National Trust: 75, 156, 174, 216 New Pieces, Breidden: 46 Oatley, William: 118, 165, Offa’s dyke: 36, 84, 16, 17 On Wenlock Edge, [Poem XXXI, by A.E. Housman]: 50-51 Owen, Wilfred: 4-5, 51, 56-62, 32, 33 Parkes, David: 81, 48

Index

Peace, Jean: 160-161 Pearson, George: 211, 130 Pearson, W. : 79, 45 Pengwern: 47 Petronius, Marcus, veteran, citizen of Wroxeter: 199-200, 126 Pickering, Jim: 166, 104 Pillar of Eliseg, Llangollen: 36, 16, 18 Placida, citizen of Wroxeter: 63, 202, 126 Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex: 173, 109 Pompeii: 16, 71, 77, 127, 211, 215 Powys (early medieval Welsh kingdom): 33, 36-37, 43, 47, 49, 16, 24 Pretty, Kate: 2, 109 Priory School, Shrewsbury: 26, 158, 164, 179, 97, 99 Prisoners, use of in excavations: 169, 105 Prytherch, Thomas (Tom): 5, 9, 69, 87, 91 15, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60 Reinheim, Germany: 215 (fn), 132 Repton, Humphrey: 72-74, 42 Reynolds, Peter: 158, 97 Riley, Derrick: 166 Roach Smith, Charles: 13, 16, 115119, 125, 139, 76, 77 Roughead, John: 152-153, 155 St Joseph, J. K.: 153, 158, 166 Secundus, Gaius Mannius, veteran, citizen of Wroxeter: 201-202, 126 Severn, River: 34, 37-38, 44, 47, 49, 60, 62, 74, 76, 83, 118, 160, 165, 190, 3, 25, 54, 92 Silchester: 51-52, 54, 109, 114, 148, 216 Shrewsbury (Scrobbesbyrig): 2-3, 16, 34, 47, 56, 62, 72, 76, 79-80, 91, 93, 95-96, 117, 127, 129-130, 134, 139-140, 144, 148, 164, 179, 205206, 211, 219, 221, 16, 25, 135

― Museum / Rowley’s House / Museum and Art Galley: 5, 93, 104, 118, 129, 145, 8, 125 Shropshire Archaeological Society: 52, 139, 146, 151-152, 154, 164, 203, 205 Society of Antiquaries of London: 52, 70-71, 116, 119, 148, 186 Stanier, Edward, tenant farmer at Wroxeter: 123, 125-126, 129, 192, 121 Stukeley, William: 82, 185 Sutcliff, Rosemary: 108, 110, 73 Sorrell, Alan: 69, 98, 104, 106, 70, 71 Sweet, Rosemary: 82 Telford, Thomas: 52-53, 56, 72, 195, 123 The Dry Bones [poem by H. Lang Jones]: 55-56 Tirintius, veteran, citizen of Wroxeter: 63, 198-199, 125 Tomlin, Roger: 198-200, 204 Tren / Tern: 33-34, 36, 72, 74, 130, 165, 25, 41, 42 Uffington ferry: 56, 33 Uricon / Uriconium: 4, 14-15, 36, 5051, 56, 62, 110-111, 129-130, 135, 144, 149, 160, 177, 183, 185, 187188, 203 Uriconium, an ode [poem by Wilfred Owen]: 56, 59-62 Valerius, veteran, citizen of Wroxeter: 199 Vane, Sir Henry de Vere, 9th Baron Barnard: 51- 52, 29, 56 Vane, John, 11th Baron Barnard: 175 Verulamium: 40, 104 Viroconium [poem by Mary Webb]: 65-67 Viventius, Flavius, episcopus: 43-44, 22 Webb, Mary: 62-67, 205, 36, 137 Webster, Graham: 1, 23-24, 26, 28, 158, 160, 162-163, 165-166, 169, 173, 177-178, 12, 94, 96, 104, 110

237

238

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon

Weigall, Arthur: 145-146 Welsh lyric poetry (englynion): 33, 37, 47, 49 Wem hacksilver hoard: 40, 19 Wenlock Edge : 27 Wheeler, Sir Mortimer: 11, 55, 171, 106 White, Walter: 127-128 Whitley Grange villa: 180, 114 Williams, Revd. Edward: 70, 79-81, 46, 47 Wilmott, Bernard: 158, 97 Wrekin: 2, 34, 36-37, 93, 104, 136137, 161, 175, 184, 211, 15, 16, 25, 57, 58, 86 Wright, Thomas: 13-16, 46, 49, 54, 63, 65, 95, 111, 114, 116, 118-123, 125-127, 129-130, 132, 134, 136, 139, 148, 152, 183-184, 192-193, 196, 215, 4, 23, 52, 124 Wrocensaetan: 37, 16 Wroxeter: ― 1 & 2 The Ruins: 2, 175, 177-178, 192, 82, 100, 133 ― destruction of: 14-17, 41, 69, 93, 95, 108-109, 112, 136, 145, 148149, 183, 59 ― possible early Christian community : 43-47, 49, 203-204, 23 ― farm: 100, 175, 177, 192-193, 82, 104, 120 ― forum: 17, 19, 23, 25, 41, 64, 76, 97-98, 100, 104, 112, 145-146, 177, 202-203, 216-217, 63, 64, 69, 90, 91, 133 ― forum inscription: 17, 19, 21-22, 24, 65, 97, 7, 8, 9, 10, 63 ― herringbone floors: 123, 127, 132, 135, 145, 212, 79, 110 ― mirror: 64-65, 38 ― Middle Crows Ground Roman cemetery: 137, 165, 198, 204 ― mosaics: 93, 123, 125, 133, 148, 196, 205, 212, 57, 58, 66, 79, 124

― public baths: 12, 14, 23, 25-26, 44-46, 55, 64, 69, 76, 91, 93, 95, 98, 100, 102, 104, 122, 125, 132133, 137, 143-153, 158, 160, 171, 175, 177-178, 202, 211, 216-217, 23, 67, 70, 89, 107, 108 ― baths basilica: 2, 23, 26-30, 41, 44, 46, 93, 100, 120, 124-5, 173, 178-179, 192, 14, 20, 66, 79, 89, 109 ― baths hypocaust: 14-16, 91, 120122, 130, 133, 139, 141, 143, 148149, 211, 61, 62, 78, 88 ― The Old Man / burials in the hypocaust: 12-13, 15-17, 44-46, 50, 54, 95, 108, 110, 112, 120, 122, 127, 145-146, 149, 23, 61, 62, 81 ― The Old Work: 2, 4, 9, 13-14, 17, 23, 28, 44, 68-86, 91, 93, 114, 118, 120, 122-126, 128, 133, 137, 139140, 148, 157-158, 160-161, 178, 185-186, 190, 192-193, 219, 5, 39, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 84, 86, 95, 98, 104, 119, 137 ― spoil heaps on site: 128, 132-136, 139-140, 143, 155, 160, 163, 52, 82, 83, 86, 89, 91, 100 ― macellum (market hall): 98, 102, 127, 132, 152, 178, 86, 110, 112 ― on-site museum: 57, 63, 133-134, 146-147, 163, 177, 179, 37, 91, 97, 100 ― reconstructed town house: 17, 106-107, 219, 72 ― ruins and melancholy: 32, 67, 139-144, 153, 155-157, 87, 88, 94 ― St Andrew’s church: 47, 57, 59, 74, 78, 80, 91, 93, 117-118, 189192, 206, 213, 35, 42, 56, 60, 117, 119 ― souvenirs : 219, 134, 135 ― stone-robbing: 125, 189-195, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122 ― The Cottage: 2, 84, 118, 148, 186, 192-193, 50, 54, 92, 103, 121

Index

― The Grange: 192, 118, 119 ― Topsy Cottage: 89, 91, 165, 53, 60 ― treasure-hunting: 184-186, 196, 198 ― village: 3, 5, 9, 47, 57, 63, 69, 74, 89, 91, 95, 117-118, 125, 137, 154, 165, 173-177, 182-183, 189-192, 195-196, 198-199, 213-214, 3, 111, 124 ― Watling Street: 98, 106, 127, 145, 153, 177, 192, 198 ― World War Two activity: 153-155, 94 Wroxeter Excavation Committee: 126, 139, 147 Wyatt family (Mr F., Mrs E.F, and Vivian), : 5, 158, 161-162, 99 Wyn-Jones, Gareth: 158, 97 Xanten, Germany: 113 York: 19, 16

239

Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon offers a perspective on how people over time have viewed the abandoned Roman city of Wroxeter in Shropshire. It responds to three main artistic Wroxeter: Ashesand under Uricon perspective on Owen, how people o outputs relating to the site: poetry, images texts. Theoffers poetsainclude Wilfred the abandoned Roman city of Wroxeter in Shropshire. responds A.E. Housman and Mary Webb. The writers cover a range of interests relating to the site It but outputs relating theBuchan. site: poetry, images texts. less The poets include Darwin, Dickens, Rosemary Sutcliff and to John The artists areand perhaps A.E. Housman and Mary Webb. The writers cover a range of interests well-known but include watercolours by Thomas Girtin, archaeological reconstructions include Darwin, Dickens,by Rosemary Sutcliff John artist, Buchan. The by Alan Sorrell and Amedée Forrestier, and paintings Wroxeter’s own and resident well-known but include watercolours by Thomas Girtin, Thomas Prytherch. Photographs are represented by the work of Francis Bedford and othersarchaeol by Alan Sorrell and Amedée andArnold paintings by Wroxete more closely associated with aerial archaeology such as J.K. Forrestier, St Joseph and Baker. Thomas Prytherch. Photographs are represented by the work of Fran morevalue, closely with aerial archaeology suchvisitors as J.K. St Josep While the famous names have their theassociated book also investigates what locals and thought of the site over time – how they perceived it and have responded to it. It reflects While thelocals famous names have their value, the book also investigates in particular upon how the public and responded to the archaeological discoveries thought ofthat the site timeby – how they perceivedworking it and have res on the site and perceived the narratives wereover created the archaeologists in particular upon how the public and locals responded on it. It contends that archaeologists are just as much story-tellers as the writers, poetsto orthe arch on the site and perceived the narratives that were created artists, although their work is more filtered or controlled, and through these narratives,by the a on it. It contends that archaeologists are just as much story-tellers they inspire others. artists, although their work is more filtered or controlled, and thr inspire others. A further strand to the book isthey to explore the increasing focus over the past century on the democratisation of access to and understanding of the site, alongside increasing A further strand is to the increasing state intervention in its running. This too has to hadthe itsbook impact onexplore who visits and what isfocus ov the concluding democratisation ofoffers access to andofunderstanding of the site understood about the site. A short section a vision how the site might state intervention in its running. This too has had its impact on develop in the near-future, and how its cultural side might flourish once again. understood about the site. A short concluding section offers a visio develop in the near-future, and how its cultural side might flouris

Roger H. White recently retired from the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Birmingham after 26 years service there as a Lecturer Roger H. recently retired from the Department of Classics and Senior Lecturer. He first worked at White Wroxeter in 1976 as a digger but then progressed Archaeology at the University of Birmingham after 26 years serv to be Project Manager of the post-excavation project and then was a Principal Investigator and Senior Lecturer. He first worked at Wroxeter in 1976 as a digg on the Wroxeter Hinterland Project. His book Britannia Prima. Britain’s last Roman province to be Project Manager of the post-excavation (2007) was the winner of the Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2008. project and then was a on the Wroxeter Hinterland Project. His book Britannia Prima. Brita (2007) was the winner of the Current Archaeology Book of the Year

Original cover art work by Lyn Evans Original cover art work by Lyn Evans

Archaeopress Archaeology www.archaeopress.com Archaeopress Archaeology www.archaeopress.com