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AT SILCHESTER. Showing a purely conventional style based on classical
models. (P. 34.) (From Archaeologia.)]
Nor is the Roman fashion of house-fittings confined to the mansions of
the wealthy. Hypocausts and painted stucco, copied, though crudely, from
Roman originals, have been discovered in poor houses and in mean
villages.[1] They formed part, even there, of the ordinary environment
of life. They were not, as an eminent writer[2] calls them, 'a delicate
exotic varnish.' Indeed, I cannot recognize in our Romano-British
remains the contrast alleged by this writer 'between an exotic culture
of a higher order and a vernacular culture of a primitive kind'. There
were in Britain splendid houses and poor ones. But a continuous
gradation of all sorts of houses and all degrees of comfort connects
them, and there is no discernible breach in the scale. Throughout, the
dominant element is the Roman provincial fashion which is borrowed from
Italy.
[Footnote 1: R.C. Hoare, Ancient Wilts, Roman Aera, p. 127: 'On some
of the highest of our downs I have found stuccoed and painted walls, as
well as hypocausts, introduced into the rude settlements of the
Britons.' This is fully borne out by General Pitt-Rivers' discoveries
near Rushmore, to be mentioned below. Similar rude hypocausts were
opened some years ago in my presence at Eastbourne.]
[Footnote 2: Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, p. 39.]
We find Roman influence even in the most secluded villages of the upland
region. At Din Lligwy, on the northeast coast of Anglesea, recent
excavation (Fig. 12) has uncovered the ruins of a village enclosure
about three-quarters of an acre in extent, containing round and square
huts or rooms, with walls of roughly coursed masonry and roofs of tile.
Scattered up and down in it lay hundreds of fragments of Samian and
other Roman or Romano-British pottery and a far smaller quantity of
ruder pieces, a few bits of Roman glass, some Roman coins of the period
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