ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Marsden: London in the 3rd and 4th centuries
Fig 72 London: lower part of the riverside defensive wall, as excavated at Blackfriars in 1975. The ragstone superstructure lay
upon a foundation of oak piles and chalk blocks. The date of this part of the wall is disputed, but it may be of the 3rd or
early 4th century (Photo: T Hurst)
quay at New Fresh Wharf disclosed a substantial quantity 1st and 2nd centuries, which were usually timber-framed
of goods from Germany which had probably been dam- and clay-walled. Dwellings of the 3rd and 4th centuries
aged in transit. However, the quay was not maintained, normally had walls of stone and mortar, and are someand
it silted up by the 4th century (Hartley in Hobley & times found to contain mosaics, hypocausts, and frescoes.
Schofield 1977, 62).
Although very few later Roman buildings have been found
Third-century London seems to have been charac- and dated, their location is suggested by discoveries of
terized in part by a succession of extremely substantial many polychrome mosaics which seem to date from the
buildings: a monumental arch decorated with a variety of
deities, a carved stone ‘screen of gods’, extensive terracing
with wall constructions on a massive scale at Lambeth
Hill, and temples of Isis, Mithras (Fig 69), probably
Jupiter, and possibly Cybele. With the exception of the
temple of Mithras and the possible temple of Cybele, all
the evidence for these buildings has been recovered from a
small area of the City, between Lambeth Hill and
Blackfriars. It has long been noticed that domestic
rubbish from sites in this south-western part of London is
normally minimal, so that this zone was apparently set
apart from domestic use, perhaps as a religious or other
‘public’ precinct (Marsden 1980, 136).
Houses too were far more substantial than those of the 48).
104
late 2nd to the 4th centuries. Significantly, many were
found during the 19th century when office cellars first
penetrated the upper Roman levels. In contrast,
polychrome mosaics have rarely been found since the last
war, when it has been the earlier Roman deposits which
are usually being removed by redevelopment (Marsden
1980, 149).
In general it seems that a blanket of ‘dark earth’ lay
around and between the later Roman buildings of Lon-
don, having begun to accumulate in the late 2nd century,
and perhaps continuing to do so in the post-Roman
periods. Careful analysis has not revealed the process by
which it was deposited (Dyson & Schofield 1981, 41, 43,