Where Gladiators Fought - Discoveries at Caerleon's Roman Amphitheatre 18 April 2007 Mrs T. V. Wheeler standing in entrance B of the amphitheatre during its excavation. Reconstruction of the Caerleon amphitheatre by Alan Sorrell. The amphitheatre is shown as a masonry structure to its full height. How the amphitheatre may have actually looked. Illustration by Dale Evans (1988) after the reconstruction by R. A. Anderson (1981). Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments, Crown Copyright. Re-enactment at Caerleon. Next to the Roman fortress at Caerleon, near Newport (south Wales), lies the remains of a well-preserved oval amphitheatre, known to local folklore as King Arthur's Round Table. The amphitheatre was excavated in the 1920s by Dr. Mortimer Wheeler, then Director at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales. Wheeler's reconstruction of how the amphitheatre may have looked has since been revised as subsequent discoveries have led to a re-think as to how it was constructed. Securing funds for excavation Wheeler exploited the connections with King Arthur to drum up sponsorship. The Daily Mail agreed to provide £1,000 for exclusive rights and daily reports on the excavation. The paper eventually trebled its original offer and presented the excavated remains to the then Office of Works (a predecessor of Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments) as a national monument. Planning and excavating In 1926, Wheeler took up the post of Keeper of the London Museum meaning he could not continue his direct involvement with the excavations, but the sponsorship from the Daily Mail made the project binding and urgent, so his wife, Tessa, took over the direction. Every evening a newsworthy story had to be sent to the Daily Mail on the day's discoveries, with 'sensational' headlines such as 'Where Gladiators Fought'. A structure of earth and masonry After the excavations were complete and nearly 30,000 tons of soil had been examined and removed from the site, the excavators concluded that the amphitheatre had been constructed around AD 80, several years after the initial foundation of the main fortress at Caerleon. In the report on the findings, published in 1928, the amphitheatre was reconstructed as an earth and masonry structure with the auditorium supported by a bank of earth retained by inner and outer walls of masonry supported and strengthened by buttresses. It was calculated that the original arena wall must have risen to a height of four metres while the external wall must have reached a height of about ten metres. The seats were almost certainly of wood, as no evidence of stone seats was discovered. In 1939, Alan Sorrell, a well-known painter of archaeological reconstructions shows the amphitheatre built in masonry to its full height. A new theory In 1962, George Boon (from the Museum's Department of Archaeology) excavated a small trench in the bank of the amphitheatre, and caused a fundamental re-think of how the superstructure was constructed. The original surface of the bank was uncovered not far below the turf, this meant that the banks were never higher than they are today. Cut into the surface of the bank were pits, a metre square and deep. Boon concluded that these pits had held large wooden beams forming an openwork timber grandstand. Since this discovery, reconstructions of the amphitheatre have been re-drawn showing its lower part in stone, but with a timber superstructure. An amphitheatre of similar construction is shown on Trajan's Column at Dobreta, the Roman base on the Romanian side of the Danube bridge. It has been estimated that the timber grandstand at Caerleon contained 6,000 seats, approximately the full complement of the legion. Events at the amphitheatre, although undoubtedly less bloody, continue to attract large audiences today with exiting re-enactments and other events staged regularly. Background reading Caerleon Roman Fortress by J.K. Night. published by Cadw (2003) Isca: The Roman Legionary Fortress at Caerleon, Mon. by G.C. Boon. Published by the National Museum of Wales (1972) 'The Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon, Monmothshire' by T.V. -d R.E.M. Wheeler. In Archaeologica vol.78, p.111-218.
Fine fresco wall painting removed for conservation 30 March 2007 Watercolour by F.G. Newton, 1905 Removing one of the panels In 1988, archaeological excavations of the council chamber in the basilica (assembly hall) of the Roman town at Caerwent revealed a fine wall painting that has since been removed for conservation and display. The painted plaster or fresco, 5m long and 1m high, was still attached to the south wall of the chamber. It had been previously recorded in watercolour by F. G. Newton in 1905, and had been covered over again. The fresco shows an architectural perspective, with yellow pillars above a brown veined pink dado. A dark brown area in the central pillar may be part of a decorated panel, possibly containing the torso of a man. It was decided to remove the fresco to prevent further deterioration as the plaster was extremely fragile. After carefully covering the delicate artwork with muslin and glue, the painting was cut into five panels. Each enclosed in specially-designed boxes. A variety of saws and chisels were used to separate the painted plaster from the wall. Since access to the back of each panel was restricted to its top edge and one side, this process was difficult, needing extreme patience and ingenuity. It took a total of nine days to remove the painting, with the subsequent conservation and rebacking taking several years, the fresco is now conserved and stored at the National Museum, Cardiff. Background Reading: Caerwent Roman Town by R.J. Brewer. Published by Cadw (2006).
The Grand Forum-basilica at Caerwent 30 March 2007 Caerwent: the south wall and towers The small village of Caerwent, near Chepstow in south Wales, was once the administrative capital of the Silures, the Celtic tribe occupying south-east Wales. Only two Roman towns are known to have existed in Wales: Carmarthen (Maridunum) and Caerwent (Venta Silurum). Between 1984 and 1995 Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales undertook a programme of research excavations to improve knowledge of the early development of Caerwent. Earlier excavations had only revealed the tops of the buildings, therefore only providing a view of the late Roman town. The Forum-basilica Like every Roman town, at the centre was the forum (market-place) and adjoining basilica (assembly hall).Even before excavation some of the walls stood as much as 2m above ground-level, having been incorporated into 19th century farm-buildings. The forum-basilica was first explored in 1907 and 1909. Almost the whole plan of the building was recovered, but there was no firm indication as to when it was first erected. The more recent excavations uncovered parts of this impressive building for display and unravelled its structural history. The forum, a rectangular open market-place surrounded on three sides by rooms, was entered from the main street through an archway. A paved piazza provided space for temporary stalls to be set-up on market days. The ranges of rooms, which were set behind a covered colonnade, served as shops, taverns and offices. Above these, there would probably have been a second storey, perhaps with a terrace and more rooms. The basilica comprises a great hall and a rear range of rooms. The great hall would have been used for large public meetings and ceremonies. Excavations of the east end of the great hall of the basilica, with the drain in the foreground As is generally the case, the great hall consisted of a nave and two aisles divided by colonnades supporting a clerestory, like that of a great church. The walls carrying the columns had foundations almost 2m deep. The great stone columns, all carved from local sandstone, reached a height of 9m. It has been calculated that the basilica must have been over 20m high. In the centre of the rear range of rooms was the aedes, or shrine, where statues of the Emperor and civic deities would have stood. The floor was raised above those of the rest of the basilica, giving it some prominence. The room to the west of the aedes served as the curia or council chamber. Its south wall survives to a height of some 2m and carries painted plaster with an architectural design. In its later history, mosaic panels adorned the floor of this room. On either side of the mosaics were channels, with corresponding grooves in the plaster on the south wall. These carried the timber framework of the benches on which the councillors of the tribal assembly would have sat. Stone bases of a stepped wooden dais occupied the east end of the room from which the local magistrates would have presided over meetings of the council. Beneath the floor of the basilica, was a box-drain which carried rainwater collected in the gutters surrounding the forum piazza. Massive blocks of local sandstone, some weighing more than a ton, were used for the sides and capping of the drain, while the base was paved in roofing tiles. A semi-circular inspection hole, cut in one of the capstones, gave access to the drain to clean it out. Reconstruction of the forum-basilica. (Cadw, Crown Copyright) This great building was erected in the earlier part of the 2nd century A.D. The work must have placed a severe strain on resources and finance as the forum-basilica were among the largest buildings constructed in Britain before the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages. In the late 3rd century, the basilica appears largely to have been rebuilt. The roof of the great hall was stripped and the columns dismantled. As part of this reconstruction, the walls were strengthened and the floors were raised, probably as a result of subsidence. Structural problems may have existed from the outset, for two very large pits had been dug through the earliest floors to inspect the foundations. Buckle and plate of a late fourth century belt found on the site of the basilica. The buckle is adorned with confronting dolphins and outward facing horses heads. The basilica continued to function as the administrative centre until the 330s, but at that time the nature of the occupation changed. Numerous hearths were found in the nave, indicating that the great hall was being used for small-scale industrial activity. Some twenty or thirty years later the basilica was demolished, however coins struck in the 390s show continued activity on the site. The nature of this late occupation, when the rest of the town was slipping into decay and ruin, is uncertain. The excavations at Caerwent have unravelled much of the history of this massive building, and the features described have been observed nowhere else in Britain. Background reading Caerwent Roman Town by R.J. Brewer. Published by Cadw (2006)
The old clock at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis, north Wales 22 February 2007 The clock above the entrance to the Welsh Slate Museum A distinctive feature of the National Slate Museum building is the diamond-shaped face of a clock on the front of the Museum. On the roofline above it is a small pagoda-like structure containing a bell and hammer, connected to the clock by a wire rope. The mechanism is installed on the second floor of the building. It was manufactured in Shropshire but it is not possible to read the date. Early photographs of the building, erected in 1870, do not show the clock, so it was probably not installed until the mid-1890s Timekeeper for quarry explosions The Museum is located within the Victorian workshops of the Dinorwig Quarry. The clock helped ensure the trains taking slate from the quarry to the Company's port at Port Dinorwic were always on time. The clock was more than simply a timekeeper for the workshops though. At some stage in its life, a series of electrical connections were added. At set intervals the clock transmitted an electrical signal to other parts of the Quarry's large site. This was to ensure that blasting happened on time. Such systems were usually marketed as 'pulsynetic clocks'. They were sold by well-known makers such as Gent, Leicester. At Dinorwig, however, a home-made, reliable solution was produced. 100-year-old graffiti A power supply was required to provide the electrical signals. This was supplied via wet cells, or accumulators, stored alongside the clock. One of the discoveries made when renovating this part of the building, in the mid-1990s, was the original graffiti on adjacent walls and panels noting the dates of battery charges. On June 10, 1909, for example, Willie Owen Williams and George Hughes charged the batteries. Cleaning the clock Although well cared for over the years, by 2001 the clock required specialist attention. J.B. Joyce and Company, the manufacturers, were still in existence. They were established at Whitchurch in Shropshire, and are still there over three hundred years later. Unfortunately, they have no records of individual clocks manufactured, but were prepared to visit the Museum to inspect the clock. The mechanism ended up being returned to the Joyce workshops where it was cleaned and serviced. The clock was then reassembled, brought back to the Museum and commissioned. Today the clock works smoothly and to a good degree of accuracy. Village timekeeper At a time when few people possessed watches, the clock installed in the Dinorwig Quarry workshops was a timekeeper for its surrounding community, with its bell being audible to most of those living in and around Llanberis. To quote one local author: 'Torrai ar y distawrwydd yn nhrymder nos, a chlywyd aml i glaf yn cwyno yn y bore,"Chysgis i ddim gwerth neithiwr - clywed yr hen gloc yn taro pob awr nes iddi 'leuo"' (It relieved the silence of the depth of night, and quite frequently one would hear of those who were unwell complaining the next morning, "I didn't sleep well last night - I could hear the old clock striking each hour until it dawned".) The old clock continues to measure the passage of time into the 21st century at Llanberis.
