A very tidy ruinThis is Wroxeter. It's near Shrewsbury, which has two claims to fame: 1) It's the setting for Ellis Peters' series of novels about the medieval monk-detective Cadfael, and 2) nobody knows how to pronounce it (I've heard Shroosbury, Shrowsbury, Shoosbury).
Wroxeter is now just a pile of crap in a field, but it was once the fourth biggest city in Roman Britain. The big piece of standing masonry, known as 'the Old Work', was a wall of the civic bathhouse.
What ruins should look likeA bunch of people recently built a replica Roman villa on the site and filmed the process for a multi-part Channel 4 reality documentary, because nowadays people will watch any old shit about something being built or renovated. The gimmick of the show was that the people who built it were regular 21st century builders who, naturally enough, had no idea how to build a Roman villa, and had to learn from scratch on a tight budget.
Mithraea and a replica Roman villaThey even got the 21st century builders to do the decorating. For comparison, here is a genuine Roman fresco from Pompeii.
AmazingAnd now from the Wroxeter Roman villa:
Less amazingIt's a bit like what Roman villas would have been like if Roman villas had been built by children. We also checked out the medieval church in the nearby village, but only because its builders used Roman columns and stone when constructing it.
Spot the Roman columnsWe went to Caerwent in south-east Wales, another old Roman city which is now largely abandoned. It has a lot more to see than Wroxeter, and the remains were even more impressive than I was expecting. The south side of the city wall has survived amazingly well - to give you a sense of scale in the next photo, Mithraea is about twelve feet tall.
The missing brickwork is the part Mithraea ate for lunchQuite a lot of Caerwent has been excavated and left exposed - a temple, the forum and basilica and a some townhouses. Here we see Mithraea walking along an actual Roman street. You can see the drain and building foundations and everything.
OMG WHERE IS MY HOUSE GONE LOLNot far from Caerwent is Caerleon, whose highlights include a pretty awesome Roman museum stuffed full of stuff, and a very well presented section of the legionary bathhouse which includes an olympic-length swimming pool for the Roman legionaries to practice swimming. Also visible was a massive amphitheatre which was full of kids drinking cider and eating crack.
Next we headed for the Cotswolds, a pretty corner of England where all the well-heeled wankers of Londinium built their country homes, thus pricing locals out of the housing market. This is Great Witcombe.
In olden times it supposedly looked more like this:
A little to the west is Chedworth, an even more impressive villa. Unfortunately much of it is covered with scaffolding as it's undergoing a huge refurbishment that won't be finished until 2012. We were so mad we kicked over a bunch of hypocaust piles. Here's a reconstruction though:
And a lizard we saw:
All in all, I learned a lot about the Romans, and I saw the first lizard I've ever seen in Britain, so it was definitely worthwhile.
This was so boring I fell asleep after the first letter. and I can't even remember what that was.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you got Mithraea to model Roman ruins. I think Mithraea should really model Roman ruins professionally. In short, whilst Roman stuff is interesting, I would like less facts about it and more Mithraea modelling of it.
ReplyDelete"We were so mad we kicked over a bunch of hypocaust piles." Is that a joke, or are you genuinely that immature and disrespectful? The former I hope! The scaffolding is there as they are erecting buildings to better protect the mosaics that were already on display, and finally reveal those which have, until now, been under earth and concrete.
ReplyDeletePeace.