|
September 10th to 20th
Excavation
of the Roman octagonal bath house at Bax Farm
back
to Course diary
The
2006 summer excavation of the Kent Archaeological Field was
on a possible Roman building located by field work as part
of
the
Swale Archaeological Survey in 2000. 67 students from most of
the major universities in Britain gathered for a weeks training
and excavation at the end of which we had exposed a large part
of a unique and magnificent late Roman octagonal structure with
a huge octagonal central plunge bath which had been re-built
in the early 5th century as a smaller circular central plunge
bath with a fountain. The blue coloured fresco floor still survived
as did the Roman lead water pipe leading from the massive earlier
Roman brick conduit. Our evaluation trench also revealed the
concrete base of an enormous Roman corn mill, a huge 'hollow-way'road
leading down from other Roman buildings- again revealed by evaluation-
to a possible harbour. Earlier Iron-Age ditches and later Anglo-Saxon
buildings all added to the rich repertoire of the site.
But the jewel in the crown is the unusual and unique in Kent
and even south-east Britain- the octagonal bath house. The structure
is about 10 metres across and has arcading surrounding the huge
at over 5 metres central octagonal pool which had still in situ
an massive brick built conduit built to supply fresh cold water.
The walls of the building were originally covered with highly
decorated painted plaster and the floors with smaller than usual
tesserae in black, yellow, red and blue. Smaller marble mosaic
cubes were also retrieved which suggest that some of the floors
had mosaics.
Octagonal buildings of this type are to be found in the West
Country at Lufton and Holcombe, others are further afield in
Ravenna and of course Rome. The function of these elaborate and
exotic buildings has often been discussed but most experts keep
coming back to the idea that the astonishing octagonal frigidarium
in the centre could have been used for Christian baptism or even
Jewish sacred bathing, a scenario reinforced of the finding of
a Roman lead seal probably depicting the Jewish minora on site.
Some rooms had underfloor heating as well as alcoves which contained
hot plunge baths. It is logical to assume that above the central
pool and its fountain was a vaulted ceiling carried on arcading
or columns- some elements of a stucco ceiling- again unique had
survived- and possibly a large dome set on pendentives that would
have echoed and reflected the sound of cascading water. Ceiling
such as these would have been possible with the columns or arcading
bearing the vertical pressure, and the surrounding ground floor
rooms providing a buttressing effect to counteract outward thrust-
This is very sophisticated Roman engineering and belongs more
to the late Roman and Byzantine Meditteraen world and has to
open a discussion on why and how late were such Roman influences
prevalent in Roman Britain.
|
