Great excitement here this morning (well, I got quite excited, anyway). Part of my cellar needed repairing (a few days ago I put my hand through the old plasterboard) and today our specialist in repairing old houses (who lives about three doors along from us) has come in to effect repairs. He was getting on with the job, and I was working hard playing Scrabble on my computer and being thoroughly thrashed by Z, a fellow blogger, when Cliff called me across to show me something interesting. He'd removed some of the damaged plasterboard and uncovered part of the very early stone wall. The other end of the cellar is of flint cobbles with very early brick stringing, plus some courses of tiling. I've been told (I think reliably) that the old tiles are probably Roman ( and also probably reused). He'd now uncovered another area of flint cobble, with brick and tile courses in it, abutting on the base of the Tudor chimney, and almost certainly earlier than the chimney. I've also taken photos of the newly discovered wall (discovered in both senses) and I hope the two of the photos accompanying this blog, give a good idea of the old walls. The problem is that our architectural experts are very 'expert' on early timber construction, but not nearly so good (or keen) on early stone/brick walls. I do hope that some of my readers will feel able to comment on these photos. Just after we moved here (about twelve years ago), Crowbard visited us and came up with the suggestion that the work on the end wall of the cellar appeared to be late Romano British, and one or two others have supported this view. I look forward to getting your opinions.
7 comments:
Gosh, how interesting. I don't have any suggestions, i'm afraid, far earlier than anything I know about.
I think we're pretty evenly matched, in terms of Scrabble. I have to keep on my toes, anyway!
Having studied the photos diligently again I am inclined to hold to my original opinion. While perfectly happy to be contradicted or corrected it doesn't look to me like a later wall built from Roman debris, but appears to be a wall built by or for Romans themselves.
Hello Zoe. Yes, I agree that we're pretty evenly matched scrabble wise, which makes the games far more enjoyable. Warm regards, Mike and Ann.
Hello Crowbard. Thanks for the opinion. The newly discovered area of wall in the corner is a quite complex bit of work- it's built of flint stones with five extra courses of stringing, one of small bricks and four of early flat, terra-cotta tiles.
I'm with Crowbars. It looks destinctly Roman in origin to me, but I'm no expert. Will you be covering it up again? Or are you going to leave it exposed?
The latter, I think. I'll take some more photies , and print them on blog to try and give you a better idea.
See blog entry for Tuesday 23rd October for further photograph of waal.
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