Category Archives: Minster

VM_365 Day 245 Minster Villa detached Bath house

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The image for Day 245 of the VM_365 project shows an overview, from the west side facing east, of the detached bath house building (Building 3 )that stood to the west of the main range of buildings of the Minster villa. The bath house was located within the walled compound of the building, adjacent to the west wing of the villa which was shown in the post for VM_365 Day_242. The bath house lay under the spoil and unexcavated area in the centre right of that image. The Minster villa had a number of bath houses in operation at various times in its period of use.

The bath house was formed of a series of cold, warm and hot rooms as well as cold and heated pools arranged in a tight rectangle around a furnace, which heated the raised hypocaust floors. Building materials recovered from the structure indicated that the floors were formed of concrete and lime plaster, but there was no evidence for mosaic floors. In common with the rest of the building, no structure above foundation level survived, but some of the deeper elements of the structure associated with the furnaces and hypocausts were relatively well preserved.

The main ranges of the Minster villa had been constructed on the plateau and crest of an elongated hill, flanked by dry valleys, which overlooked the flood plain of the Wanstum valley below. The bath house had been located on the edge of the plateau at the point where the land began to fall  toward the western valley.

The bath house builders took advantage of the natural slope to feed water diverted from a natural source, probably a spring,  through the various processes within the bathhouse structure.   It is not clear where the water source used by the bathhouse was, but the western valley has a small spring fed stream in the present day and the source may have been located further up the valley in the Roman period.

Although much of the infrastructure had been destroyed, probably within the Roman period, remnants of the piping and channels that controlled the flow through the building were recovered.  In the foreground of the image one of the drainage ditches from the western side of the building, traced for some of its length in the excavation, can be seen.  On the right of the picture  two parallel walls mark the route of a deep mortared flint channel that also served as a main drainage outlet for the building.

The position of the bath house reflects a clever approach to water engineering which was a characteristic of architecture in the Roman period. With the main occupants, administrative staff, servants and labourers a buildings like the Minster villa would have represented one of the densest concentrations of people within a confined space that could be found in the Roman period. The post for Day 131 of the VM_365 project showed one of the high pressure water pipes that had been used for the external drain of another bath house. located at the southern end of the  western wing of the villa.

Wherever a large population gathered, the supply of clean water and systems for disposing of waste would have been essential.  The provision of steady flow of water through the building would have served more than just the provision of luxury bathing facilities but also to keep the location and its occupants clean and healthy.

 

VM_365 Day 244 Minster Roman villa heated apse

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The image for VM_365 Day 244 shows part of an apse which was located in the centre on the north side of the east west range of rooms of the Minster villa.

This structure is one of the better preserved elements of the villa’s underground heating system, which as previous posts have noted, survived damage from cultivation because they had been cut below the foundation level of the main structure. The apse is formed by flint and brick walls set in firm mortar forming a ‘D’ shape that extended out from the northern end of the middle room in the central range with the sub floor surfaced in hard, pink concrete made using crushed tile. The apse may have formed a heated niche at the northern end of a rectangular room.

In the foreground of the picture a deep ‘L’ shaped channel gave access from the exterior of the building on the east side into a furnace chamber. The hot air from the furnace entered the apse through a small arch in the southern wall,  passing under the floor of the curved chamber and out through flue tiles in the wall, although none were preserved. The southern retaining wall of the stoke chamber was built of an unusual combination of mud-brick and mortar.

The floor of the apsidal room above was probably surfaced with mosaic as large fragments of patterned mosaic had been retained in the chamber after demolition of the building giving us our best evidence that the villa building was originally extensively covered with tesselated floors.

 

VM_365 Day 243 Robbed Roman Remains

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Today’s image for VM_365 Day 243 shows the remains of a hypocaust underfloor heating system from Building 4 of the Abbey Farm Roman villa complex at Minster, Thanet. The remains of the hypocaust structure survive to a depth of only around 0.5 metres below the base of the plough soil.

Building 4 was a two roomed corridor house seperate from the main villa building. The corridor house had a  small heated room in one corner. Like most of the buildings in the villa complex, this structure had been heavily robbed in the Roman period and later for reuseable building materials, including the large flint cobbles that were used in the building foundations.  In the case of the heated room in Building 4 the tiles that had been used to build the pilae stacks that supported the hypocaust floor had all been taken to be used elsewhere.

In the picture above the wall foundations around the edge of the hypocaust have been robbed leaving the raised lip of the  mortar floor and a few cobbles to suggest where the walls had been. Only the tiles that were bonded to the floor with mortar and were too difficult to remove remain in place, leaving scars in the mortar and parts of broken tiles to show where the stacks had been.

VM_365 Day 242 The Roman villa at Minster Part 1.

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Today the image for VM_365 Day 241 is a view of the excavation of the west wing of the Roman Villa at Abbey Farm, Minster in Thanet. The villa is the largest Roman building to have been excavated in Thanet and it was exposed over several seasons of excavation when it was adopted by the Kent Archaeological Society for a training excavation.

The picture is taken from the west side, facing south east toward Richborough. The Villa’s boundary wall is in the foreground, with a stone and tile structure attached to it. In the upper middle of the picture the foundations of the main east west range of the villa and its western wing are exposed, following the removal of the thin layer of topsoil that covered it. The curved apse from the central hall in the main range can be seen in the top left limit of the building foundations.

Like much of the archaeology found on Thanet, heavy ploughing has reduced the walls of the villa almost to the base of their original foundation trenches, leaving only one or two courses of stone to mark out the floor plan. Only the deep chambers for the hypocaust systems for heated rooms that were originally constructed below ground survived in the main villa structure. Occasionally, deep cut channels like the tile lined structure in the foreground also survived.

Previous VM_365 posts have explored some of the diverse range of artefacts recovered in the excavation of the Villa, including personal items such as brooches, tweezers and needles and pins on Days 88, 89, 90, 96, 112, 129139, 143, 154 and 39. Evidence of the different decoration schemes using painted plaster has featured on Days 178, 182, 185, 188 and 191, and evidence for how they managed their water supply has featured on Day 130 and 131.

VM_365 Day 241 Accessory vessel from burial at Thorne, discovered in Gas pipeline

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The image for Day 241 of the VM_365 project is of a pottery vessel placed with a skeleton in a Roman grave discovered on a gas pipeline project at Thorne, near Cliffsend. Vessels from a cremation group from the same area, discovered in the same pipeline project, were shown in the post for VM_365 Day 239.

The north south orientated grave contained the skeleton of an adult around 25 years old. The small pottery beaker or jar was found along with a flagon near the head of the individual.

The pot is made in a grog tempered fabric,  where fragments of crushed ceramic has been added to the clay paste. Occasional stone grits are also visible where they protrude from small faults in the surface. The outer surface of the pot has been lightly burnished.

The range of vessels that were recovered from this small cemetery illustrates the market for a wide range of styles of pottery and probably the diverse products that were shipped in the pots, which existed in Thanet in the Roman period. Each grave is  a snapshot of the pottery that lay to hand as the accessory vessels for a burial or cremation were assembled. The surviving vessels from grave groups, as well as those from remarkable survivals like the dump of Roman kitchenware discovered at Broadstairs, allow archaeologists to reconstruct the suites of pottery that were available to settlements in Thanet.

 

 

VM_365 Day 230 Roman cremation burial from Minster, Thanet

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Today’s image for Day 230 of VM_365 shows a Roman vessel which was found during grave digging at the modern cemetery at Tothill Street, Minster in the 1920’s.

This greyware  biconical urn with a carinated rim was found in association with three other vessels, presumably all from the same cremation group.  The group also included a carinated beaker in grey ware with black spots measuring approximatley 10 cm high, a grey ware bowl or platter about 18cm in diameter and a flagon in red fabric measuring approximatley 17.5 cm high. This cremation group dates to the late first to early second century AD.

The biconical urn contained fragments of burnt human bone representing the cremated remains of the individual buried in the pit.  The other vessels are likely to be ancillary vessels deposited in the grave pit alongside the urn, possibly containing food and other offerings for the afterlife.

These vessels were reported in the Antiquaries Journal in 1924 by Mr W. Whiting, an early Roman ceramics specialist who also later worked on the pottery from the early excavations at Richborough Roman Fort in the 1930’s.

VM_365 Day 210 Barbed and Tanged arrowhead from Laundry Road, Minster

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The image for Day 210 of the VM_365 project is another taken from our slide archive.

The object shown is a Late Neolithic flint tanged and barbed arrowhead, found in the fill of a segment excavated through an enclosure at Laundry Road, Minster in 1995. Another ditch section contained pottery dating to the Beaker period, suggesting that the whole enclosure was of late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age date.

Other similar flint arrowheads from locations in Thanet have been featured in previous VM_365 posts, on Day 141, Day 162, and Day 168.

VM_365 Day 191 Candelabra design Roman Painted Plaster

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The image for Day 191 of the VM_365 project shows another example of a fragment of painted plaster from the Roman villa at Minster. Other examples of fragments of painted plaster have been featured on Day 178, Day 182 , Day 185 and Day 188.

This fragment shows part of an elaborate candelabra type design painted in yellows and white against the smooth red background, a darker red outline can just be seen on the left hand side of the motif. The greenish blue paint on the right hand side may represent part of a border or alternativley may be part of a foliage design. Candelabra designs are well known in the Roman world and examples of similar themed designs have been found at Verulamium and London.

VM_365 Day 188 More painted plaster from Minster – Artist(s) unknown

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For Day 188 of the VM_365 project the image shows another fragment of the painted plaster from Minster. This time showing a delicate yellow painted swag painted overpainted on a dark blue grey background. The centre of the swag is filled with a lighter  blue grey pigment. An abstract leaf is  picked out in green paint under the end of one of the finer swags, which are probably meant to suggest the stems of a plant.

Perhaps we should pause to consider the artist who painted these freehand patterns. Each of the patterns is painted using a ‘fresco’ type of technique where the paints are bonded into a fine layer of plaster skim over the thick coat that covered the walls below. These thin plaster layers and all the patterns would have had to have been applied and painted in a single process, perhaps in sections over the space of a whole room, and then over the extensive area of the villa.

Although to our eyes the painting can sometimes appear gaudy, there are sections of delicate painting that indicate skill and control of pigments and drawing. Perhaps there was a team of painters with some delegated to covering large areas of ground with colour washes, borders and easily produced geometric patterns and borders.  Perhaps only a master-painter would have been trusted to produce the finer free hand elements and the figurative work that lifted the panels into a higher artistic plane.

In later centuries the master painters of Fresco painting have become household names, yet the paintings and painters who contributed to the Minster Villa, although perhaps equally skilled, are largely forgotten.

VM_365 Day 185 Roman painted plaster inspired by nature

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The image for Day 185 of the VM_365 project shows another fragment of painted wall plaster from the Roman villa at Minster. Fragments of painted plaster from the same site were featured on Day 178 and Day 182.

This fragment of decoration depicts a seed head or flower, painted on a dark grey background. The edge of the flower or seed head has been painted in white with a yellow stem. The internal part of the flower may have originally been painted the same colour as the stem  with additional detail in dark red although the paint is now worn away. Green leaves, possibly extending from the stem can be seen on the edge of the fragment.

In contrast to the figurative painting of the Deer shown on Day 178 and the architectural emulation of marble shown in Day 182, this fragment shows an abstraction from nature where a natural object has been used to inspire a painted motif.