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T-shaped Corn-drying Ovens in Roman Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

R. G. Goodchild
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Extract

The T-shaped furnace or oven is already a familiar feature of Romano-British archaeology. Whether among the huts and pits of Woodcuts, the more substantial dwellings of Silchester and Caerwent, or the farmsteads of the rural areas, this type of oven occurs with such frequency that its place in Romano-British economic life must have been an important one.

It is not proposed to discuss here at length the function of these furnaces. This problem was resolved beyond any measure of doubt when the Romano-British villa was excavated at Hambleden, Bucks., in 1912, and Professor Gowland, in an Appendix to the excavators' report, stated that ‘In my opinion they are flues of drying floors which have been used for drying harvested grain.’ The evidence from sites elsewhere (as at Caerwent and at King's Worthy, Hants, at both of which sites charred wheat was recovered from the flues of the ovens) has provided strong corroboration of Professor Gowland's hypothesis, and it is only surprising to find that the unmistakable corn-drying ovens of Woodcuts village were still classed as ‘hypocausts’ in the 1931 edition of Professor Collingwood's Archaeology of Roman Britain.

The main interest of the Hambleden discoveries lies, however, in the great variety of types of ovens excavated, for in all no less than fourteen specimens were unearthed, ranging from the simple and basic T-shaped type to structures of considerable elaboration. Such a variety of types on one single site demands some explanation, and it is not inconceivable that the Hambleden villa was something in the nature of an experimental station.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 23 , Issue 3-4 , October 1943 , pp. 148 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1943

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References

page 147 note 1 Cocks, A. H., “A Romano-British Homestead in the Hambleden Valley, Bucks’, Archaeologia, lxxi (1920–1)Google Scholar, see Appendix I. It is interesting to note that the late Professor Haverfield quoted Professor Gowland's opinions in his note on Romano-British discoveries in 1912–13 contributed to the German Archaeologischen Anzeiger, 1913 (p. 286), and at the same time referred to similar discoveries made at Casterley, Wilts., and Rockbourne, Hants. Had the outbreak of the Great War not caused the postponement of publication of Professor Gowland's detailed analysis until 1920, it is probable that the notion that the T-shaped furnaces were hypocausts would have been rejected at a much earlier date.

page 147 note 2 R. G. Collingwood, Archaeology of Roman Britain, 1930, p. 154.

page 149 note 1 Sussex Archaeological Collections, lxxx (1939), 80, fig. xi.

page 149 note 2 The elaborate tile-kilns of the Legionary factory at Holt, Denbighshire, are fully described by Mr. W. Grimes in Y Cymmrodor, xli, 1–235. Two Surrey examples of the kilns used for civilian supplies of tiles are described in Surrey Archaeological Collections, xlv, 74 seq.

page 149 note 3 Corder, Philip, Excavations at Elmswell, East Yorkshire, 1938 (Hull, 1940), p. 13, footnote.Google Scholar

page 149 note 4 The excavations at Atworth were interrupted by the crisis of September 1938. Details of what had been found up to that date are given in a paper ‘The Roman Villa at Atworth, Wilts.’ by A. Shaw Mellor and Richard Goodchild, in Wilts. Archaeological Magazine, xlix, 46–95. A preliminary note on the T-shaped ovens was included as Appendix II (p. 93).