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XX. Account of the Remains of a Roman Villa, discovered at Bignor, in Sussex, in the Years 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814, and 1815. By Samuel Lysons, Esq. V.P. F.R.S.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

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Extract

The village of Bignor, in Sussex, is pleasantly situated on the north side of the South Downs, at the distance of about nine miles from the sea, six miles from Petworth, and about the same distance from Arundel. Within half a mile of the village runs a Roman road very distinctly marked, leading from Chichester by way of Pulborough (where it crosses the river Arun) to Dorking, and from thence to London. On this road there was great reason to expect some traces of a Roman station about Bignor, as Richard of Cirencester, in his fifteenth Iter, next after Regnum, proceeding eastward, introduces a station which he terms “Ad decimum,” not noticed in the Itinerary of Antonine; and Bignor is, by the Roman road, about ten miles disstant from Chichester, the Regnum of the Romans. No Roman remains had however been noticed near this place till the year 1811, when a mosaic pavement was discovered by the plough in the month of July, in a field called the Deny, about a quarter of a mile east of the church, part of a copyhold estate held under the Earl of Newburgh by Mr. George Tupper, a respectable farmer, by whom it is also occupied. The inhabitants of the village have a tradition, that Bignor formerly stood in this field, and the common field adjoining, on the east, called the Town-Field.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1817

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References

page 203 note a See the annexed Plan, PI. xix. A.

page 206 note b It seems probable that the second letter was intended for a combination of E arid R, but it is not so clearly marked as to render this point certain.

page 207 note c In most of the remains of Roman villas which have been found in this country similar deviations from regularity are to be observed; and the same occur in the remains of a Roman villa discovered at Rielves in Spain, published in 1788 by Don Pedro Arnal. We need not be surprized that such instances should occur in the provinces of the Roman empire, when Cicero, giving his brother Quintus an account of the progress of his villa near Rome complains that the architect had neither placed the columns upright, nor in a straight line. “Columnas neque rectas neque e regione Diphilus collocaret: eas scilicet demolietur aliquando perpendiculo et linea discet uti.” Epist. ad Q. Fratrem, lib. iii. 1.

page 211 note a See an outline of this subject in PI, xix.

page 219 note a “Duas validissimas gentes, superque viginti oppida, et hisulam Vectem Britanniae proximam hi deditionem redegit.”