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Brantingham Roman Villa: Discoveries in 1962

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Joan Liversidge ,
D. J. Smith  and
I. M. Stead
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Extract

The Roman villa at Brantingham in East Yorkshire was discovered in 1941, when two mosaic pavements were found in a stone quarry, the ‘Cockle Pits’ (SE 932287), on the west side of the main road (A63) from Hull to Leeds and a little over a mile north-north-west of Brough (Petuaria) (FIG. I). The pavements were first uncovered and recorded, and then protected and re-buried; but in 1948 it was decided to move them to the Hull Museum. This operation gave rise to one of the mysteries of Yorkshire archaeology, for one of the floors disappeared overnight and has never been recovered. The second pavement was successfully re-housed at Hull.

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Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 4 , November 1973 , pp. 84 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Joan Liversidge, D. J. Smith and I. M. Stead 1973. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Y.A.J. xxxv (1943), 424-25; Ibid., xxxvii (1951), 514-20.

2 The writer was assisted by Mrs. S. M. Stead and Mr. A. L. Pacitto. The farmer, Mr. F. Chrispin, and his landlord, Mr. C. R. Maxsted, generously gave permission for the excavation and presented the finds, including the mosaic pavement, to the Hull Museum.

3 A similar technique was used to that previously employed on the Rudston pavements (reported in I. A. Richmond, The Roman Pavements from Rudston, East Riding, Hull Museum Publication, No. 215, 1963).

4 Identified by Mr. P. E. Curnow: Irregular coin of the House of Constantine: rev., Victory on Prow; obv., CONSTANTINOPOLIS; small AE 3 size, 14 mm diameter; mint mark PLG, cf. Lyons; A.D. 330+.

5 Y.A.J. xxxvii (1951), 517.

6 Trans. E. Riding Antiq. Soc. xiii (1906), 145-8 (fig. 3, mosaic III, which is only a small part of the border). The site was again excavated in 1951 (mentioned briefly in Y.A.J. xxxviii, 1955, 117-18) and the measurements quoted above are taken from Mr. E. Mellor's unpublished notes.

7 The Daily Mail (Hull), 25 Oct. 1962; The Times, 16 Nov. 1962; JRS liii (1963), 131, pls. XI, XII; J. M. C. Toynbee, Art in Britain under the Romans (1964), 286; D. J. Smith in The Roman Villa in Britain (ed. A. L. F. Rivet, 1969), 105-7, pl. 3.19.

8 I am indebted to Mr. John Bartlett, Director of Hull City Museums, for facilitating rny study of these fragments. For an illustrated account of their removal and mounting see ‘Araldite in the restoration of Roman mosaics’, C.I.B.A. Technical Notes, July 1965.

9 First observed by Mr. D. S. Neal.

10 This implies the employment of a ‘reverse’ method; cf. Roman Villa in Britain, 98 and n. 2, adding now P. Fischer, Mosaic: History and Technique (1971), 46-8, 146-7.

11 Lysons, S., Reliquiae Britannico-Romanae iii (1817), pl. x.Google Scholar

12 For a (? corridor-) mosaic of comparable design at Aldborough (Yorks.), see H. E. Smith, Reliquiae Isurianae (1852), 42, pl. XIX (upper right figure).

13 Soc. Ants. London, Vetusta Monumenta ii (1789), pl. IX; Wm. Fowler, Engravings of the Principal Mosaic Pavements, etc. (1796-1818), No. 1. The mosaics of Winterton have been re-excavated by Dr. I. M. Stead: report forthcoming, with description and discussion of the mosaics by D. J. Smith and accurate illustrations including reproductions of paintings by Mr. D. S. Neal.

14 Y.A.J. xxxvii (1941), 514-20, fig. IV (Mosaic 2).

15 Fowler, op. cit. (note 13), Appendix 2, No. 10.

16 Ibid., No. 2; R. Hinks, Catalogue of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Paintings and Mosaics in the British Museum (1933), figs. 122, 123.

17 The nimbus, of course, is quite inconclusive: cf. D. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements (1947), i, 289.

18 Eight busts surrounded a head of Medusa on a mosaic of Bramdean (Hants.) and eight small heads surrounded a figure of Bacchus on the mosaic of Thruxton (Hants.), but the Bramdean busts were clearly identifiable by their attributes as those of the presiding deities of the Roman internundinal week and the Thruxton heads appear to have been simply ornamental and without any significance: see Roman Villa in Britain, pls. 3.4, 3.9.

19 S. Lyons, Roman Antiquities… at Woodchester (1797), pl. VIII, fig. 1.

20 Idem., op. cit. (note 11), pl. XIX; Toynbee, op. cit. (note 7), 261, pl. LIX b; Roman Villa in Britain, pl. 3.1 (colour).

21 Coloured lithograph, a print of which is preserved in Somerset County Museum, published by Bedford's Lithography, Bristol (undated but probably c. 1837 or 1838); hence, presumably, the drawing reproduced in V. C. H. Somerset i (1906), fig. 77, on which Professor J. M. C. Toynbee based her description, op. cit. (note 7), 249.

22 Figures set against a coloured background are rare in Roman mosaics: cf. Roman Villa in Britain, 105. It has been suggested that red and related colours such as purple and even brown symbolised light: cf. Oxford Class. Diet., s.v. ‘Colours, sacred’, and K. Lehmann in The Art Bulletin xxvii, No. 1 (March, 1945). 11

23 Cf. for example the nimbed busts of the Constantinian painted ceiling in Trier: Th. K. Kempf, Aus der schatzkammer des antiken Trier (1951), 45-51, pls. 5, 6; cf. I. Lavin in Dumbarton Oaks Papers xxi (1967). figs. 4-8.

24 Cf. Toynbee, op. cit. (note 7), 286; Levi, op. cit. (note 17), 289, n. 12, citing nimbed female heads in the paintings of a hypogeum. Lavin, loc. cit. (note 23), figs. 18, 20, illustrates the interior of a Palmyrene mausoleum with busts in rows and side by side, which immediately recall the rows of busts at Brantingham.

25 Illustrated in Lincolnshire Notes and Queries i (1889).

26 Fowler, op. cit. (note 13), No. 5; hence Roman Villa in Britain, pl. 3.18. It is now known, however, that Fowler's engraving is not entirely correct, and Dr. Stead's forthcoming report on Winterton will include a reproduction of the accurate painting made by Mr. D. S. Neal. See, further, note 13 (p. 95).

27 Also, of course, of Cybele; but there is no indication of the veil conventionally depicted as falling from Cybele's crown, or of the lions or any other specific attribute of the Magna Mater.

28 The original lithograph affords no evidence of the corn-ears mentioned by Professor J. M. C. Toynbee and does not support identification of the figure as either Ceres or Abundantia: see note 21 (p. 96).

29 Roman Villa in Britain, 104, notes 1,2.

30 Hinks, op. cit. (note 16), fig. 112; hence Roman Villa in Britain, 89, fig. 3.2.

31 D. J. Smith in La Mosaïque Gréco-Romaine (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1965), 96-9; Roman Villa in Britain, 96, fig. 3.4, 102-7; and in Dr. Stead's forthcoming report on Winterton, where the evidence for a ‘Petuarian school’ is re-presented in greater detail. On the vicus of Petuaria see P. Corder and I.A. Richmond, Jour. Brit. Arch. Assoc, 3rd Series, vii (1942), 1-30; J. S. Wacher, Excavations at Brough-on-Humber 1958-1961 (Soc. Ants. London, 1969).

32 Baume, P. la, Römisches Kunstgewerbe (Braunschweig, 1964), fig. 214.Google Scholar I am indebted to Dr. J. P. Wild for this reference.

33 Lavin, I., Dumbarton Oaks Papers xxi (1967), figs. 4-8.Google Scholar

34 M. Cellinet-Guérin, Histoire du Nimbe (1961), p. 708.

35 S. Aurigemma, L'ltalia in Africa. Tripolitania 1.2: Le Pitture d'Etá Romana (Rome, 1962), pl. xlvi.

36 Information from Mr. D. S. Neal. See also Davey, N., Britannia iii (1972), 265 and fig. 12.Google Scholar

37 J. Liversidge in I. M. Stead, Excavations at Winterton Roman Villa.…, (H.M.S.O., forthcoming); see also Britannia iii (1972), 268.

38 S. S. Frere, Verulamium Excavations ii (forthcoming).