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Verulamium, Three Roman Cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

S. S. Frere
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Abstract

Verulamium was the third largest city in Roman Britain (200 acres within the walls). Its place in the Roman province was thus commensurate with the part it has played in modern assessments of the history and culture of Roman Britain. The excavations undertaken between 1930 and 19-34 by Dr and Mrs R. E. M. Wheeler were amongst the first scientific excavations of Roman towns in this country, and their report was certainly the first to interpret the results gained in the wider context of the history of the Roman Empire. Those deductions were thereupon utilized by Collingwood as a framework for the history of urbanization in Britain as a whole and have coloured interpretation ever since. Yet of the 200 acres of Verulamium only 11 had been investigated and those in an area thought to be peripheral. Today, therefore, at the conclusion of a second campaign (1955-61) when another, more central, area has been excavated and when the acreage investigated has increased to 20, it is justifiable to reassess the history of the town.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 38 , Issue 150 , June 1964, pp. 103 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1964 

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Footnotes

*

Sheppard Frere, Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces at London University, excavated at Verulamium, the Roman predecessor of St Albans, for seven years (1955–61), and here sums up the historical results of the work.

References

[1] See e.g. ANTIQUITY, VI, 133-47; VII, 21-35; XII, 16-25, 210-17. Also R. E. M. and T. V. Wheeler, Verulamium, A Belgic and Two Roman Cities (1936) (hereafter cited as Verulamium); R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements (1936), etc.

[2] Antiq. Journ., XXXVII, 6; XXXVIII, 13; Trans. St. Albans Archit. and Archaeolog. Soc., 1961, 31.

[3] Archaeometry, 11, 53-7.

[4] Antiq. Journ., XXXVII, 9-10 with fig. 2.

[5] Ibid., XXXVII, 4-6; XXXVIII, 2-4.

[6] S. S. Frere, ‘Verulamium Then and Now’, London Institute of Archaeology Bulletin, IV, 55-76, hereafter cited as Frere 1964.

[7] Antiq. Journ., XXXVI, 4, 7; XL, 2, 21-4; XLI, 80-3; XLII, 150-7.

[8] Verulamium, 25-6.

[9] Archaeologia, xc, 83-4; Antiq. Journ., XXXVIII, 2; XXXIX, 3; XL, 19.

[10] Jaarverslag van de Vereeniging voor Terpenonderzoek, XXV-XXXII; JRS, XLII (1952), pls. XV-XVI. See also I. A. Richmond ‘Roman Timber Building’ in E. M. Jope, Studies in Building History (1961), and Arch. Ael., XXXI (1953), 205-53.

[11] Antiq. Journ., XLIII, 5 and fig. 3.

[12] Ibid., XLII, 9 and fig. 3.

[13] W. Page in Trans. St. Albans Arch. Soc., 1899-1902; VCH Herts (1914), 130 and pl. IV.

[14] Tacitus, Agricola, 21.

[15] Antiq. Journ., XXXVI, 9.

[16] Antiq. Journ., XLI, pl. xxvii. For reconstruction see Frere 1964, fig. 6.

[17] Verulamium, 93-4 (Ins. Ill 2A, 2B); Antiq. Journ., XVII, 42 (Ins. XIII, 1); Trans. St. Albans Archit. and Archaeol. Soc., 1953, 27 (Ins. XIII, 2).

[18] Grenier, Manuel, III (1958) passim; see also J. A. Hanson, Roman Theater-Temples (Princeton 1959). The matter is further discussed in Antiq. Journ., XL, 12-16.

[19] Antiq. Journ., XVII (1937), 29.

[20] Verulamium, 28.

[21] Antiq. Journ., XXXVII, 13; XL, 16.

[22] Verulamium, 26.

[23] Ibid,, 50 and pl. ii.

[24] See J. S. Wacher, Arch. Journ., CXIX, 103.

[25] See Frere 1964 for a further discussion of this point.

[26] Antiq. Journ., XXXVII, 14.

[27] Illustrated in J. M. C. Toynbee, Art in Roman Britain, pl. 201.

[28] Antiq. Journ., XXXVII, 13; XL, 16; paintings illustrated in colour, ibid., XXXVII, pl. V; XXXIX, pl. i; and in half-tone, loc. cit. and Toynbee, pls. 195-8.

[29] Verulamium, 143.

[30] For a full discussion of this point see Frere 1964.

[31] Roman Britain and the English Settlements (1936), 206.

[32] Arch,, LXXXIV, 239-40.

[33] The facts are studied by Mrs A. Ravetz in a recent Ph.D. thesis at the University of Leeds.

[34] The evidence is almost entirely literary. See N. K. Ghadwick, Studies in Early British History (1954), 1991ff; Myres, ‘Pelagius and the end of Roman Britain’, JRS L(1900), 21-36.

[35] See note 33; the 4th-century Verulamium coin-list is discussed in fuller detail in Frere 1964, p. 70.

[36] P. Corder, Arch. Journ., CXII, 20-42.

[37] ‘From Roman Britain to Saxon England’ in R. H. M. Dolley, Anglo-Saxon Coins (1961), 5.

[38] Medieval Archaeology, v, 1-70.