page 272 note b “Some labourers employed in cutting a drain in the nine-acre field, within the walls of Silchester, and about 200 yards to the south-westward of the church, struck upon some foundations of Roman buildings. The Rev. John Coles being informed of the circumstance, obtained permission of Mr. Burton the farmer to prosecute the discovery, which he liberally did at his own expense.
In a short time the foundations of a large building, upwards of 80 feet in length, probably the Thermae or public hot-baths of the city, were revealed, disposition of the rooms of this edifice.
Nos. 1, 2, 3, were apartments, the dimensions of which I derive from a neat lithographic plan presented to me by Mr. Coles, and from the information of John Bruce, Esq. F.S.A. No. 1, 11 feet 8 inches by 25 feet. No. 2, 12 feet 9 inches by 25 feet. No. 3, 19 feet by 25 feet. These were hypocausts, or sudatory apartments, the floors of which stood upon numerous round and square pillars of Roman brick, each about 3 feet 4 inches in height. The walls were 3 feet thick. The easternmost chamber is No. 1; the floor of this room had been supported by seven ranges of pillars, seven in a row; the three first rows from the east were circular, the remainder square. The diameter of the pillars 9 inches; they stood on a plinth formed of a single tile of larger dimensions. The apertures 6 and 7 afforded a brisk draught to the praefurnium or furnace, and heat was thus diffused all over the floor of the sweating rooms, and to the general volume of air by flue-tiles placed as pipes, perforated with holes, in ranges against the walls. The floor was composed of large square tiles, on which, in a bed of cement, was probably laid a tesselated pavement. 5 was undoubtedly the natatio or water-bath; here, at figure 8, was a leaden pipe inserted in a tile, having a triangular aperture, through which the element was supplied. 4 was probably the apodyterium or frigidarium, the anti-room, where the bathers undressed, as 3 was the media cella, or tepidarium, where they were shampooed (to adopt a term in modern use) by the strigils of the alijptae or unctores. The anti-room was paved with large square tiles, surrounded by a border of tesserae, each an inch square. A quantity of fractured window glass, full of air bubbles, and having a coarse surface, somewhat resembling the graining of wood, was found on the spot. Such a substance must have been peculiarly necessary in the sudatories, as light would be transmitted, while the cold external air was excluded.”—Gent. Mag. ciii. 124, 125.
