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rooms,
rendered necessary mainly by the disuse of one of the furnaces
(Room 46) and the construction of another (Room 65) for the
hot plunge-baths, and also by the need to provide an adequate
furnace-room for the laconicum (Room 32).
The position of the laconicum, projecting beyond the
main line of the bath building, and the absence, owing to
methodical demolition in later periods, of any evidence for a
main entrance into the baths, make it difficult to reconcile
the plan of the earliest Eccles bath building entirely with
either of Krencker's two main types.4 It is clear,
however, that the bath suite provided two alternative kinds of
bathing practice, dry heat and damp heat and, if the second
alternative were to be adopted by the bather, then the plan of
the first bath building could be considered as conforming in
general with Krencker's Ringtyp.5 In this
case, the bather would progress, at any rate in Phase A, from
the apodyterium (Room 49) into the frigidarium (Room
30) before entering the tepidarium (Room 28) and the caldarium
(Room 39); from these rooms, he would be expected to pass
through Rooms 55-57, before the main hot plunge-bath (Room
58), and emerge either directly through the frigidarium into
the apodyterium or, first, by means of the tepidarium
and, next, through the frigidarium.
From Phase B, however, it is quite clear that, with the
commissioning of Room 50, the baths would be entered through
the long corridor (Room 59) and the apodyterium (Room
60); and, if the bather should adopt the alternative of dry
heat, he would then visit the laconicum before
proceeding into the frigidarium and its cold
plunge-bath (Room 31) where the colder temperature and
immersion into the cold water of the plunge would be expected,
by closing the pores of his skin opened in the very hot
temperature of the laconicum, to protect him from
chilling.
The walls of the bath building were built, with a few
exceptions such as the wall of the laconicum and others
mentioned below, to a standard thickness of 2 feet with
ragstone set in a bright yellow mortar which, when dry, is
almost the same colour as the mortar used for the construction
of the third baths in Period V.
PHASE A
Room 47 was in this phase 6 feet wide, narrower than in
later phases, and is interpreted as a corridor leading towards
the main rooms of the baths; there is a slight possibility
that at least part of this area was associated with the
furnace-room (Room 48), and some soot
4
D. Krencker, Vergleickende Untersuchungen romischer Thermen, in D. Krencker and E.
Kruger, Die Trierer Kaiaerthermen, Augsburg, 1929,
117-8.
5 ibid., 178. |