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hand, this
part of the site had been completely disturbed several times
in the course of the construction of the three bath suites.
The northwest wall of these two rooms had been built of
bonding-tiles, ragstone and tufa, all set in off-white mortar;
it had fallen towards the southeast and must have been of
considerable height as the material from it was scattered some
17 feet 6 inches beyond the line of the wall.
A very small chamber, Room 45, measuring 2 feet
6 inches by 4 feet, was exposed at the north corner of Room
40; it belongs to one of the last phases of this period. The
walls of this 'room' were built entirely of coursed
bonding-tiles; the north-east wall was abutted against the
north-west wall of Room 40 which was partly removed, so that
both the floor and south-west wall of Room 45 were laid across
the north-west wall of Room 40. The floor of Room 45 consisted
of opus signinum, 3 inches thick, and was raised nearly
3 feet over the north-east cheek of the flue in the demolished
Room 46 by the deposition of a large mass of loose ragstone,
of which only the upper 8 inches were mortared together. The
purpose of this room is not known, but the level of its floor
(2 feet below the surface) suggests that the floor in Room 40
could scarcely have been much lower.
Like its predecessor, the second bath building had an open
courtyard to its north-west. Its courtyard wall, shown on the
main site plan, (Fig. 1), was built almost exactly over the
alignment of the earlier courtyard wall, which it used as a
foundation; to the north-east, it was abutted against the
south-west wall of the earlier Room 59 and, to the south-west,
it extended beyond the limits of the excavation to enclose an
area about two-thirds the size of the Period III palaestra.
Period V, c. A.D.. 180-290: (a) The Bath Building
Excavation of the third bath building was completed with the
recovery of the plan of the later furnace-room (Room 43) and
its adjoining fuel store (Room 44) of Phases B and 0; the bath
building comprised in all seven heated rooms, two
furnace-rooms and a large cold plunge-bath.18
Room 23 was confirmed as measuring 16 by 9 feet,
and had three flues, each 1 foot wide, through its south-west
wall allowing heat to reach Room 20. The construction of the
suspended floor was described in the 1963 Report;19
the under-floor consisted of opus signinum, 2 inches
thick (Fig. 3, Section E-F, Layer 43) laid over a foundation
of rammed lumps of chalk (Fig. 3, Section E-F, Layer 44),
which were deposited on the levelled debris of Period III.
Room 20 was also completely cleared; it was a narrow room
measuring
18 Arch.
Cant.,lxxii (l963), 137-8.
19 Arch. Cant., lxxix (1964), 132-3. |