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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
In April of the year 1854 I had the honour of addressing to you a letter on the subject of a tessellated pavement of considerable beauty which was discovered in Bishopsgate Street in digging for the foundation of Gresham House. That paper was subsequently printed in the thirty-sixth volume of the Archæologia, and at page 209 the following passage occurs :—
“In the summer of 1853 the excavations on the north side of the Tower on Tower Hill showed in situ distinct remains of Roman work in part of the inclosure wall of Roman London on that side.
page 296 note a Since writing this letter my attention has been drawn to an account in a small literary publication of the day, in which the following description occurs: “Mr. Crack recorded the appearance of the Wall as he saw it in 1841 laid bare for the works of the Blackwall Railway.
“Beneath a range of houses which have been in part demolished, in a court entering from the east side of Cooper's Row, nearly opposite to Milbourne's Almshouses, and behind the south-west corner of America Square, the workmen, having penetrated to the natural earth—a hard, dry, sandy, gravel—came upon a wall seven feet six inches thick, running a very little to the west of the north, or parallel to the line of the Minories, which, by the resistance it offered, was at once conjectured to be of Roman masonry. When we saw it, it had been laid bare on both sides to the height of about six or seven feet, and there was an opportunity of examining its construction, both on the surface and in the interior.
“The principal part of it consisted of five courses of squared stones, regularly laid, with two layers of flat bricks below them, and two similar layers above—the latter at least carried all through the wall—as represented in the drawing.
“The mortar, which appeared to be extremely hard, had a few pebbles mixed up with it ; and here and there were interstices or air-cells, as if it had not been spread, but poured in among the stones. The stones were a granulated limestone, such as might have been obtained from the chalk quarries at Greenhithe or Northfleet. The bricks, which were evidently Roman, and, as far as the eye could judge, corresponded in size as well as in shape with those described by Woodward, had as fine a grain as common pottery, and varied in colour from a bright red to a palish yellow. A slight circular or oval mark—in some cases forming a double ring—appeared on one side of each of them, which had been impressed when the clay was in a soft state.