No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Arecent paper made reference to the three iron beams found at the Chedworth villa. They were called ‘blooms’ and it was suggested that they were the product of the Forest of Dean ironworks. The place of origin may be correct, but it is no longer right to refer to these great objects as ‘blooms’. They had been manufactured for a definite purpose and had a definite structural part to play in building work, as is shown by a study of the find-spots, not only of the Chedworth examples, but also of others found in more recent years, and by their condition when found. Moreover they are also of interest as being probably the largest single objects yet known to have been manufactured by Romano-British smiths. Their function and manufacture has already been discussed by Dr. R. F. Tylecote, in spite of which many misconceptions still seem to survive about them. Indeed, I am grateful to Dr. Tylecote for discussing the Catterick examples with me soon after they were found; also to Mr. H. Cleere of the Iron and Steel Institute for arranging a study of the broken Catterick beam, and to Mr. L. Biek of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory for making the report available to me.
1 Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Arch. Soc, lxxxvi, 14.
2 R. F. Tylecote. Metallurgy and Archaeology (1962), 237–41.
3 Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Arch. Soc., lxxviii, 7 (room 19 on the plan), 14.
4 JRS 1 (1960), 217.Google Scholar
5 The writer is indebted to Mr. Trevor Walden, Director, City of Leicester Museums and Art Gallery, for permission to take the photographs published on PL. XXIII.
6 Arch. Ael. i vi, 241, 265; viii, 207. Note: Dr. Tylecote has now drawn my attention to the fragment of a further, fifth, beam in Chesters Museum.
7 Publication forthcoming.
8 A bronze testudo exists in the Stabian baths at Pompeii, while a boiler of lead sheets was found in the villa at Boscoreale.
9 L. Jacobi, Das Römerkastell Saalburg (1897), p. 237 and taf. XLVII.
10 I am indebted to Dr. R. F. Tylecote and Mr. C. Daniels, F.S.A., for this information, as also for the original suggestion on the purpose of these beams. See also A. Mau and F. W. Kelsey, Pompeii, its Life and Art (1899), p. 188.