The Poultry digLater Roman LondonIn AD125 or thereabouts, Londinium was burnt to the ground for a second time. Thick layers of burnt debris, found both at Poultry and during numerous other digs in London, bear witness to a catastrophe on the scale of the Great Fire of 1666. Just as in 1666, the blaze may well have started accidentally. On many London sites, archaeologists find that the later Roman levels have been destroyed by medieval buildings or modern basements. At Poultry, however, these levels remained, telling a fascinating story of urban renewal, change, and of ultimate decay over a period of 300 years. Shortly after the fire, rebuilding work began. Some - but not all - of the houses and shops were restored. Initially, these buildings will have looked much like their 1st-century predecessors (recreated in the High Street Londinium exhibition) but when, a hundred years later, they began to need refurbishment, entirely different styles of architecture were introduced. Extensions, either built entirely in stone or at least with stone foundations, appeared in the backyards. One of these was a bath block, with a hypocaust, a hot plunge bath and mosaic floors. Another was a large reception room or hall, also with a mosaic floor. Tantalisingly, to the south of the via decumana, were found two massive parallel stone walls that apparently enclosed a large open space. Might these have been the boundary walls to a temple precinct?
Find out what the dig told us about: Description of the image(s) on this page: Top: The site as it may have been in AD300. Bottom: Recording a mosaic floor within a wealthy, later Roman building.
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The
baths may have remained in use as late as AD400, but elsewhere on the
Poultry site, the 4th century was a period of increasing dilapidation
and abandonment. Indeed, for Britannia as a whole, this was a time of
