Domestic Housing, suburbs and utilities

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Position of water mains on 1909 plan

You can use the Antiquaries Plan as a graphical menu to explore the buildings of Calleva. (This page contains large images and may take some time to download on slower connections)

Domestic Housing

There is a considerable range in the size and ground-plan of private houses within the walls of Calleva, with the earliest examples in masonry dating back to the late first century AD. There are small rectangular buildings without any internal sub-divisions, but with evidence of a hearth or furnace which could have served as houses, workshops, or a combination of both.

Plan of some of the shops

Larger, single-range houses occur with internal sub-divisions and then either one or two corridors alongside to give privacy to individual rooms. The provision of projecting wing rooms marks the next elaboration in ground plan, and this is followed by houses where additional wings were added. Although never designed like this from the start, house 1 in Insula XIV eventually grew to have four wings enclosing a courtyard. Such a grand development, perhaps slowly evolving over several generations, was exceptional; most houses having no more than one range, perhaps with projecting wing-rooms.

All these houses were provided with masonry foundations which, in many principal rooms can be identified by the presence of mosaics, tiled or tessellated floors and under-floor heating. The majority of rooms had plain floors of cement or gravel and some of these may have had raised, plank floors. Heated rooms are reasonably common, but only one private house seems to have been provided with a bath-house.

Roofing was of ceramic tiles or thatch, with stone 'slates' of limestone or sandstone becoming more common in the later Roman period. Window glass is a relatively common find suggesting that many windows were glazed. Interior decoration was limited to painted wall plaster and, more rarely, the provision of mosaics, evidence of which has been found in some thirty houses. Most of the wall plaster was too fragmentary to reconstruct but one section has been reconstructed with a flower pattern.

The majority of mosaics so far discovered are of geometric designs, with only a few examples of figured subjects. Using stone of mostly southern British origin, colours are predominantly red, yellow and grey, outlined in black against a white background. While some surviving examples date back to at least the second century, the majority belong to the third and fourth centuries.

left: Mosaic pavement from house in Insula XIV water mains.
right: Fine tableware pottery vessels, first and second century.

Water Supply and Drainage

Water is to be found in abundance beneath the shallow gravel-capping of the Silchester spur. From the late Iron Age onwards it was mostly obtained by means of wells dug to a depth no greater than 6m, and often no deeper than 3m. The shafts were generally lined with wood to prevent collapse and the remains of both purpose-built 'box' linings and discarded wine-barrels specifically reused for this purpose have been found. Water was presumably raised in buckets, but there is one example of a wooden force-pump with leaden cylinders which could have delivered about three gallons a minute.

left: Imported wine barrels re-used as well-linings
right: Wooden force-pump with leaden cylinders.

There is no certain evidence of an aqueduct supply to Silchester and this is not surprising given the height of the settlement in relation to the surrounding land. The nearest higher ground with springs and streams that could be tapped is the north Hampshire chalk at least six miles (10 km) distant. However, the existence of one deeply lined wooden water-pipe which ran along the XVI and deep beneath the defences is evidence that some water was brought from outside the settlement. The actual source of water for the pipe is unknown but, if the nearest stream was tapped, the water would have to have been raised to the level of the pipe. A puzzle also surrounds the water supply to the town baths. The latrine suggests the nearby stream might have been exploited, but close by there are also remains of wooden piling, perhaps to carry wooden troughs from a source of water in Insula VI or XXXV.

Apart from their latrines which emptied into a wood-lined cess-pit, the town baths exploited the small adjacent stream to drain waste water while the baths attached to the mansio were drained via a wooden channel through the south-east gate. Otherwise there was no organised drainage scheme todispose of sewage and waste water from Calleva. To be effective drainage systems depended upon a continuous supply of running water and that, as we have seen, was not available to the citizens of the town. Refuse and night-soil was either disposed of in pits in back yards or taken out by cart from the town.

Suburbs and Cemeteries

Roman suburbs outside the west gate recorded from aerial photographs.

Apart from the exploration of the amphitheatre there has been no lengthy investigation of the Roman suburbs by excavation. Most of what we know is derived from a study of aerial photographs and the systematic collection of building debris, pottery and other artefacts from the surface of ploughed fields.

Such investigation has revealed that the suburbs extended at least half a mile beyond the east and west gates, but rather less to the south. At the back of the small rectangular buildings ranged along the Cirencester road are small allotments and paddocks.

Except for the occasional cremation revealed by the plough and the discovery of one inscribed tombstone (a translation of which reads: To the memory of Flavia Victorina Titus Tammonius, Her husband set this up.) in 1577, the cemeteries remain unknown, but their location appears to lie beyond the 'Outer Earthwork' to the north and west. Thus the former population of Calleva remains, virtually undisturbed, for future generations to research.

Beyond the cemeteries and suburbs lay fairly open country with only a little woodland, as the study of the ancient pollen has begun to show. The land seems to have been given over to pasture rather than the cultivation of cereals. West of the town, the plateau gravels seem to have supported a similar heathland vegetation to that which grows there today.