The Inter-City Villa
Lower Basildon, Berkshire
25 February 2001

Reconstructing one of the Lower Basildon mosaics

As part of the programme filmed at Lower Basildon, Time Team brought together a group of academics, students and volunteers to reconstruct a Roman mosaic of the same design as one of those unearthed by navvies building the Great Western Railway in 1838. Those involved included mosaics expert David Neal, historical reconstructor Chris Owen and Professor Susan Tebby, of De Montfort University.

Wherever possible, the same techniques were used as the Romans', so as to make the construction process as authentic as possible. Among other things, this involved making 8–10,000 tesserae (small cubes) to make just one quarter of the whole mosaic. The different-coloured tesserae were produced by cutting 'sticks' from hard rock chalk, blue lias stone from Lyme Regis, and Roman brick and tile. These, in turn, were cut into the finished cubes.

Only 12 pieces are known to be left of the original mosaic, but the design is typical of others made in Britain in the 4th century AD. So by using our knowledge of these in combination with the painting of the Lower Basildon mosaic made before it was broken up, it was possible to reconstruct an accurate copy of the original.

The reconstruction showed the high levels of skill involved in matching the individual tesserae to the overall pattern. It also demonstrated some of the practical difficulties that would have faced the Roman mosaic makers, such as how to keep the mortar mix damp and flexible for long enough to allow the tesserae to be placed in their correct positions.

Where to see Roman mosaics in Britain

Fishbourne Roman Palace and Gardens
Salthill Road
Fishbourne
Chichester
Sussex PO19 3QR
Tel: 01243 785859
The remains of the north wing of the palace are enclosed within a cover building where there is the largest collection of in-situ mosaics in Britain, including the famous 'Cupid on a Dolphin' mosaic.

Corinium Museum
Park Street
Cirencester
Tel: 01285 655611
A welcoming and airy museum with one of the finest collections of antiquities from Roman Britain, including various mosaics and the famous Septimus Stone, featured on Time Team's Cirencester programme in the 2000 series, which records the restoration of a column to Jupiter by a governor called Septimus.

Bignor Roman Villa
Bignor
Pulborough
West Sussex RH20 1PH
Tel: 01798 869259
One of the less well-known Romano-British sites open to the public, the villa has a marvellous collection of mosaics. It is six miles north of Arundel, signposted from the A29 and the A285.

British Museum
The British Museum
Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DG
The British Museum has a number of fine Romano-British mosaics, including the early depiction of Christ found in the Hinton St Mary mosaic floor and the first- or second-century Leadenhall Street mosaic, featuring Bacchus on a tiger.

Other websites

This website contains links to other websites which are not under the control of and are not maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics (ASPROM)
www.asprom.org/index.html
The Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics website offers a wide variety of materials relating to mosaics in Britain, including their design, construction and the buildings in which they have been discovered. There is a catalogue of every Roman mosaic discovered in Britain, as well as articles providing an insight into the relationship between mosaics and art, architecture, religion and history. ASPROM is supporting former English Heritage chief illustrator David Neal and Steve Cosh's project to catalogue and publish details of every Roman mosaic in Britain, further details of which can be found on its website.

The best and worst Roman mosaics in Britain
www.cix.co.uk/~archaeology/timeline/roman/mosaics/mosaics.htm
Mosaics expert and illustrator David Neal has been working with Steve Cosh to produce a four-volume account of all the known mosaics in the country. Here they choose four of their best – and worst – Roman mosaics in Britain. This illustrated web page is an abridged version of an article that appeared in Current Archaeology 157, published in May 1998.

Illustrating Roman mosaics
www.asprom.org/articles/General/mosaics.htm
How can Roman mosaics best be illustrated? Mosaics are difficult to photograph even under good conditions: because of their size and situation, often only an oblique view is possible. Furthermore, many are known only from photos, usually black and white, usually oblique, and rarely of the entire mosaic. Thus to get an overall idea of what an ancient mosaic looked like, the best solution is a painting to scale, together with photographic evidence, and this is the solution adopted in the forthcoming corpus of Romano-British mosaics by David Neal and Steve Cosh. This illustrated article gives a detailed account of the background to their work and the history of recording Roman mosaics in Britain.

The Romans in Britain: Roman mosaics
www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/arc_roman_mosaics.htm
Good basic introduction to Roman mosaics, their design, construction, peculiarities and mistakes.

Roman mosaics gallery
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/mosaic_gallery/index.shtml
Online gallery of mosaics from Fishbourne Roman Palace and Bignor Roman villa.

Fishbourne Roman Palace mosaics
www.sussexpast.co.uk/fishbo/mosaics.htm
Illustrated details of the Fishbourne Palace mosaics, the largest in situ collection of Roman mosaics in Britain.

Piazza Armerina, Sicily
www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/armerina/armerina.html
A large, early 4th-century Roman villa and estate in Sicily, the Piazza Armerina has many well-preserved mosaics that feature on this website.

Pyrrha's Roman pages
www.pyrrha.demon.co.uk/index.html
This website provides information on how a couple with classical enthusiasms made a Roman mosaic and garden. The site also contains an introduction to the Latin language, poetry and how to read Latin inscriptions.

Mosaic Workshop
www.mosaicworkshop.com/acatalog/index.html
Shop: 1a Princeton Street
London WC1R 4AX
Tel: 020 7831 0889
Workshop: Unit B
443-449 Holloway Road
London N7 6LJ
Tel: 020 7263 2997
The Mosaic Workshop supplies materials and organises courses on mosaic-making.

Further reading

Ancient Mosaics by Roger Ling (British Museum, 1998) paperback £12.99 ISBN: 0714122181
Traces the history of mosaics and their regional variations from Hellenistic to early Christian times, including mosaic techniques and their relationship to ancient interior design.

Geometric Patterns from Roman Mosaics by Robert Field (Tarquin Publications, 1988) paperback £2.95 ISBN: 0906212634
A compact and interesting guide.

Romano-British Mosaics by Alan McWhirr (Shire Publications, 1995) paperback £10 ISBN: 0852638914
Illustrated guide to Roman-British mosaics in the popular Shire Archaeology series.

Vitruvius: On Architecture translated by Frank Granger (Harvard University Press, 1996) hardback £12.95
Studied by architects from the Renaissance to the present, Vitruvius's book is an incredible DIY handbook ranging from recipes for plaster and paint to the aesthetic use of marble and the construction of siege engines. An invaluable reference for Time Team cameos and a guide to the styles and means of construction of Roman buildings that survive today.

Mosaic
Annual journal of the Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics. [see website] Vol 27 includes the article 'Recreating the mosaic from Basildon Roman villa' by Steve Cosh. The recreation was carried out for Time Team as part of the excavation of a Roman villa at Lower Basildon for the 2001 series.

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