Romans

Being regular visitors to the Roman Villa at Brading, on the Isle of Wight, it has been interesting to visit two other offerings of the same sort, the palace at Fishbourne and the villa at Bignor. With Bignor being in more or less private hands and Fishbourne in local, rather than national heritage, hands.

Started off well at Fishbourne with a fine display of canna lillies, illustrated left.

I then took a walk up the grass mound behind the main building, to be impressed by the range of small livestock. Two sorts of slugs. Lots of spiders' webs in the sort grass. Plenty of evidence of ant action, but small scale. Quite a lot of small holes in the ground, perhaps 1cm in diameter, which I took to be mouse holes but now I am not so sure that mice burrow in that way. Some rabbit sign.

Onto to the building, larger but very like Brading in layout. Which was not very surprising because the Brading people had come to take notes here before they got under way. A much plainer main shed, no arty laminated wood or steel ties, although there were the now usual stainless steel, yacht flavoured fittings holding the hand rails together.

A little to my surprise, while the villa at Fishbourne was a far grander affair than that at Brading, the presentation was not. There was plenty of floor & mosaic, models of diggers were pleasingly missing, but they lacked the homely touches like the loom at Brading. And while there was a small museum - which I did not inspect - there did not seem to be room for the travelling exhibitions that Brading accommodate. See reference 1. Nonetheless, I expect we shall be back for a second look.

We did have the services of a very knowledgeable trusty, a retiring classics teacher at a local school, en-route to full time trustiness. We were able to tax him with the vexed question of whether translating into Greek and Latin from English was a good idea, it having been the norm when I was little but, I think, the exception rather than the rule now. The teacher steered a middle course. If all you wanted was enough Latin and Greek to read the classics and to learn something about the classical world, you could manage well enough without translating from English. But if you really wanted to understand, to know the language, then you probably could not. Presumably the number of people of the latter sort is small these days: they are all too busy with creative arts and computer studies to be bothered with dead languages.

Bignor, which we visited a few days later, was most unusual in that the sheds in which the villa - or rather its rather impressive mosaics - were housed were themselves listed buildings, being some of the last example extant of Sussex vernacular architecture from the early 19th century - having been built about the time of our war with the United States.

I wondered about the merits of ancient and rather damaged mosaics. Did anyone go in for replicas, replicas which might give one a rather better idea of what they looked like in their hey-day? Perhaps it is time to go and see the ones at the National Gallery again. I was also rather taken with the idea that some of the designs were probably taken from the woven matting which they probably replaced.

Bignor also ran to a couple of interesting toys - if that is the right word. One was a couple of replica helmets and the other was a couple of mazes. More on them in due course.

PS: the teacher was able to explain that the tesserae were a mixture of sawn stone and ceramic, these last presumably cast to size. Also that the travelling mosaic masters were important people, on a par socially with the rather later master masons who put up castles and cathedrals.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/roman-villa.html.

Reference 2: https://sussexpast.co.uk/.

Reference 3: http://www.bignorromanvilla.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/jigsaw-8-series-2.html. A bare mention. It rather looks as if the post promised there did not materialise. But we do have: '... Between 1928 and 1933, the National Gallery commissioned Anrep to lay two mosaic pavements in the vestibule of the Main Hall to illustrate 'The Labours of Life' and 'The Pleasures of Life'. In 1952, Anrep laid a third pavement, 'The Modern Virtues'.  The resulting mosaics are a celebration of everyday life, which lies underfoot in a busy public place...'.

Group search key: rvb.