Laying foundations of city

LEICESTER’S Roman inhabitants lived in a variety of houses, ranging from rows of small, simple rectangular buildings built along street fronts (with domestic rooms located behind shops or workshops) to larger, elaborate townhouses built around colonnaded courtyards.

Roman houses were built of stone, dried clay bricks, timber, or a combination of the three. Poorer homes would have had thatched roofs, while other buildings used slate or tile.

Most floors would have been made of compacted earth but in some houses more important rooms had concrete floors or were decorated with mosaic pavements. Walls and ceilings were rendered with plaster and painted with a variety of effects, including imitation marbling, geometric panels, architectural friezes, figures and foliage.

The location of many of Leicester’s Roman townhouses are known about because of the discovery, over the last 300 years, of dozens of mosaic pavements across the city.

Some of these are among the finest in Britain, including the Peacock Mosaic found at St Nicholas Street in 1898 (now St Nicholas Circle), which features a magnificent peacock in its central panel; and the Blackfriars Mosaic found at Jewry Wall Street in 1832 (now beneath the viaduct of the former Great Central Railway Station), which has been described as the finest mosaic in Roman Britain because of its high-quality craftsmanship and the sophistication of its geometric composition.

The opulence of some of Leicester’s townhouses was apparent during an excavation at Blue Boar Lane in the 1950s (today beneath Vaughan Way and the Travelodge in Highcross Street).

Archaeologists discovered parts of a large, remarkably well-preserved house. This was built in the early 2nd century AD and was occupied for about 40 years before it was demolished to make way for the macellum (market hall).

Two ranges of rooms, floored with concrete or mosaic pavements, were found opening on to a colonnaded courtyard. Clay-brick walls survived to nearly a metre in height above the floor and were still decorated with painted plaster adorned with elaborate architectural and figurative schemes.

Left, personal items buried with people from Roman Leicester found during the excavation of a Roman cemetery in Western Road. Right, the Roman Forum and Basilica as they may have looked from the south-west during the early 3rd century Part of the 2nd century Blackfriars Mosaic discovered in 1832

Archaeologist John Wacher records the remains of the Blue Boar Lane town house in 1958. Clay brick walls survived to nearly a metre high above the floor and were still decorated with painted wall plaster

The central panel of the 2nd century Peacock Mosaic Pavement discovered in 1898 at St Nicholas Street, now part of St Nicholas Circle. It came from a Roman town house excavated in 1968

The reconstructed decorative scheme of painted wall plaster from the Blue Boar Lane townhouse

This excavation near Highcross Street took place in 2017