3-021-331 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Roman pavement found in The Poultry, near the Mansion House, 1869. View of '... the discovery in the City [of London] of a tesselated pavement [the Bucklersbury Mosaic], in the course of excavating...it is apparently as fresh and perfect as if but yesterday it had left the artist's hands. It is of a bold type of geometrical pattern - scrolls, circles, and interlaced squares, inclosing a design of some beauty, but no animals or figures of any kind. The tesserae are of five colours...the outer portion being of common red and yellow brick, the whole laid in the ordinary Roman mortar, and upon tiles. It has very properly been thrown open to public inspection, so that the excavations have been at a standstill...The Board of Works have handed it over to the Corporation for presentation to the Museum of Antiquities at Guildhall...the floor...indicates an apartment formed on the usual plan for one of the principal chambers of a Roman villa...The investigation of the discovery has been taken up by the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society...the contractors, Messrs. Mowlem and Burt, have, to their great inconvenience, facilitated the society's researches. The public were admitted to view the pavement...[and] 33,000 persons inspected the remains'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.