Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/351

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ROMANO-BRITISH SUFFOLK though doubtless more might have been found if further search had been carried out. The third and last example of the remains of buildings to be cited here is one found at Icklingham in 1 877, situated in a field called the Horselands. Its discoverer, Mr. Henry Prigg, says of it, 'So far as one can judge from the portion already explored the general plan of the building was that of a parallelogram directed north-west and south-east, having its principal apartments at the west, and the minor ones grouping around a central court- yard. The only portion explored was one large chamber at the west end, 25 ft. by 17 ft., divided into two by a transverse wall and warmed by a hypocaust ;' which he proceeds to describe very fully. It differs in nothing from the usual type of pillared hypocaust. Nothing more than the exploration of this hypocaust seems to have been attempted, and the rest of the traces of the house still have to be explored." The last resting-places of the inhabitants wherever discovered point to their dwellings in life in close vicinity. Near to any village or group of houses the cemetery will be found, and every isolated dwelling has its little burial-ground ; only in our generally haphazard methods of research one or other, house or interment, is missed. Instances of various cinerary urns have been dug up : at Coddenham, a site already mentioned, and at Stratford St. Mary. At Wangford," near an ancient ford over the Waveney, calcined bones and Roman pottery (the latter probably the broken urns which had held the human ashes) were turned up in 1856. At Stoke Ash 'some vessels con- taining calcined bones were found inverted on a square tile,' and at Easton '* in 1850 in a gravel pit five urns, and a sixth in the following year, were dug out. Later a group of seven or eight were turned up, only one of which had been used to hold ashes. Lastly, close to the site of the villa at Whitton previously referred to, one of those large globular amphorae not uncommon in this county was discovered in digging for gravel in 1894. It was filled with ashes, probably from the funeral pile, in which no doubt had been buried the cinerary urn. Amphorae of similar character and containing cinerary urns have been dug up elsewhere. In all cases, as in this, the handles and neck have been removed so that the urn holding the ashes could be placed within. The most remarkable, however, of the Roman tombs found in Suffolk are the four tumuli at Rougham, the remains in which were unquestionably those of the possessors of the mansion in their close neighbourhood. These barrows were ranged in a line, one being larger than the others and called Eastelow Hill. The most northerly on being levelled in 1843 was found to contain a cist of brick 2 ft. square covered by a layer of flat tiles. In it was an iron lamp and a thick square jar of green glass holding bones and ashes. The next tumulus to this one was destroyed in the same year. A cist of brick of the same character as that just mentioned lay in the centre at a depth slightly lower than the ground level. A large globular vase of glass contained human ashes and bones, and amongst them lay a lachrymatory, also of glass, with a bronze coin. Various vessels of different wares were "Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. 1878, xxxiv, 12 et seq. ^ ¥roc. Bury and West Suff. Arch. Inst. 1863, iii, 413 et seq. '*Jourtt. Brit. Arch. Assoc. 1853, viii, 159, 160. 293