Welsh Journals

as a cellar. The excavation for this room, 0.25 m. into the bedrock, removed the wall-trench of a timber building which was not erected before the late first century A.D. The addition to the south range must therefore be dated not earlier than c. 120 -probably it was substantially later. Early in the third century the 'cellar' was in use as a tip for ash and other domestic rubbish; this layer contained substantial quantities of broken pottery (Samian, Nene Valley colour-coated and coarse wares) and fragments of a glass beaker with trailed white and blue serpentine decoration; this is a characteristic product of the factories in the Rhineland. Subsequently this tipping was sealed by a fill of masonry debris, including fragments of painted plaster. To the east of the main room of this complex another room was added, measuring 7.2 x 3.2 m. This in its turn was linked by a single wall to the east wall of the hypocaust excavated in 1967, indicating that the whole of the south range was in use simultaneously. Its floruit must be placed in the third century. Its end is not necessarily marked by the filling of the western 'cellar', for this may only have been filled to floor level: as in other areas at Whitton, the south range does not survive as high as this. The west range consisted of a single building, of one period, subdivided into four rooms. Overall it measured 19.2 x 6.6. m. The walling (of which two courses survived in places) was of calcareous tufa blocks on a rubble foundation; this foundation, 0.8 m. deep, was set in a trench which was cut into the solid limestone. This deep foundation presumably implies a structure two stories high. The building, which was probably residential, was erected close to the back of the bank, but not set into it as were the buildings of the south and east ranges. It was an isolated structure, not linked to the south range (though only 2.1 m. away from it) or to the north range building whose east end was examined in 1965, and whose south-west corner was located in 1968. In the 14.5 m. gap between this corner and the north-east corner of the west range lay a circular timber house, 10.6 m. in diameter, with an entrance porch facing south-east. The only subsequent feature in this area was a drainage gully which was