Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday, 12 March 2024

Reassessing Silchester


PhysOrg has an interesting article about a new interpretation of the Roman city at Silchester in Berkshire. Then known as Calleva Atrebatum it is one of the few Roman cities in Britannia to have been completely abandoned and is not, as a result, overlaid by medieval and later development. 

This recent project has established that it had more houses than were discovered in the nineteenth century excavations and has used the latest multiplier to calculate what the Roman population might well have been.


It also has a link to a 2017 article which describes a temple complex apparently commissioned by the Emperor Nero and which indicates his interest in developing Calleva Atrebatum. It can be seen at Third Roman temple in Silchester may have been part of emperor's vanity project

Many of the finds from Silchester together with such things as a model reconstruction of the church found there - virtually the only one identified from the late Imperial period in the country - can be seen in the excellent museum in the centre of Reading.


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