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Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932

Romano-British Kent - Introduction - Page 8

types is that sometimes called the Corridor type (fig. 3). This type is used alike for small and for fairly large houses, and is found as far away on the Continent as the Saalburg on the Taunus, the extreme limit of the Romano-German frontier. It is distinguished by a straight row or range of rooms with a corridor or verandah running along them. Generally, some larger room projects at one end; sometimes rooms project at both ends, forming wings, and the resulting plans have some resemblance to those of many modern


Fig. 3  Corridor House

cricket pavilions. More elaborate, but hardly less common in the country districts, is the so-called Courtyard type (fig. 4), which also occurs freely in northern Gaul, and often reaches a very great size. In this essentially rural type, three ranges of rooms fronted by corridors stand round three sides of a large rectangular unroofed courtyard, which is entered by a gateway in the middle of the fourth side. Other Courtyard houses, built compactly round three or four sides of a small rectangular yard or garden, represent in reality a somewhat different tradition. They are an urban type, and are derived from the ‘peristyle’ town-houses of Italy and the Mediterranean provinces.There are also simpler types of building, of which two possess consistency enough to be classified. In one of these we find a small oblong structure with dwelling-rooms at one end, and barns or sheds at the other. In the other, which we may call our fourth type, the living-rooms stand at the two ends of a similar rectangle, with a small yard between them (fig. 24, p. 107).
   Not infrequently in the country two or three of these types are used together to make up the equivalent of one large house. At Brading, for instance (fig. 5), three detached structures stand round a large yard. In the centre is a luxuriously fitted corridor house (rooms i—xii),


                             Fig 4  Courtyard House

obviously meant for the master and his family. On the left is a ruder structure, perhaps of the fourth type, intended in part for residence, and perhaps occupied by servants (rooms xiv—xxx). On the right, a third block (rooms xxxii-xxxv) may have contained barns or stables, and a structure beyond this (xxxvi) may be a detached bath - house

   2 Compare Schwalb, Römische Villa bei Pola, plate 3; Fondation Piot, iii, 177-226 ; Gsell, Revue Africaine. xxxviii, 230, and Monuments de l’Algerie, ii, 18, 19; Déche1ette, Bibracte, p. 40. For an important fresh survey of Romano-British house-plans, see R. G. Collingwood, The Archaeology of Roman Britain (1930), p. 113.

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