If we add to this latter amount the mould between the fragments of
stones, some five or six inches of mould must have been brought up from
beneath the concrete or tiles. The concrete or tiles will consequently
have subsided to nearly this amount. The bases of the columns of the
aisles are now buried beneath mould and turf. It is not probable that
they can have been undermined by worms, for their foundations would no
doubt have been laid at a considerable depth. If they have not subsided,
the stones of which the columns were constructed must have been removed
from beneath the former level of the floor.
_Chedworth_, _Gloucestershire_. The remains of a large Roman villa were
discovered here in 1866, on ground which had been covered with wood from
time immemorial. No suspicion seems ever to have been entertained that
ancient buildings lay buried here, until a gamekeeper, in digging for
rabbits, encountered some remains. {183} But subsequently the tops of
some stone walls were detected in parts of the wood, projecting a little
above the surface of the ground. Most of the coins found here belonged
to Constans (who died 350 A.D.) and the Constantine family. My sons
Francis and Horace visited the place in November 1877, for the sake of
ascertaining what part worms may have played in the burial of these
extensive remains. But the circumstances were not favourable for this
object, as the ruins are surrounded on three sides by rather steep banks,
down which earth is washed during rainy weather. Moreover most of the
old rooms have been covered with roofs, for the protection of the elegant
tesselated pavements.
A few facts may, however, be given on the thickness of the soil over
these ruins. Close outside the northern rooms there is a broken wall,
the summit of which was covered by 5 inches of black mould; and in a hole
dug on the outer side of this wall, where the ground had never before
been disturbed, black mould, full of stones, 26 inches in thickness, was
found, resting on the undisturbed sub-soil of yellow clay. At a depth of
22 inches from the surface a pig s jaw and a fragment of a tile were
found. When the excavations were first made, some large trees grew over
the ruins; and the stump of one has been left directly over a party-wall
near the bath-room, for the sake of showing the thickness of the
superincumbent soil, which was here 38 inches. In one small room, which,
after being cleared out, had not been roofed over, my sons observed the
hole of a worm passing through the rotten concrete, and a living worm was
found within the concrete. In another open room worm-castings were seen
87