Further information

The Italian style

The plans were similar to the Italian style of house, but not grand or complicated. They also had to be made with whatever materials could be found nearby. There was a lack of building stone locally, therefore resulting in a lot of timber and flint being used instead.

Classic Italian houses

The classic Italian house had its rooms arranged around the four sides of an atrium (main hall). Next to the house would be a garden (the peristyle). Houses in Roman Britain were slightly different. Panel 7 shows what houses probably looked like. From this, you can see that the main part of the house is shaped like an 'L'.

This is where the main living rooms were. It was built parallel to the street, and anyone coming in would have had to walk through an entrance hall and corridor to reach it. The best rooms were furthest away from the street, and so would be quieter.

Courtyard houses

Another type of house was closer to the Italian style. This had a courtyard, probably with bushes and flower beds, and was similar to the peristyle. Large decorated pillars of stone surrounded it.

Houses made of wood

The simplest kind of houses, the easiest and the cheapest to build, were made of wood. Carpenters would cut frames into a house shape; the gaps were then filled up with mud bricks, or a mixture of wooden sticks and clay called wattle and daub.

Houses at Caistor Roman Town

Excavations at Caistor have discovered a large town house with its own set of baths. It probably belonged to someone quite wealthy; however it was mostly made with wattle and daub. The walls might have been covered with plaster, and have decorations painted on them.

The houses at Caistor were built on top of flint walls, two or three feet high. The wood was then much less likely to rot away, and collapse. Finer houses had walls built of lumps of stone mixed with mortar - a kind of cement.

Single or two storey houses?

It is difficult to tell whether a house would have had more than one storey, since the buildings that are left are only a few feet high. We do not think that rooms on a second floor were very common. If more rooms were needed these were added on to the ground floor.

Some wealthier houses could have had ceilings covered with plaster, and painted white. Plaster was also used to decorate walls in houses. It was pasted on to them, and, quickly, while it was still wet, a painter would paint on his design.

Bright colours

The Roman Britons loved bright colours: red and yellow were a favourite combination. One wall painting found at Silchester had a red background with white, yellow and blue flowers painted on it.

Mosaics & floor decoration

The Roman settlers introduced floor decorations, or 'mosaics' to Britain. These would be found in richer houses - floors could also be made of wood, clay, chalk, mortar, or pressed gravel.

Mosaic floors were made using cubes cut out of pottery, different coloured stones, or sometimes blue glass. They were arranged to make a pattern, or a picture of people or animals. They took a long time to make. At Silchester mosaic floors were made of thick layers of flint, concrete and mortar.

The pattern for the mosaic was sketched out on the wet concrete before the cubes were pressed. Favourite colours include black, green,pink, red, yellow and white. An example of a mosaic can be seen above.

The designs were inside squares, circles, rectangles, or other shapes. Between each shape were simple patterns, like stars or rosette. The edge of the mosaic might have had a triangle, or wavy pattern.

Window glass

Because of the cold British weather, some windows had glass in them as they do today. It was a greenish colour, and not very easy to see through. Otherwise windows had sliding wooden shutters.

Tiled roofs

Tiled roofs were used at towns and small towns across Roman Norfolk, but roofs made out of thatch or turf also existed. Stone roofs were expensive, but some wealthier people could afford to have them.

Related pages on this website

• Life under the Romans