Silchester

“ As a specimen we may take Silchester, remarkable as the one town in the whole Roman empire which has been completely and systematically uncovered. As we see it to-day, it is an open space of 100 acres, set on a hill with a wide prospect east and south and west, in shape an Silchester.irregular hexagon, enclosed in a circuit of a mile and a half by the massive ruins of a city wall which still stands here and there some 20 ft. high (fig. 4) . Outside, on the north-east, is the grassy hollow of a tiny amphitheatre; on the west a line of earthworks runs in wider circuit than the walls. ”

“ The only choristers in these natural fanes were the robins and the small lyrical wren; but on passing through the rustic village of Wolverton I stopped for a couple of minutes to listen to the lively strains of a cirl-bunting among some farm buildings.
Then on to Silchester, its furzy common and scattered village and the vast ruinous walls, overgrown with ivy, bramble, and thorn, of ancient Roman Calleva. Inside the walls, at one spot, a dozen men were still at work in the fading light; they were just finishing—shovelling earth in to obliterate all that had been opened out during the year. ”

“ DETAILS OF FOUR INSULAE, THE FORUM AND THE CHURCH AT SILCHESTER
(From Archaeologia.)
But whatever the exact amount of Roman building and Roman street-plan given to Silchester when it was first laid out, the place is not in effect a real town. It is not merely that, as I have said, the houses do not form continuous streets. A glance at the houses will show that they could not possibly be fitted into streets. The types of house here visible are not town houses. ”

“ I got it into my head that I should be preaching here on the first Sunday in term and was looking forward to seeing so many Silchester men. I can't think how I came to make such a muddle."
Father Rowley's shoulders filled up all the space of the window, so that Mark only heard scattered fragments of the conversation, which was mostly about Silchester and the Siltonians he had hoped to see at Oxford.
"Good-bye, my dear man, good-bye," the Missioner shouted, as the train moved out of the station. "Come down and see us soon at Chatsea. The more of you men who come, the more we shall be pleased." ”

“ Mark's first visit to Silchester was on the occasion of Father Rowley's terminal sermon in the June after he was nineteen. He found the experience intimidating, because he was not yet old enough to have learnt self-confidence and he had never passed through the ordeal either of a first term at a public school or of a first term at the University. Boys are always critical, and at Silchester with the tradition of six hundred years to give them a corporate self-confidence, the judgment of outsiders is more severe than anywhere in the world, unless it might be in the New Hebrides. ”

“ At Gloucester, Chichester, and Chester, the course of the four main streets has been little, if at all, disturbed, and their present meeting-place nearly represents the centre of the Roman city. The arrangements of the forum of a Romano-British town have been made out very clearly by the excavations at Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) in Hampshire.11 It was a closed rectangle, entered by a gateway and surrounded by public buildings, in front of which were colonnades; one side at Silchester was occupied by a great basilica, which served the purposes of a hall of justice and mercantile exchange. ”

“ With respect to the geology of the Roman road, it may be remarked that Silchester is situated on the "plastic-clay formation;" the stone debris on the surface of which has been picked up about the inclosure, for not a flint-stone can be found for some distance around. The walls of the old city are built with flint, grouted with lime and sand, and bonded in a herringbone manner, with an oolite stone at every three feet in height. ”

“ This city lies just beyond the confines of Berkshire, although the Amphitheatre, where Roman gladiators fought, and where, doubtless, as at Rome during the Decian Persecution, Christians were doomed to death, "butchered to make a Roman holiday," is within our borders. Silchester was the centre of our system of Roman roads. Other Roman towns in this district were Spinæ (Speen, near Newbury) , Thamesis (probably Streatley) , and Bibracte (possibly Wickam Bushes, near Easthampstead) . A road ran from Silchester to Pontes (Staines) , and another from the same place to Spinæ. ”

“ Lord Silchester in his fondness for landscape beauty had preferred a lovely, unkempt, autumn-wistful wilderness to a possible brick-field, though to a geologist the clay was almost crying out to be turned to the service of man. He liked great spaces without a sign of man's habitation to mar the poem. Roger, though he had a strongly developed sense of the beautiful in Nature, yet combined with it a realization that much waste land in the England of latter days, and even in Scotland, is an offence and a temptation to discontent on the part of the landless. ”

“ Sibyl tried by broken phrases, and half-uttered hints, to convey the idea that Lord Silchester being nearly sixty—at any rate close on fifty-six—and not of robust health, might not live for ever; though really she wouldn't mind if she died first, men were so perfectly hateful, and so was your family—if you were a woman. You were expected to do all you could for your family, and abused into the bargain by others who held you bound by foolish promises made when you were a mere girl without any knowledge of the world. ”

“ Its area is by no means filled with buildings. Garden ground must have been common and cheap, and the buildings themselves do not form continuous streets; they do not even front the roadway in the manner of houses in Italian towns. In these respects Silchester differs widely from any of the examples which we have already considered, so far as their internal buildings are known to us. I will not call it a 'garden city', for a garden city represents an attempt to add some of the features of the country to a town. ”

“ It has been found that the walls of Calleva followed the irregular outline of a former British stronghold, and instead of the usual square plan the outline of the city was seven-sided. The remnants of the flint walls are nearly one and three-quarter miles round and contain within their circumference about 100 acres. Within the east gate is an old farmhouse and the interesting parish church of Silchester, dating mostly from the thirteenth century.
The beautiful fir woods that are such a feature of the surrounding landscape make rambles in any direction most delightful. ”

“ Lord Silchester: "Molyneux, Bennet Molyneux. I know him. Not a bad fellow in some respects, but a bad enemy to make. He is a kind of cousin of Feenix's—Colonial Office, you know. Well, your fate is in your own hands ... you must walk warily..." (at this a servant enters and informs his lordship that the carriage is waiting) "I must be off. Sibyl! you won't stay up late? Roger, don't talk to her for more than an hour. Good-bye. ”

“ Modern excavations have proved the importance of the city as a great centre of life and industry, in Roman and British times, with its Forum, Basilica, and rows of shops and houses; and if the Calleva Attrebatum were really Arthur’s crowning place, its fitness and worth for so imposing an event cannot be disputed. Although Silchester is not directly referred to in the Romances, Arthur’s Hampshire connections are numerous. They centre in Winchester, where his predecessor and foster-father, Ambrosius Aurelianus, died in the year 508. ”

“ The study of flint implements, of barrows and earthworks, has considerably thrown back our historical horizon and enabled us to understand the conditions of life in our island in the early days of a remote past before the dawn of history. The systematic excavation of Silchester, so ably conducted by the Society of Antiquaries, and of other Roman sites of towns and villas, enables us to realise more clearly the history of Britain under the rule of the Empire ”

“ Here the new art of excavation has already achieved many and varied successes. In the western Empire one town, Silchester in Britain, has been wholly uncovered within the circuit of its walls. Others, like Caerwent in Britain or Timgad and Carthage in Africa, have been methodically examined, though the inquiries have not yet touched or perhaps can never touch their whole areas. In others again, some of which lie in the east, occasional search or even chance discoveries have shed welcome light. Our knowledge is more than enough already for the purposes of this chapter. ”

“ When the Romans came to the district they found it occupied by a tribe of Britons named the Atrebates; and Silchester, just over our county boundary in Hampshire, was their chief town or settlement.
The written history of the district does not go further back than the Atrebates, but we find many relics of man of a much earlier date. There are in our museums human bones found in old graves, but it is not possible to give them a date or to name the tribe or tribes to which they belonged. ”

“ It occupied an important position in the city close to the Forum, and it is probable from this and from the importance of the city that it was a bishop’s church. Moreover, it is evident that if there was such a church at Silchester there must have been others in Canterbury, Verulam, London and other cities. This church was only about 30 ft. square, exclusive of the narthex (Fig. 155) . Some day, when we reverence our antiquities more, it might be excavated once again and, having a decent roof erected over it, be made a place of pilgrimage. ”

“ But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."
Sibyl (in a muffled voice) : "N-no; he ... he ... didn't. He—overrated his strength. He—he—oh, how can I tell you? He was so anxious to play a great part in public affairs ... but he had lost all his energy...." (Sitting up with flushed cheeks—damnably good-looking, Roger feels.) "Well! What can I do for you? You've failed me. But I suppose you've come here to ask me to help you in some way. Men don't generally waste their time on afternoon calls without a motive. ”

“ And will not say "good-bye," because when he has "made good" in Africa he will come back on a holiday and hope to find the Estate flourishing and Silchester grown into a sturdy boy.
From what I knew of Sibyl I should say she at first took the breaking off of their relations very hardly.... "Agony, rage, despair" ... much pacing up and down the library.... Passionate letters half-written, then torn up into small fragments and thrown into the fire. ”

“ Camden says a Roman road runs westward from Silchester, which I imagine goes to Andover. From Aldermaston is a fine view of the country hanging over the Kennet, lately made navigable. Going from Aldermaston to Kingsclere, where once was a palace of the Saxon kings, I passed over Brimpton common: here are many very fine Celtic barrows:Barrows Br. the soil is a moor full of erica, which they dig up for fewel; underneath it is sand: at Kingsclere the mighty chalk-hills begin. Upon the top of a very high promontory is a square Roman camp, in a park. ”

“ Roger: "I know.... They've told me I must try to maintain friendly relations with our Teutonic friends, especially as I am to be, when the Consul-General returns, 'on my own,' so to speak, in the German sphere of influence. Meantime I am to live at Unguja and 'act' for the Consul-General till he or some one else comes out. Awfully good of you, sir, to get this chance for me ... it's rare good luck to be going out to act straight away for a man like Eccles.... I'll try my utmost to do you credit."
Silchester: "I don't doubt you will. ”

“ At all costs the Germans must defend Silesia, not only because it is the key to Germany from the south-east, but because it is the German Lancashire, a great industrial province which supplies the empire with much of its cotton, linen, woollen, and metal manufactures. Should this province be captured, Germany would suffer a blow from which she could hardly recover.
There is another but a less important reason why Silesia must be held by the Germans. Silesia is, as it were, a wedge between the Slav peoples of the east and those of Bohemia. ”

“ But that life was too good to last. At twenty, a corporal of Prussian dragoons fell in love with me, or I with him—it is all the same. His regiment was ordered to Silesia, and away we all marched. But if ever there was a country of fogs, that was the one. There are, now and then, a few even in our delightful France; but, in Silesia, they have a patent for them, they have them par privilège; if men could eat them, there would never be a chance of starving in Silesia. ”

“ And again in later times it was precisely to Silesia that it was reserved to send a new ray of hope to that sorely tried Hohenzollern King, Frederick William III, when he encountered the ardent enthusiasm of the first volunteers in Breslau, when the first raising of troops took place here, and when the “wild, dashing Lützow hunters” started in their career against the enemy at the Zobten. And so it has been ever since. The sons of Silesia have fought whenever it was a question of coming forward and sacrificing their blood for the Fatherland. ”

“ To seize Silesia is easy: a Country open on all but the south side; open especially on our side, where a battalion of foot might force it; the three or four fortresses, of which only two, Glogau and Neisse, can be reckoned strong, are provided with nothing as they ought to be; not above 3,000 fighting men in the whole Province, and these little expecting fight. Silesia can be seized: but the maintaining of it?—We must try to maintain it, thinks Friedrich. ”