Living Like a Roman

What did Roman Leicester look like?

Leicester’s Roman inhabitants lived in a wide variety of houses, ranging from rows of small, simple rectangular buildings built along street fronts (with domestic rooms located behind shops or workshops) to larger, elaborate townhouses built around colonnaded courtyards.

Roman Townhouses

Roman houses were built of stone, dried clay bricks, timber, or a combination of the three. Poorer homes would have had thatched roofs, whilst other buildings used slate or tile. Most floors would have been made of compacted earth but in some houses more important rooms had concrete floors or were decorated with mosaic pavements. Walls and ceilings were rendered with plaster and painted with a variety of effects, including imitation marbling, geometric panels, architectural friezes, figures and foliage.

Part of the 2nd-century Blackfriars Mosaic discovered in 1832

The finest mosaics in Roman Britain

The location of many of Leicester’s Roman townhouses are known about because of the discovery over the last 300 years of dozens of mosaic pavements across the city. Some of these are amongst the finest in Britain, including the Peacock Mosaic found at St Nicholas Street in 1898 (now St Nicholas Circle), which features a magnificent peacock in its central panel; and the Blackfriars Mosaic found at Jewry Wall Street in 1832 (now beneath the viaduct of the former Great Central Railway Station), which has been described as the finest mosaic in Roman Britain because of its high quality craftsmanship and the sophistication of its geometric composition.

The Blue Boar Lane townhouse

The opulence of some of Leicester’s townhouses was apparent during an excavation at Blue Boar Lane in the 1950s (today beneath Vaughan Way and the Travelodge on Highcross Street). Archaeologists discovered parts of a large, remarkably well-preserved house. This was built in the early 2nd century AD and was occupied for around 40 years before it was demolished to make way for the macellum (market hall).

Two ranges of rooms, floored with concrete or mosaic pavements, were found opening on to a colonnaded courtyard. Clay-brick walls survived to nearly a metre in height above the floor and were still decorated with painted plaster adorned with elaborate architectural and figurative schemes.