By Andie Byrnes and Helen Anderson, August 4th 2023

The discovery in 1991

In 1991 artist and archaeology enthusiast Helen Anderson was driving over the Farndon-Holt bridge, about 11 miles (c.18km) south of Chester, when she noticed some activity and bare soil surfaces in the normally grassy nearby field associated with the Roman tile-works and its ancillary buildings overlooking the Dee.   She had recently started to focus on Roman archaeology and to visit Roman sites, and although she had spent her childhood locally in Churton, she had only recently been reading about the Holt tileworks site for the first time.  She had been intending to go and look at the site but hadn’t yet done so, and thought this might be an interesting opportunity to go and see it. She received permission from the landowner to walk over the newly-stripped surface of the field.

On the  recently exposed soil surface that day, as well as sundry fragments of imbrex and tegula (roofing tiles), two of which were marked with cat and dog paw-prints and one with a finger print, she found the wonderful piece of inscribed brick shown in the photograph above right. Here is Helen talking about discovering the piece:

As I was walking through the field, which had been stripped for turf that was still being rolled and loaded, I saw a large piece of orange tile lying on the muddy surface, picked it up, turned it over and found what appeared to be writing on the underside.  I could hardly believe my eyes – it was an extraordinary and quite eerie moment!  My immediate thought was who I should tell about it.  Later, gently cleaning it in the kitchen sink, the excitement of the incised letters appearing clearly as the soil washed out of them was something I will never forget. It felt a bit like time travel.

The piece was clearly broken, with a bit of the inscription missing.  Helen returned to Holt a few days later, to show it the to the farmer and to see if the rest of the fragment was lying about in the field, but by then it had all been rotovated – if she hadn’t picked up the brick it probably would have been further damaged. She reckons the gods must have been with her that day!

This was six years before the establishment of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, so after after showing the find to the landowner, who gave Helen permission to keep the object, Helen sent photographs to the British Museum.  The resulting correspondence offers a terrific insight into how an understanding of the significance of the object was reached. It emerged that the fragment of Helen’s brick on which the inscription was made was re-used as a form of notepad to make a quick record.  At first it was thought that the fragment was a tile, but it is more likely to be a piece of lydion or sesquipedalis; these look rather like tiles because they are very thin compared with modern brickwork.  Some of the letters have been sliced off at the far right, but what we are looking at is part of a coherent piece of text, a list with signatures.  It was a small-sized record, containing only a few details.  It measures 32cms, by 30cms, and is around 6mm thick.

The inscription is now recorded in various books and papers contributing to knowledge about Roman activities and everyday life in the Chester area.  Although Holt is just over the Welsh border, the tiles and bricks were created for the Roman occupation in Chester.

Following very fine lunches at Pant Yr Ochain near Gresford and the White Horse in Churton, where we pored over both the artefacts and documents that Helen has assembled, including her original correspondence with Catherine John and Roger Tomlin, we decided to write a post about the inscribed fragment.  Helen has now been investigating the Romans in the Chester area for three decades, and as her knowledge has grown she has excavated as a volunteer at Chester amphitheatre, the Heronbridge Roman settlement, and most recently the Rossett villa.  All the documentation cited here has been provided by Helen.

First, a quick look at the Holt tile-works, which produced the inscribed brick.

The early 20th century discovery of the Holt Tile-works

The Holt brick and tile works site was recognized in the early 1600s when landowner Thomas Crue of Holt Hill suffered repeated damage to his plough and was forced to investigate.  He discovered that his plough was encountering a series of fifty 2ft-tall posts, and his finding found its way into the book Roman Cheshire by W. Thompson Watkins (1886).  This was noted by retired chemist and keen amateur historian Alfred Neobard Palmer who, in 1905, decided to hunt for the remains that Crue had found, accompanied by local vicar Jenkyn Jones, having sought permission from the landowner.  A series of field-walking expeditions followed, uncovering plentiful fragments of Roman brick, roof tile and pottery over an area of some 20 acres.

Palmer was not an archaeologist, and the task of excavating the site was taken on by Wrexham solicitor and amateur archaeologist Arthur Acton.  Work began in 1907 and continued until 1915.  Although he delivered numerous lectures about the site, Acton never published his work.  Fortunately a portion of his records survived, and he sold the excavation finds to the National Museum of Wales, where William F. Grimes used the data to compile a comprehensive report, complete with site plans, photographs and object illustrations.  Work did not stop there, and during the 1970s Geoffrey Bevan conducted both field walking activities and an excavation, finding Roman material that filled dozens of boxes, which were donated, this time, to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester.  Helen’s field-walking in 1991 added the inscription to the list of important finds, and in 2018 Holt Local History Society commissioned Archaeological Survey West to carry out a geophysical survey of the site, to fix the positions of the known buildings and, with luck, to identify any unexcavated and previously unknown structures.  This demonstrated that the Holt complex was even bigger and more complex than Grimes, via Acton, had been able to determine.  There is, of course, the potential for future field research, and recent work in Farndon, summarized on local historian Mike Royden’s website is beginning to expand the story over to the other side of the Dee.

What was the Holt tile-works like?

The 20th Legion, Valeria Victrix, of the Roman army, was stationed at Chester, Roman Deva, from AD87, and the Holt works appears to have been established shortly afterwards to supply the fort and settlement at the legionary fortress.  Holt’s industrial activities reaching their peak output at around AD135, and began falling out of use in the mid 3rd Century.  The site was clearly a fully integrated operation combining industrial, public and domestic components.

A senior manager had his own house, complete with hypocaust (under-floor central heating), there was a public bath house, a series of kilns for the manufacture of tiles, bricks and pottery, and a barracks that may have housed workers, or alternatively a detachment of the Roman army based at Chester at this time.

The kilns formed two main units, a larger (139ft / 52m long, consisting of a row of six kilns) and smaller twin-kiln built on the natural bed-rock.  Each kiln was rectangular and tile-lined with an arched stoke-hole for access.  A round pottery kiln was also located on the edge of the main kiln complex.  The oven floor consisted of a raised floor of tiles plastered with clay that were pierced with holes that acted as vents.  The drying shed was provided with a hypocaust, of the same sort used in villas and bath houses.  These, like the kilns, were stoked and kept hot to ensure that the tiles, pottery and bricks were dried through after firing.

All of the output manufactured at the works was sent by boat downriver to Chester on the river Dee.  It provided direct access to Chester, 12 miles / 19km away, passing the civic settlement at Heronbridge.  The generally flat environment meant that building of roads, where needed, was not exceptionally laborious.
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Corresponding about the tile in 1991

Helen wrote to the British Museum in April 1991 describing how she had found the fragment, and enclosing a high resolution photo in which the inscription could be seen clearly.  The first person to reply to Helen’s letter to the British Museum was Catherine Johns F.S.A., at the time Curator of Roman Britain in the Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities in the British Museum in London.  In a letter dated 18th June 1991, Catherine Johns begins “Thank you for your letter and the excellent photographs and drawing of the inscribed tile from Holt in your possession.  This is an interesting and important find.”  She goes on to explain that the inscription is in cursive Latin, “that it is to say, it is handwriting rather than formal lettering.”  She was unable to translate the text, which is a specialist task, and sent it to Dr Roger Tomlin of Wolfson College, University of Oxford.  She warned Helen that the fragmentary nature of the text might impede translation.  She finished by suggesting that Helen might consider presenting the piece to the National Museum of Wales, where most of the Holt material excavated in the early 20th century is held.

Helen then received a letter dated 25th June 1991, only a week after the letter written by Catherine Johns, from Dr Roger Tomlin.  Dr Tomlin explained that it was by no means straightforward to decipher and transcribe the fragment, partly because of the several examples of handwriting inscribed, and the fact that it was clearly incomplete.  He suggested that this was a record of expenses, with the star symbol indicating the unit of payment in denarii, and that several individuals were involved. He referred to the inscribed brick as “a welcome addition” to the corpus of Roman inscriptions in Britain. In a later letter, dated 1st July 1991, he thanked Helen for offering to take the the object to him in Oxford, for translation, whilst on a family break, and expressed the hope to meet up with Helen to discuss it.  He suggested that the fragment was probably part of a lydion (or sesquipedalis), rather than a tile, a brick used for bonding-courses.  When Helen met Dr Tomlin for coffee, he departed on his bicycle, in typical Oxford style, with the inscription propped up in the bicycle’s basket.  ———

The inscription

The brick was inscribed in the still-soft surface of the wet clay before firing.  The translation of the inscription by Dr Tomlin is a great example of the sort of scholarship and academic detective work that go into understanding a single object.  The inscription was abbreviated, typical for this sort of note, where space was limited and standardized abbreviations were recognizable to all.  As already noted, the slab was broken, possibly by ploughing, so parts of the inscription are missing, but this apparently presented few problems for Dr Roger Tomlin.

Just by looking at it, you can see that there is more than one person’s handwriting, and that’s because each person wrote his own signature.  All three were men, named  1) Junius, 2) Maternus and 3) Bellettus.  The final s is missing in each case due to the break.  In the official transcription below, Tomlin has completed words where he knows them.  The slab is a record of expenses they had incurred, but does not say how they were incurred.  Junius was paid at least 4 denarii, probably more, but the break carried the other details away.

Dr Tomlin wrote about the inscription in the journal Britannia, vol.26, 1995, p.387, where it is numbered no.28 (and Helen’s role in the discovery is referenced in the footnotes).  It was later included in Tomlin’s comprehensive Britannia Romana, published in 2018, which lists over 400 epigraphic inscriptions from Roman Britain.  The inscription is listed on page 290 as number 11.14.  Dr Tomlin observed that the three men listed were probably legionaries (although he does not rule out in the 1995 publication that they may have been auxiliaries).  He says that two of the three names were commonplace Roman names, and the third, Bellettus, may have been a variant on the name Bellicus, which he describes as “popular in Celtic-speaking provinces.”  All three signed their own names, meaning that they were literate.

Tomlin is particularly interested in the word sumtuaria, which is missing its p, and is the plural of the noun sumptuarium.  The word is very rare, with the only example known by Tomlin appearing on a legionary pay-sheet in Masada, Israel, where it refers to food expenses.  Tomlin speculates that this was a record of expenses that were to be reimbursed by headquarters at a later date, but he does question how this was supposed to work when the record took the form of a brick (which, after all, could not be divided between the three men!)

This find, recording something of the lives of three men who lived in Roman Holt, has something of the air of the Vindolanda tablets.  The thin leaves of wood used at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall recorded many aspects of everyday life, also written in cursive.  A selection of them are on display in London’s British Museum.  One of them had a similar content to the Holt example, showing a list of people who owe money.  Although it is incomplete and undated, it was possible to identify Vitalis the balniator or bath house keeper and Tagomas, one of a number of cavalrymen from northern Spain who appear on the list (also mentioning the latter’s contubernalis, or unofficial wife).

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Publications mentioning the brick

The inscription became something of an emblem of local Roman social history, being referred to not only in academic publication, but also heritage newsletters and leaflets in Chester.  Dr Tomlin suggested that it be included on the Roman Inscriptions of Britain website, and it has very recently been added to the site here, where it has been given the identifier Brit.26.28.

Here are two examples of publications aimed at the general public, collected by Helen, that mention the find and give a good idea of how it was regarded:

Connecting with the past

You can see the inscribed fragment today in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, where it is on display in the ground floor Newstead Roman gallery, thanks to Helen requesting that it be displayed locally rather than in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.  Not only would it have been difficult for local people to visit it easily in Cardiff, but the tile-works were directly connected with the legionary fortress in Chester, so this seemed like the perfect home for the inscription.  Generations of local schoolchildren can have their imaginations fired by seeing the handwriting of several different Romans who lived here nearly 2000 years ago.

Helen explains that her own children were so excited and proud of her discovery of this piece of heritage that they somehow persuaded her that it should be on loan to the museum rather than donated, but she has since donated it outright, rightly deciding that it’s a piece of history that belongs to everyone.

If anyone wants to chat with Helen about the find, you can contact her via Twitter: @Helenus_.  You can also contact Andie on the Contacts Page, via Twitter @BasedInChurton, or leave a comment (the Leave a Reply link is immediately under the title of the post).

Other posts on this blog about Roman Chester and Holt can be found here.
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Final Comments

The object that Helen found in a field in Holt, during a short window between when turf was removed and new grass sown, has multiple identities.  Archaeologically and historically, it is one of a number of records of Roman Britain that together provide insights into Roman settlement and industry and particularly contribute to the narrative about the Holt tile-works.  At another level it is both a clue about record keeping in Roman Holt, and an ephemeral glimpse into the everyday life of three literate Roman men who were working at the tile-works and were claiming expenses.  Today, as well being a significant part of the Roman display in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, it has made a claim for a position in Helen’s own family history.  Not a bad set of achievements for one inscribed object found lost in a field.  One wonders if the three soldiers ever did receive their expenses?———————

Sources:

Letters (in the private archive of Helen Anderson)

From Catherine Johns, Curator, Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities, British Museum. To Helen Anderson, dated 18th June 1991

From Dr Roger Tomlin, Wolfson College, University of Oxford.  To Helen Anderson, dated 25th June 1991

From Dr Roger Tomlin, Wolfson College, University of Oxford.  To Helen Anderson, dated 10th July 1991

Books and papers:

Grimes, W.F. 1930.  Holt, Denbighshire:  Twentieth Legion at Castle Lyons.  Y Cymmrodor.  Society of Cymmrodorion.

Tomlin, R.S.O. 1995. 11.14 Holt (? Bovium), in (eds.) B. C. Burnham, L. J. F. Keppie, A. S. Esmonde Cleary, M. W. C. Hassall, and R. S. O. Tomlin Roman Britain in 1994. Britannia, Vol. 26 (1995), p. 325-390

Tomlin, R.S.O. 2018.  Britannia Romana. Roman Inscriptions and Roman Britain. Oxbow Books (Chapter 11, no.14, p.290-1)

Leaflets and newsletters:

The Past Uncovered, Autumn 1996
http://www.cheshirearchaeology.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/The-Past-Uncovered-Autumn-1996.pdf

Revealing Cheshire’s Past series: From Farms to Fortress leaflet, page 6 Industrial Activity.  Cheshire County Council

Holt: Legacy of the Legions, available from the museum, or can be downloaded.
http://old.wrexham.gov.uk/assets/pdfs/heritage/holt_castle/holt_legacy.pdf

Websites:

Coflein
Holt Roman Site NPRN 307201
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/307201?term=holt&pg=2

National Museum of Wales
Request for Information – Freedom of Information Request Relating to Collections – Reference 17-002, 14th February 2017
amgueddfa.cymru/media/41203/response-web-17-002.pdf

Roman Inscriptions of Britain Online
https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/
The Holt inscribed brick now has its own page at:
https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/Brit.26.28

Vindolanda Charitable Trust
Writing Tablets
https://www.vindolanda.com/blog/fact-file-writing-tablets

Vindolanda Tablets Online
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/