C. 10.—­The forum was flanked by a vast basilica, no less than 325 feet in length by 125 in breadth, with apses of 39 feet radius.[226] A smaller edifice of basilican type is generally supposed to have been a Christian church.  It stands east and west, and consists of a nave 30 feet long by 10 broad, flanked by 5-feet aisles, with a narthex of 7 feet (extending right across the building) at the east end, and at the west an apse of 10 feet radius, having in the centre a tesselated pavement 6 feet square, presumably for the Altar.[227]

C. 11.—­The main street of Silchester ran east and west, and may have been the main road from London to Bath; while that which crosses it at the forum was perhaps an extension of the Icknield Way from Wallingford to Winchester.  A third road led straight to Old Sarum,[228] and there may have been others.  Silchester lies about half-way between Reading and Basingstoke.

C. 12.—­The relics of domestic life found indicate a high order of peaceful civilization.  Abundance of domestic pottery (some of it the glazed ware manufactured at Caistor on the Nen), many bones of domestic animals (amongst them the cat),[229] finger-rings with engraved gems, and the like, have been discovered in the old wells[230] and ashpits.  More remarkable was the unearthing (in 1899) of the plant of a silver refinery,[231] showing that the method employed was analogous to that in vogue amongst the Japanese to-day, and that bone-ash was used in the construction of the hearths.[232] The houses were mainly built of red clay (on a foundation wall of flint and mortar) filled into a timber frame-work and supported by lath or wattle.  The exterior was stamped with ornamental patterns, as in modern “parjetting” (which may thus very possibly be an actual survival from Roman days).  This clay has in most cases soaked away into a mere layer of red mud overlying the pavements; but in 1901 there was unearthed a house in which a fortunate fire had calcined it into permanent brick, still retaining the parjetting and the impress of wattle and timber.  But the whole site has not provided a single weapon of any sort or kind, and the construction of the defences clearly shows that they formed no part of the original plan on which the place was laid out.[233] They were probably, as we have said, added at the break up of the Pax Romana.

C. 13.—­With the exception of the silver refinery above mentioned, nothing has appeared to tell us what handicrafts were practised at Silchester; but such industries formed a noteworthy feature of Romano-British life.  Naturally the largest traces have been left in connection with that most imperishable of all commodities, pottery.  The kilns where it was made are frequently met with in excavations; and individual vases, jugs,[234] cups, and amphorae (often of very large dimensions) constantly appear.  Many of these are beautifully modelled and finished, and not unseldom glazed in various ways.  But