Three fine wide streets, paved with small round stones in the roadway, have been found in Uriconium. The Roman houses in Britain had no upper stories, and all the rooms were on the ground-floor; no traces of a staircase have ever been found; the roofing in Uriconium was slates or flags, fixed with an iron nail to the wooden framework; they lapped over each other, in lozenges or diamonds; some of the walls were tesselated in ornamental patterns; few doorways were discovered; window-glass was found one-eighth of an inch thick, though until recently it was thought that the Romans, especially in this distant province, did not use window-glass. The rooms were sometimes heated by hot air circulated in the walls, from hypocausts, and flue-tiles with holes in the sides for the escape of the air; though the hot air merely under the floor was more used, the ashes, wood and coal, and the soot of the fires were found in the hypocausts at Uriconium just as they were left when the city was overthrown and ruined by the barbarians. A large hypocaust is described with 120 columns of bricks, and is thought to have belonged to the public baths. A wide space is pointed out as the forum of Uriconium, and the basilica here holds exactly the same place as at Pompeii.
We have thus glanced at the houses of Uriconium; we now turn to their domestic articles. First is the pottery, of which the most striking is the ware of the colour of bright red sealing-wax, commonly known as Samian ware; several of the pieces found at Wroxeter have been mended, chiefly by metal rivets. There were also found specimens of the Upchurch ware, of simple ornamentation; and of the pottery from Castor, ornamented with hunting-scenes laid on a white substance after the pottery had been baked: the colour of both wares is blue, or slate-colour. Two classes of Roman pottery, both evidently made in Shropshire, were also found: the first, a white ware, consisted of elegantly formed jugs, mortaria or vessels for rubbing or pounding objects in cookery; and bowls painted red and yellow. The other Romano-Salopian pottery is a red ware, and included bowls pierced all over with small holes so as to have served for colanders. Fragments of glass vessels were found, with a ladle, several knives, a stone knife-handle, and several whetstones. Hair-pins of bone, bronze, and wood were found, with bronze fibulæ, buttons, finger-rings, bracelets, combs, bone needles, and bronze tweezers for eradicating superfluous hairs. The most curious of the miscellaneous objects is a medicine-stamp for salves or washes for the eyes, inscribed with, probably, the name of a physician resident in Uriconium. The stones with Roman inscriptions, chiefly sepulchral, are numerous. The church, a Norman edifice, at Wroxeter contains amongst other architectural and sepulchral fragments two capitals, richly ornamented, of the late period of Roman architecture which became the model of the mediæval Byzantine and Romanesque; also, a Roman _miliarium_, or mile-stone. The general result of these discoveries, is that they show the manner in which this country was inhabited and governed during nearly four centuries; we also learn, from the condition of the ruins of Uriconium, and especially from the remains of human beings which are found scattered over its long-deserted floors, the sad fate under which it finally sank into ruins; and thus we are made vividly acquainted with the character and events of a period of history which has hitherto been but dimly seen through vague tradition.[12]