Mosaic Unearthed Under The Bank of England

This 'Bank of England Mosaic' was discovered 12ft below the Bank of England in London.

It dates between the first and fourth centuries, and it was the first Roman mosaic acquired by the British Museum.

It was famously acquired by The British Museum about a year after its discovery.

It was remarkably discovered under the south-west corner of the Bank of England site in the City of London.

When the Bank of England was rebuilt in the 1920s, builders dug 15 metres down to build the gold vaults and foundations for the new building.

This revealed a wealth of archaeological finds.

Pottery from every era of London’s history was discovered, from Roman cooking pots and mortaria used to prepare food, to medieval water jugs and beer bottles from the 1700s.

There were also things you might have expected to rot away over time, such as organic materials like wooden writing tablets and leather shoes.

These had been protected over the centuries by the London’s wet, clay soil, which protects artefacts from oxygen in the air that would otherwise cause them to rot and decay.

Pictured above is a leather sole of a Roman sandal, with a bird engraved into the leather, preserved in London’s clay for nearly 2,000 years.

There were also some much larger objects that showed the kinds of Roman buildings that were once on the Bank of England site.

Three mosaics were found on the site – decorative floors that once adorned impressive Roman villas built on the bank of the now-lost River Walbrook.

The first mosaic (pictured at the top of this article) was discovered in the 1820s, when Sir John Soane was completing the north-west expansion of the Bank.

It’s been in the Roman galleries at the British Museum Opens in a new window ever since.

An ‘onion’ style glass wine bottle, thought to be Dutch, dating between 1710 and 1740, was also discovered.

The British Museum describes the mosaic as the following:

”Its design comprises a small square frame of four-strand guilloche, outlined dark grey with red, yellow and white strands, surrounding a medallion bordered with a dark grey fillet enclosing an elaborate cruciform plant composed of four white stems.

”Each outlined with dark grey and blue-grey (outermost) and sprouting small uniformly shaped barbs with blue-grey on their undersides; at their tops the stems divide to form roundels separating red-tipped calices.

”In the spandrels between the circle and the guilloche border are dark grey leafed calices with curved pedestals and pointed red flowers; the panel is surrounded by a band of white and a coarse plain red tessellated border.”

Londinium, also known as Roman London, was the capital of Roman Britain during most of the period of Roman rule.

Most 21st century historians think that it was originally a settlement established shortly after the Claudian invasion of Britain, on the current site of the City of London around 47–50 AD.

But some defend an older view that the city originated in a defensive enclosure constructed during the Claudian invasion in 43 AD.

Its earliest securely-dated structure is a timber drain of 47 AD.

Roman mosaics, such as the one found under the Bank of London, were used in a variety of private and public buildings.

They were used on both floors and walls, though they competed with cheaper frescos for the latter.

Not only are mosaics beautiful works of art in themselves but they are also an invaluable record of such everyday items as clothes, food, tools, weapons, flora and fauna.

They also reveal much about Roman activities like gladiator contests, sports, agriculture, hunting and sometimes they even capture the Romans themselves in detailed and realistic portraits.

If you’d like to see the mosaic for yourself, it’s still on display at the British Museum.

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