4 July 2011
All the first years - accompanied by their Latin teachers and tutors - today visited the Roman palace of Fishbourne where King Togidubnus had once ruled as a puppet of Rome. We saw the amazing impact that the arrival of the Romans had on the lifestyles of at least the richer Britons: massive yet intricate mosaic pavements, hypocausts - or underfloor heating - and wall paintings - made with pigments from as far afield as Afghanistan. The boys also got to handle real artifacts that archaeologists had dug up at the site: numerous oysters from beds off the coast nearby, fragments of amphoras which had imported wine from Gaul, and pieces of expensively decorative glassware.
