The Abingdonian 2019

61 www.abingdon.org.uk Summer Term First Year Latin Trip to Fishbourne Roman Palace On 1 July the first years and their Latin teachers went on a trip to Fishbourne Roman Palace: a topic in our recent Latin lessons. In our textbooks we had got up to where Quintus was about to visit King Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus at his palace (Fishbourne Roman Palace), for a party honouring Emperor Claudius making him king. This made us want to see the remains of Fishbourne, which are near Chichester in Sussex. We watched an interesting 15-minute video about what the palace was like in Roman times and about the discovery and archaeology of it. We learnt that the palace was first discovered in 1960, when a workman was using a JCB to dig a trench through a field for a water main; it was then excavated by amateur archaeologists. We were told that we could not see all the palace because about half of it is underneath houses and a road. Also, there was a great fire in around AD 270, which ruined most of the palace. The remains of the North Wing of the palace are under a protective building, and we could see the mosaics on the floors. We also saw where the entrances of rooms were and the underfloor heating. All of the mosaics (over 20) were done in a wide variety of colours (apart from one older, black and white mosaic at a lower level) and many of them were based on the sea. Most of the mosaics were well preserved and very interesting to look at. We noticed that the centres of the mosaics were done to a higher standard than the edges of the mosaics; this was because the skilled mosaic makers did the insides (which were harder to do) and the trainees did the edges of the mosaics as they would be likely to have furniture over them, so a mistake wouldn’t be too bad. My favourite mosaic was ‘Cupid Riding a Dolphin’ because it was very complicated and had a wide variety of colours but was still done to a very high standard. We also looked at the garden. The north side of the garden had been cultivated to show how it would have looked when it was in Roman times, and the south section of the garden, featured the herbs which the Romans would have grown; the herbs we saw included chives, oregano, fennel and cumin. In the garden we also saw the outlines marking where the pool at the entrance had been. We visited a small museum with Roman objects discovered in and around Fishbourne. These included chains, necklaces, beads, a reconstruction of some of the roof of Fishbourne, pots, and other artefacts. We then attended a session run by one of the Fishbourne Palace staff. In one of the activities, two volunteers from each tutor group got to put on Roman-style clothes to show the rest of us what Romans would have looked like. In that same activity we also got to have a hands-on experience with some of the artefacts found at Fishbourne, as well as look at a reconstruction of what a Roman room might have looked like. After all the activities we were given some time to look around the gift shop and buy things if we chose to. I recommend visiting Fishbourne because it is very interesting, and you can learn a lot about what life there was like back then. It is also not that far away, as you can get there from Abingdon in under two hours. Philip Ashton, 1HFCP