Books

Central heating, commander’s quarters, Hadrian’s Wall.

One of the more affecting spectacles from my time in England was visiting a small Roman excavation site on a B-road; it was a villa that had only been partly extracted relatively intact. The part that particularly snagged me was the note that the villa had been stripped of the lead from its lead and guttering, which was apparently usually woven into the thatch of Britons’ houses.

It was, I think, on of the sadest images as a decline of a civilisation; Roman Britain had houses with plumbing, even central heating in some cases. When they left, as the Empire crumbled, the remaining Britons were unable to maintain Roman technology, prefering to scavange well-appointed stone housing for houses made of wood and mud.

Reading Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Trilogy has reminded me of this; it’s theme, of course, is the decay of the post-Roman Britons in the face of Saxon invaders, but the loss of knowledge is explicitly referenced throughout the novels; the Romans, his Guinevere notes archly at one point, had the technique of keeping warm, but it has been forgotten. Similar observations are dotted throughout the books.

When people suggest the inevitability of progress I am put in mind of that little villa; social structures, technology; these can all be lost, easily, for for a long time. It is a lesson we’d do well to remember.