Most temples in Roman Britain were of the so-called Romano-Celtic design, a much less elaborate structure than its classical predecessor. The term was coined by Mortimer \"heeler when he excavated the temple at Harlow. Romano-Celtic temples, found throughout the northwest of the Roman Empire, usually consisted of a central cella and a surrounding concentric ambulatory. Since a large part of the cella of the temple of Janus at Autun, near Dijon, is extant, we know that Romano-Celtic temple cellas were tower-like, and that the ambulatory had a pitched roof built into the cella walls. However, the proportions must have varied from place to place. In some cases flanking
Chambers were built onto the structure, as at Lamyatt Beacon (Somerset), and this modification seems to have been adapted for use at Bath, where flanking chambers and a possible ambulatory’ were built around the classical temple, creating a very curious hybrid form of temple. Romano-Celtic temples rarely produce any trace of architectural embellishment, even mosaics, although painted wall-plaster is known.
Romano-Celtic temples were built throughout Britain in a variety of contexts, from the relatively isolated temple on Maiden Castle [233] to the urban examples at St Albans and Caerwent. It is rarely clear to whom any one temple was dedicated, especially as many
Examples were built on sites that had been sacred in prehistory. At Wanborough (Surrey) there was undoubtedly an Iron Age shrine. By the late first century a stone circular temple had been built, later replaced by a Romano-Celtic temple built beside it in the mid-second century. At Harlow (Essex), Bronze Age burials and numerous Iron Age coins have been found. The Roman-period temple was built in the late first century in one half of a double precinct. By the earlv third centurv, Harlow s
233. Maiden Castle (Dorset).
The fourth-century Romano-Celtic temple, sited on the old Iron Age hillfort, as it might have app>eared.
Large towns, small towns, rural settlements, and in total isolation. In all cases, the temple was the home of the god or goddess. A representation of the deity was stored within the cella. Cult activity mainly took place outside in the temple precinct {temenos). It was not unusual for several temples, especially Romano-Celtic temples, to be sited within the temenos, each dedicated to a different deity. Outside the temples stood altars on which ceremonial sacrifices took place, and over which sacred
234. Caerwent (South Wales).
A Romano-C'eltic temple with its precinct. Despite the legal proscriptions against paganism, this temple was built c. 330, and remained in use for much of the fourth centurv.
Precinct had been enclosed with stone walls, and additional chambers were built onto the temple. More recent excavations have produced a stone head of Minerva as well as an altar dedicated to the Imperial Spirits. Given the site’s history, a now-anonymous Celtic deity must also have been worshipped here. The variety of classical gods represented by statuettes at Lamyatt Beacon emphasizes the flexibility of pagan cult centres.
Such sites help date sequences, but the basic design of the structure itself was so simple it cannot really be dated on typological grounds. Even in the ‘Christian’ fourth century, new Romano-Celtic temples were being founded. The Maiden Castle temple, for example, was brand-new in the late fourth century, but was completely basic in form. The town-centre temple at Caerwent, however, was built c. 330, but was more elaborate [2341.
It was not unusual to build several Romano-Celtic temples in a single precinct. The small town at Springhead had three in one precinct, and at Silchester, Insula XXX by the east gate had at least two temples in a precinct that was linked by road to the amphitheatre. Mixing of the Romano-Celtic and classical was very unusual, though this may have happened in the town-centre precinct at Canterbury. Here a classical temple has yet to be found, though fragments of classical architectural features suggest that one stood alongside the already discovered Romano-Celtic temples. The most curious design of all was the ‘Triangular Temple’ at St Albans. It occupied a small triangular insula, formed by the intersection of two roads. The main core of the temple was essentially standard Romano-Celtic, but was contained within a triangular precinct.
235. Nettleton (Wiltshire).
The (Ktagonal shrine of Apollo Cunomaglos as it may have appeared before collapsing in the mid-fourth century. The surrounding settlement survived as a centre of light industry, including pewter manufacture. It has been suggested that the ruins were even adapted into an early church, but this has not been proved. The temple and its attendant settlement lay on the Fosse Way between Cirencester and Bath, and in its heyday clearly benefited from and relied on passing trade.
Incantations were spoken. The temples provided an attraction to pilgrims and travellers, and formed an integral part of the services provided in towns. Godmanchester (Cambridgeshire), for example, had a temple next door to a building interpreted as the matisio (inn).
In some instances, temple-building was ambitious, or at any rate unusual. The shrine of Apollo Cunomaglos at Nettleton [235] probably had Iron Age origins. At its climax, the temple was remodelled as an innovative and ambitious octagonal structure, based on the Romano-Celtic temple concept of internal cello and surrounding ambulatory. The octagonal form was apparently beyond the architect’s skills, and he failed to recognize that the central lantern of the cello would place huge pressure on the external walls. Consequently, no provision for buttressing was made, and the temple eventually suffered partial collapse. Equally unusual, but far more successful, was the probable temple to Victory at Carron, near Falkirk, on the Antonine Wall [236]. Built as a beehive structure with dressed stone, the design allowed the weight of the domed roof to be carried dowm through the walls. The building was so well executed that it survived intact until the eighteenth century, the only Romano-British structure to do so, until it was dismantled to provide stone for a dam.
In contrast, ritual in the congregational mystery religions of the Roman Empire took place mainly indoors. The temples of Mithras were based on the basilican form of nave and aisles - a form later adapted for use as Christian churches. Not many early Christian churches are known in Britain, although Silchester’s fourth-century church’ beside the civic basilica is one of the most convincing, as is the cemetery ‘church’ at Colchester [237], with its ground plan of eastern apse, nave and aisles.*’’
236. Carron (Stirlingshire).
This remarkable “beehive’ temple was probably built by the Roman army as a temple to Victory. Mid-second century.
The inscriptions from Roman Britain that record temples usu ally commemorate an individual’s endowment of the building or an associated structure, either in a personal or profes sional capacity. Most come from the north, even if the donor was apparently civilian. At York in 221, the trader Lucius X'iducius Placidus built an arch, evidently for a temple precinct, as did Trenico, probably for the precinct of the temple at Ancaster to Viridios, who is named on the slab."At Caerleon, Titus Flavius Postu-mius, legate of (presumably) the II legion, restored a temple of Diana around the mid-third century.”
Cooperative efforts are also recorded, such as the building of a temple to the Mother Goddesses somewhere near milecastle 19 on Hadrian’s Wall by a vexillation from the First Cohort of t..! . .
Vardullians.' The inscription from Chichester recording the client king, Togidubnus, also records the dedication of a temple to Neptune and Minerva by a guild of smiths.” And in London, an imperial freedman called Aquilinus probably restored a temple to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, with assistance from three other individuals, probably in the third century.”
The renewed interest in paganism in Roman Britain in the late third and fourth centuries, despite the progressive outlawing of pagan practices, was manifested in the countryside where a number of new temples were established, usually as fairly isolated buildings. Urban temples.
237. Colchester (Essex).
This‘church’ has been identified as such because of the ground plan and clustering of late Roman east-west graves around it. Built about 320—40, with the apse added c. 380.
238. Carrawburgh (Northumberland).
Relief from the spring at Carrawburgh (Brocolitia). Dedicated to the nymph Coventina byTitus D[...) Cbsconianus, prefect commanding the First Cohort of Batavians.
However, generally fell out of use. Lamyatt Beacon (Somerset), begun in the late third century, stood on a ridge with epic views across the Fosse Way to the west. Brean Down, not far away, was begun in the early fourth century. At Maiden (Castle, within the old Iron Age fortress, a new Romano-Celtic temple was built on a virgin site after 367, dated by a hoard found under its tessellated floor. Nearby at South Perrott (Dorset), coins of the late third and fourth centuries were deliberately inserted in pits around what is now known to have been a Neolithic or Bronze Age ditched enclosure, probably reflecting a revival of veneration for ancient monuments in the landscape. Similar deposits have been found at many other prehistoric monuments. However, it is extremely unlikely that those who buried the coins had any idea at all of what those monuments had once been used for.
The temple of Nodons at Lydney was originally built in the late third century on a site that must have already been sacred to Nodons, but which had presumably remained undeveloped. Many of these new rural temples were in regions where the most luxurious villas were being developed, often with iconography on their mosaic floors reflecting an intense interest in pagan myth and cult activities. These are characteristically difficult to interpret, or to connect with temples. The triconch hall at Little-cote with its distinctive Orpheus mosaic has been interpreted as the meeting place of an Orphic cult, or as an elaborate summer dining room. Mosaics are virtually unknown in Romano-British temples themselves.
Altars and other votive goods were often set up in the open air. Outside the temple of Mithras, at Carrawburgh, a small stone bench and an altar marked an outdoor shrine to the local Genius and the Nymphs. A few metres to the north, the shrine of Coventina [238] was no more than a stone-lined revetment around the site where her spring rose. Making offerings to a local deity was a way of harnessing that deity’s power to Roman ends. Failing to do so might, in the Roman superstitious mind, have risked its wrath. In such a context, building a physical temple was unnecessary, although there is no doubt that one was built at Bath. At Carrawburgh, the shrine to Coventina was left as it was, though now she w'as offered gifts and portrayed in the Roman way.
This explains the recently-discovered shrine of
Senua, near Baldock, where a quantity of votive gifts, including gold and silver plaques, jewelry, and material deposited by the Spaniard, Servan-dus, were thrown into a pool. There were probably attendant buildings around the pool to accommodate pilgrims and service the cult. Senua, who is otherwise totally unknown, was probably the Celtic goddess of the water in the pool. Despite the fact that she had been Romanized by being depicted as Minerva, the centre of the cult remained a pool, and not a temple.
Incidental places could become a setting for an act of veneration. On Bollihope Common, near Stanhope (Durham), Gaius Tetius Veturius Micianus, prefect of the Sebosian cavalry wing, hijacked an altar that had already been dedicated to the imperial spirits. He recarved it with a dedication to Silvanus Invictus (‘Undefeated Silvanus’), in gratitude for the god s aid in helping him to capture an evasive wild boar.” At nearby Eastgate, the prefect, Aurelius Quirinus, made another dedication to Silvanus [239]. To the south, on Scargill Moor, an open-air shrine to Vinotonus Silvanus stood by a stream where several soldiers left other altars in this remote and windswept spot.” At Custom Scrubs, Bisley (Gloucestershire), a pair of gabled reliefs depicts Mars Olludius and Romulus, respectively.
There is no recorded structural context for either of these reliefs, which were probably displayed in an open-air shrine. Not far from the fort at Risingham, a relief depicting an unnamed warrior god, known locally as ‘Rob of Risingham’, is still partly visible in situ. All of these altars and reliefs are typical of countless roadside or rural shrines that were scattered across the countryside in every province of the Empire, to which passers-by, travellers and hunters made offerings as a matter of course. In the Christian era, the more obvious and accessible examples were susceptible to destruction, and even ‘Rob of Risingham’ was partly destroyed in the nineteenth century by the landowner who was sick of visitors. However, anyone passing through Catholic countries in Europe and Latin America will have become familiar with Christian wayside shrines, which preserve a much older pagan tradition.
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