LYDNEY
Gloucestershire, England.
Roman
temple and settlement founded after ca. 364-367 m the
SW part of an Iron Age hill fort, in private grounds
0.3 km W of the town; application to view must be made
in advance to the Agent, Lydney Park.
The Roman buildings comprise a) the temple; b) the
long building or dormitory adjacent; c) the guest house,
now covered; and d) the baths. All were enclosed within
a precinct wall. A small iron mine of Roman date can
be seen to the NE. The temple (ca. 27 x 19.5 m) faces
SE. The oblong cella, reached by steps, was originally
arcaded, but later, after subsidence, made solid; at the
NW end is a triple sanctuary. Surrounding the cella
is a wide ambulatory, the outer wall containing five large
recesses or chapels, two on either side and one behind
the sanctuary; they are unusual and may have served
for incubation, as subsequently did the long building on
the NW with its dozen or so cubicles.
A mosaic pavement in the cella, now destroyed, had
an inscribed panel giving the name of the god worshiped
here, Nodens. The dedicator was an officer in charge of
the (Bristol Channel?) fleet supply-depot, acting through
an interpreter on the governor's staff. Other inscriptions
also name Nodens, whose cult seems to have been principally concerned with healing, to judge from the numerous ex-votos found. The Lydney Dog, a small bronze
figurine housed with other finds in the private museum
at Lydney Park, is one of the finest known from Roman
Britain.
The guest house was a courtyard building (ca. 42 x
39 m) containing numerous rooms in three ranges; the
fourth side, facing the NE side of the temple, was devoted to a large hall or concourse. Many of the rooms
had mosaic floors of geometric type, as did those in the
baths to the NW. The bath house, of the normal
Reihentyp, seems extremely large (36 x 21 m) in relation to
the guest house, and it is possible that ritual bathing
formed part of the sequence of rites. The water supply
was derived from a stone reservoir outside the temenos.
Though not built until A.D. 364-367, the temple and
its associated buildings do not seem to have been long
in use; occupation declined markedly in the latter years
of the 4th c., and a 5th c. brooch indicates a subsequent
frequentation of the site, possibly connected with a refurbishment of the Iron Age ramparts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. H. Bathurst & C. W. King,
Roman
Antiquities at Lydney Park, Glos. (1879) color ills. of
mosaics
PI; R.E.M. & T. V. Wheeler,
Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman & Post-Roman Site
in Lydney Park, Glos. (1932)
PI; summary, G. C. Boon
in Royal Archaeological Institute,
Programme of the
Summer Meeting at Cheltenham 1965 (1965)
P with
other refs.; Lydney Dog, see also J.M.C. Toynbee,
Art
in Britain under the Romans (1964) pl. xxxivb-c.
G. C. BOON
