The Ancients - The Largest Roman Palace North of the Alps

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex was first constructed just three decades after the empire’s legions conquered Britain in the first century AD. Rediscovered in 1960, Fishbourne is the largest known Roman residence north of the Alps, and much of its sprawling ruins have still not been excavated fully.In this episode, Tristan chats to Dr Robert Symmons, Curator at Fishbourne Roman Palace and its museum, to find out more about what makes the gigantic villa–and the spectacular artefacts it left behind–so special.Order Tristan’s book today from Amazon!If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hithttps://access.historyhit.com/?utm_source=audio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Podcast+Campaign&utm_id=PodcastTo download, go to Android or Apple store:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.historyhit&hl=en_GB&gl=UShttps://apps.apple.com/gb/app/history-hit/id1303668247If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating The Ancients content then subscribe to our Ancients newsletter. Follow the link here:https://www.historyhit.com/sign-up-to-history-hit/?utm_source=timelinenewsletter&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Timeline+Podcast+Campaign

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well brace yourself because we are talking all about the largest Roman palace north of the Alps. At least the largest Roman palace that we know of to this day in 2022. I am talking about a site that is situated in southern Britain, in West Sussex, near the city of Chichester. And this is, of course, Fishbourne Roman Palace. Now I've been

going to Fishbourne since I was very, very small, since I was three or four. It's one of the closest attractions to where I grew up. It's an astonishing sight. And a few months back, I was fortunate enough to head back down to Fishbourne to interview the legendary curator there, Dr. Rob Simmons. In this chat, we talk all about Fishbourne's discovery, the archaeology at Fishbourne, some theories surrounding Fishbourne's use, including a lot of different animals that seem to have been present in Fishbourne's grounds, and so much more. Including a Twitter trend from the late 2021s that seized the ancient history community, or at least a quirky small part of the ancient history community,

called hashtag hypercostgate. If you're intrigued, that's good, because this podcast is going to reveal everything about that. So without further ado, to talk all about Fishbourne Roman Palace, here's Rob. Rob, great to be back. Tristan, nice to see you again. It is lovely to see you. And I must say, first of all, I think in the ancient history world and archaeology world, you do hold the title of the best beard in the business there's some pretty stiff competition out there absolutely it is a stiff competition world the archaeology beard world but we're not

talking about the beard today we're talking about fishbourne roman palace this has got to be you you see on so many lists of top 10 roman sites to come and see in Britain. And it's just such a remarkable site. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think it's just working here. You kind of get used to it, which is really, really worrying, actually. But yeah, sometimes you step back, and especially when you see it on this sort of top 20 places to see before you die type list. You step back and see it afresh. And yeah, it's massive.

You compare it to anything else of the same period in the country. And yeah, it's head and shoulders above anything else you can see i mean let's talk about the size quickly because there are some it holds some pretty incredible records shall we say for the size of this roman building yeah well very snappy strap line is with the largest domestic roman building north of the alps which just trips off the town we should have on t-shirts really it's just a fabulous little strap line but much more snappy is we're bigger than Buckingham Palace, which I still can't quite believe. But yeah, it's probably about 120, 140 metres square,

which when you work here and you have to walk from one corner to the other on a daily basis, you do actually realise it's quite massive. And yeah, certainly in the 60s when it was excavated, people knew that there was Roman material at Fishbourne and there was some sort of roman focus at fishbourne but nobody would ever have guessed that it all came from the same building and to make that even more even more striking is the fact that excavations here we haven't even excavated the whole lot of what was the building have we absolutely not no half of it is under the village so i don't know how you came here if you came up the a259 through fishbourne

you drove straight across the top of the south wing and so the south wing and half of the east and west wings are still buried under the village at the southern garden has not been looked at and of course in the 60s when barry cundiff dug the site as was kind of common practice and for good reason in those days he kind of stopped at the edges of the walls you know he got to the exterior walls and that was where he stopped digging and so there was no attempt to find things like you know outbuilding stables servants quarters kitchens we still don't know where the kitchens were middens wells all of this stuff is still a mystery to it must be here but we haven't found that yet mysteries still abound indeed and you mentioned barry cunliffe and you mentioned the 1960s but do tell me through the story of how fishbourne was found well it's well rehearsed

story it was in 1960 earlier in 1960 the water board was putting a water main through a field just outside fishbourne and the digger driver started to hit large lumps of masonry and he went through five walls and two mosaics, then decided to stop. And thank God he did, because he got the archaeologists involved. And Barry Cunliffe and Margaret Rule both excavated the site together over the next eight or nine years. And here we are. And here we are.

50 years later. Exactly. It's quite a story, the fact that he went through five walls and two mosaics at the start. You've met Tigger Drivers, haven't you? And archaeology was a different world in those days. there was no sort of watching brief or anything like that which actually grateful that we alerted professionals if you like well fair enough and of course fishbourne right next to chichester near the south coast stained streets running nearby as well there's a lot of roman west sussex it does seem to be this jewel of

roman archaeology when you do actually look at this area of Britain absolutely there's a lot around obviously Bignor springs immediately to mind we're not far from the Isle of Wight we've got braiding there's plenty of Roman material going and the store behind me where we keep all the artifacts from the district is rammed with Roman material Roman villas Chillgrove another one Elstead there's a villa up there so there's plenty of villas around but nothing is quite no nothing's remotely on the scale of the palace and not a lot of it is quite as early because we are really early here the main palace the building that people think of when they think of us is 8075 so not long after the invasion well let's go a bit before 8075 in this big climax with this big palace because what do we know about activity at the site before the Roman invasion of AD 43?

Yeah, this is kind of an emerging story and it is literally constantly evolving. But in the last 20 years or so, we've started to see glimpses of pre-AD 43 activity on the site. I mean, there clearly would have been an Iron Age Celtic presence. I know we're not allowed to say things like Celtic presence anymore, but you know what I mean. There would have been a sort of an Iron Age presence, but what's starting to emerge is that there was a lot of overlap between that Iron Age population and the Roman Empire. So we're starting to see things like trade. Really excitingly, we're starting to see hints of some kind of military presence before the invasion, which is, if you ask me, pretty massive. One of our volunteers here did his master's at Southampton University and he

identified crucibles, metalworking crucibles, absolutely Iron Age in form, but had been used to make or to cast brass, which is a Roman military material. So that is looking like the Roman military are talking to the locals here on the south coast of Britain and getting them to make military hardware. It was a military secret. You couldn't make brass without military intervention. And we have military finds as well. We've got fragments of Gladius sheath is one thing. The tiles from the palace themselves are military, are made by the military. We know that much, although that is a little bit later. So there's just these hints that stuff is going on and we're just slowly picking away at it and gradually around the edges and just seeing if we can get some kind of smoking gun but we're i'm confident that there were roman

soldiers here before ad43 not necessarily invading possibly engaged in trade or retired soldiers something like that but i'm sure they're here i was gonna say it's possibly reopening the debate of whether the romans landed in sussex or rich of course they did during ad43 that's fact if you say it three times it's true absolutely not the river medway not the river medway it's the river aran it was the river aran or maybe both maybe both yeah yeah it's the sussex bias coming out again from us both okay but if we go to around ad43 the invasion when do we start seeing roman buildings on this site? Very, very soon after the invasion. And it really does look like a military supply base.

It really looks like the Roman army came up, Fishbourne Channel landed, and immediately started building granaries and segments of roads. We haven't got the massive sort of playing card shaped defensive structures that you would expect elsewhere. But that just suggests to me that there was less need for that kind of thing and so there was less opposition to the presence of the roman army in this part of the world and not everybody agrees but that's what it looks like to me so military buildings supply base once again actually quite similar to richborough it seems like but also a proto palace what is this nobody knows move on Move on. No, no.

So the granary, the military buildings, were sort of upgraded at some point. But by AD 60, the Romans had constructed, and this is one of, I think, one of the greatest mysteries of the place, is they constructed some masonry buildings, the functions of some of which are a complete mystery to us. One looks like a military headquarters and also an absolutely

enormous and lavish bathhouse, which to all intents and purposes was in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, there were maybe soldiers around, but this thing is just ridiculous in its scale and level of luxury. And so who it was servicing, I would love to know and what they thought they were doing building it here. But what is interesting, and again, it speaks volumes about how strangely the Romans can behave, is that that bathhouse sat in that field with the other masonry buildings for about 15 years. And then they added the whole of the rest of the palace to it, which just seems like a really odd way to build a house to me. Build the bathroom, wait 15 years, build an extension to the bathroom.

That's the house. It just seems very strange. So that moves us therefore on to 75 ad this year which is as we've as you've hinted at already is super significant in the story of fishbowl kind of is it's yeah it's when anybody who visits the site one of the first things you're confronted with is a big model of the flavian palace the ad 75 palace is the big four-winged square structure around formal garden and that's what people associate us as being i'm very keen to tell

the story that a lot happened before and a lot happened after but yeah that's ad75 one tuesday afternoon when they cut the ribbon on what was the largest building north of the alps or the largest domestic building of the alps they'd have an ancient histories version an ancient roman version of tony robinson cutting that cutting cutting that rope at the front of the palace that day in march 75 ad or whenever i mean go on then you are the expert on this talk me through talk us through the layout of this palace what we know yeah it's really hard to sort of describe in clear details but it's yes about 120 140 meters square each wing four wings set around a square formal garden and the formal garden was ornate topiary hedging lawns gravel

paths espalier fruit trees you know a very very manicured environment and the four wings we think although a lot of this to be honest got to be guesswork but we think we're dealing with an administrative building so one of the wings the, was probably, really was almost sort of public space. There are no mosaics in that wing. The rooms are smaller. It's facing Chichester. So you imagine that that's the bit of the palace that Hoi Poloi can access to do whatever they need to do, administratively register births or whatever, pay their taxes, that kind of thing.

So that's a very functional wing. The north wing that we're very famous for, the covered area, the site that's covered today, is probably two or three suites of rooms set around two courtyards. And they're very luxurious. So we think this is like accommodation for very important people, because this is the kind of building that very important people would visit from some distance away. So we've got sort of guest accommodation. The west wing is where you find the really, really nice mosaics, sadly now largely destroyed by later ploughing, but you've got Tesserae in the audience chamber. We have a mosaic and the Tesserae are five millimetres across, and that's top quality. Really impressive painting on the walls. Unfortunately, of that mosaic, there's only two sort of 20 centimetre square bits survived and they're now reburied. But that's the state rooms, that's where whoever was

running this building would have shown off their power, where they would have received guests. And then the south wing, which is the bit that's underneath the village so we know very little about it but what we do know is that it's got a veranda that faces south down to the coast and best guess if you like, we really are talking in terms of best guess here, is that was the residential wing for the important person who lived here. Because you've got a nice south facing view where you could sit and it's a private space. It looks across an informal garden away from all the hustle and bustle of an administrative centre. That's what we think we've got. But what's crucial about the whole building is it's just incredibly Roman.

It really is the most Roman thing you've ever seen. It looks like it's been picked up out of the Mediterranean, out of Italy somewhere, and just plopped on the coast of southern England. No accounting for our weather or our resources or anything like that. It's literally a stencil job. I mean, Rob, it's so interesting how you said that imprint has moved, let's say, from the centre of the Roman Empire, I said, to the south coast of Britain. What I've found really interesting is that sometimes with these monumental roman villas on the continent or these monumental roman structures whatever they are they'll go to great leaps great bounds to get the materials for them let's say in rome they'll go to aquarian egypt to get that right type of

marble which they want for that building but fishborn what do we know about the materials used to construct it is it a similar story or different? There are some similarities. There are some. We've done a lot of work on this in the last 15, 20 years. And science, we've done a lot of science at it. And that's helped. The S word.

And we, for example, think that possibly the blue pigment in the paint is lapis lazuli, which is from Afghanistan, which is like importing your Dulux for your bathroom from the moon. It's just, you know, it could not go to greater lengths. And there are hints of the Romans sort of looping in vast trade networks. But what you're hinting at, I think, is the fact that a lot of the other materials are much more local. The black and white floors, the geometric floors from 75, the stone from that comes from Kimmeridge. The tiles were made locally. That's no great surprise.

But we have a lot of Portland stone being used. Instead of, presumably, they had access to marble. Some marble was imported. But even some of the walls are painted to resemble marble. So, okay, that was probably a very trendy thing to do in terms of interior decor at the time but it does into the fact that you know you could have got marble but no you've got a kind of a deck and best a little fake can i say fake it's up for debate it's up to you it's up to you you're the experts yeah i do get the sense that people were procuring the building materials and the

resources that looked right but they weren't just throwing everything at it if they could get something that looked okay and was local and cheaper that's what they would do and they weren't doing that thing that we're all taught about when we're at school no trouble and expense was too much for the romans and if they wanted marble they would go and get marble no these guys they wanted marble marble's black so they went to kimeridge where there's blackstone fair enough now when creating this roman palace in southern britain i know as you say there would be similarities with other places in the Roman Empire. But southern Britain, as lovely, as beautiful as it is, particularly in the summer, you know, with West Britain nearby and everything like that. It's not exactly the Mediterranean in terms of climate.

And it gets very cold during the winter, especially. You need heating. Yeah. And it's damp down here as well. It's damp as well. Very close to sea level down here. So what do we know about how did they, when they were constructing this, do we know anything about, say, the heating systems

or how they would have made themselves prepared for these issues of southern Britain? Yeah, yeah. They did nothing. They did absolutely no allowance for that whatsoever. Literally, this is what I'm saying, they picked up a Mediterranean building and plopped it on the south coast of Britain. The AD75 building, apart from the bathhouse, there was no central heating. The rooms were big, they would have been drafty, high-ceilinged, quite hard to maintain.

This is it, they were building something that looked right. It looked amazing with no allowance for what it was like under the skin, what it was like to live in or where the resources had come from. It looks very much like it's there for show. Later on, the inhabitants did start to make improvements and install central heating of varying effectiveness. But yeah, in 1875, it would have been quite a ghastly place to live, I think. If you want to be cosy on the south coast of Britain,

you live in a round wattle and daub hut, round house with a thatched roof and a fire in the middle of it. More practical. Yeah, absolutely. Easier to repair, quicker, cheaper to build and snug. Cosy. It does beg the question, therefore, as you're saying, kind of hinting at that, impressing the locals on that. Why do you think this AD 75 palace with this interesting structure, construction techniques, construction layout.

Why do you think it was constructed? You just answered your own question, Tristan. Impress the locals. It must have been. It's so Roman. It's the most Roman thing you can think of. And yeah, you build this on the south coast of Britain and you are making a statement to everybody who sees it, including the local Iron Age population,

that yeah, this is us now. This is what we're all about. We have access to technologies and resources that you can only dream of. We can get our blue paint from what is essentially the other side of the world, as far as you're concerned. We can do that. The locals wouldn't have... They'd have been so impressed with the black and white mosaics

that the fact the stone came from Kimmeridge, it was immaterial to them. They'd say that wasn't a problem. The key thing was to stupefy people, to impress by which I kind of it was immaterial to them. So that wasn't a problem. The key thing was to stupefy people, to impress, by which I kind of mean make an impression on them. And with that, the function of the palace you were mentioning earlier, this thing where there are matters of state, matters of administration, that area of the palace would be where these people walked into. So I'm presuming we think that was perhaps where there was the most

stupefying elements of the palace. Well, the East Wing, the administrative space where you go and pay your taxes, wasn't quite as ornate, wasn't quite as luxurious. But I think most of the people coming from Chichester to pay their taxes, essentially they're confronted by this massive edifice, I think 40 feet high, taller than any building they've ever seen. The entrance hall, they might just be able to glimpse through into the formal garden and see a fountain, which is ever seen the entrance hall they might just be able to glimpse through into the formal garden and see a fountain which is just inside the entrance hall maybe that

would have been nothing short of magical to them but i think the fact you can't get in is in a lot of ways even more intimidating yeah inside that space you don't quite know what goes on it's the holy of holies it's where the important people do important things and you're stuck outside just looking at this massive square imposing building but I think the effect would have been the same without the need for really ornate mosaics and interior decorations in those sort of more public spaces. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and in my podcast Not Just the Tudors we talk about everything from ballads to banqueting, from ghosts to gunpowder plots,

from saints to sodomy. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. We're talking about these important people. Rob, the big question for this palace, who do we think would have lived here? You see, everybody asks this question, and I tell people the company line. I'm sorry, I'm just like everyone else and I always ask this question. No, absolutely. It's a really important question. It's a really interesting question.

The answer is we'll probably never know, which is not the answer anybody ever wants to hear. So the story we tell our visitors is that it was a chap called Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus. There are a number of candidates who lived here, but that is what you'll find in our guidebook. And so that's the story we tell. And he was essentially a local chieftain. He was the leader of the local tribe, the Atribates. But you will notice Tiberius Claudius is a Roman name. Togidubnus is a Celtic name, so he's a Celt, but had significant connections in the Roman Empire. And that's probably how they managed to land a legion here in 43 AD without too much opposition because Togedubnus was already their mate. Probably why they built the palace, because

it was just a big fat thank you for that favour. It would have cut both ways, you know, it was a big fat thank you, but it also meant they had a client king installed in a big Roman military building showing off their wealth. So it was a two-way deal, but they only really needed Toggy Dubness's patronage support, call it what you will, for a certain period of time. And after 10, 20, 30 years, when they've established their power in this part of the world, kind of don't need him anymore, which I think is why they were not completely going to town on the build of the palace because why build a building to last a thousand years really you only need this guy to be your friend for another 30 it's really cynical but the romans are human beings and aren't we cynical people yeah absolutely all the time 100 but it is quite interesting though i'll

ask you perhaps one of the impossible questions but something just strikes me now if let's say toby dubness was this client ruler at around the time of the claudian invasion let's just say hypothetical but the palace was only constructed in 75 ad i mean that's still 30 years later isn't it i know it takes a long time to build a palace but i must i know there's so much many question marks whether toggy dubness would have been if he was here whether he would have been alive 30 years later this is the problem and this is why it's really hard to pin this answer down. There are so many angles to the dates and the timings and so many unknowns that essentially we have constructed, constructed is the wrong word,

we've adopted that story. But yes, you talk to anybody else and you get all sorts of different ideas. And that's important. That's what archaeology is all about. None of what I'm saying is true. It's a version of what we're quite right. Quite opposite to science, although we love our science here as well. But, you know, it's very different of what i'm quite right quite opposite to science although we love our science here as well but you know it's very different absolutely there we go we talked about the building itself but yeah and you've hinted as well there is also a formal garden

here talk to me about this formal garden because this also seems pretty exceptional in britain's history really absolutely it is it's actually one of my favorite aspects of the entire site because it's unique as far far as I'm aware, it's unique in the world. So essentially, the Romans had to level the site in order to build the palace. And in doing that, they removed pretty much all of the topsoil from where the formal garden was going to go, which meant in order to plant any plants in the formal garden, they had to dig little holes, fill them with topsoil and plant into that. So in 1960s, I think it's around about 64 they started to uncover it kind of discovered these trenches discovered these archaeological features so

exactly where every plant was planted where every hedge was planted so we know the patterns of the hedges now this is where people are going to write in but they're going to write to you not me so i don't care i think that's unique in the world i i've never come across anything like that before so when you visit fishbone roman palace you see our formal garden you see half of what was originally there the other half is under the village but the hedges you see are planted into the same holes that the romans dug two millennia ago which is so much cooler than mosaics 100 100 and that's right i've got your email i've got your twitter so it's right i won't work having said that i won't i haven't said it's better than mosaics I'm out of a job let's

be honest moving on we'll get to mosaics in time but the garden is insane and just to repeat that because it is absolutely awesome because of the archaeological work that's done the garden that is at Fishbourne today has been recreated this like the hedgerows and everything to look as it would have looked to the romans living here some 2 000 years ago as far as is humanly possible we don't know what plants were planted in the in the holes so we've got box hedging today we know that box hedging was used in the roman period so and we know that the soil that was put in those trenches was suitable in fact highly suitable for box hedge and so it's not a crazy guess to imagine that's the balance and so we we have a spallion trees apple trees and in the 60s what they found was a hole that a tree would have been planted in a whole row of those and in between

each of those holes is a post hole and that starts to look to me like some sort of framework and why would you have a framework along a line of trees if you're not spallion so the evidence is pretty good we can never be 100 this is archaeology but it is good but what we've got is the oldest formal garden in britain at the end of the day and it's great these superlatives which you can link to this site are absolutely brilliant yeah largest residential building of the roman world north of the alps oldest formal garden in britain i'm sure there's more as well, because I want to also talk to you about this other thing, the oldest zoo. What is this claim? This is new. I love just saying zoo to people and watching their faces. If the Tower of London is listening, our zoo is older than yours. This is other people's work. I've got to be very clear on that. And a lot of it's not published, but it is all in

the public domain. And there are some great videos of lectures on YouTube and things of the actual researchers involved in this work, explaining it much better than I ever could. But the key researcher is Naomi Sykes, Professor Naomi Sykes from Exeter University now. And about 20 years ago or so, she discovered some of the bones in our stores were fallow deer bones. And that's nuts because we all know that fallow deer were introduced by the normans they can't be fallow deer bones or at least they can't be roman so no mean did a lot of work on that and proved that actually yes they are fallow deer and they are roman they've been dna analysis they've been carbon dated she's even been able to go so far as to demonstrate that the earliest specimen of fallow deer we've got

arrived in this country from possibly the balkans i think that's what she said as a living animal and it grew up here and then the later examples the chemistry of their teeth seems to suggest they were born here and they died here you've got that first one comes across and it forms a breeding population and these animals aren't solely for food it looks very much like they're being bought as status symbol but that's fallow deer again i'm not 100 up the science, but Naomi tells me that of our chickens, and we have a lot of chicken bones, Fishbourne, compared to any other site, which in itself is interesting because at the time chickens were seen as very special animals. They weren't so much for food, but they were much closer to being pets or having some sort of religious or social

significance. But here at Fishbone, we've got a lot of them and we're eating them, which I think is sending an interesting message to the locals. That special animal you've got that you look after and you feed and you love and you're buried with because it's a little bit of a pet, we just eat those. That's how important we are. But two of our chicken bones, the DNA suggests that they were imported from China, which is nuts.

Absolutely insane. So, fellow dear chickens, we are very proud of our very early rabbit so one of the bones we have in the collections these are all bones found in the 1960s and have been stored here for sort of 50 odd years in 2017 we discovered that one of the bones that had been assumed or thought to be hair was actually rabbit and there's been a huge amount of work done on that. And it looks like it's the very first rabbit to arrive in Britain. And we think it was kept in a cage. That's really cool. If you look at the chemistry of the isotopes in its bones, it looks a lot like it's a carnivore.

It has a carnivore signature in its chemistry. And obviously, it's not a carnivore. It's not eating other animals. We think it's eating itself insofar as it's eating its own droppings. And it's eating a lot of them it's not eating other animals we think it's eating itself in so far as it's eating its own droppings and it's eating a lot of them rabbits do eat their own droppings but this is eating a huge amount of his own droppings which suggests it was kept in a cage and so it's a very important animal worthy of protecting so rabbits what else have we got a zoo yet is that that's three we've got three i'm wondering about the most wild boar craziness too

there is and this is very much emerging so i probably shouldn't say too much about it it's actually the subject of dissertation at the moment and there's going to be more work done on it but we've got one wild boar specimen again from the 60s material and long story short it looks like it's being fed human food not humans not food made of humans the same food that humans are eating but it's being fed from kitchens right so i thought it might be like a hercules one of the ladies of hercules with like the cattle which is eating humans but okay it's not that okay but but it's a what's important it's a different diet from what the pigs are eating the pigs are eating pannage out somewhere in some wood somewhere acorns and stuff like that we know we can see

that in the chemistry but this thing is being kept close to the palace presumably so they can be fed scraps at a time when wild boar even though they're not exotic they would have been very rare so that's that's getting quite close to a zoo if you ask me i think i think we're getting there absolutely proto zoo charity what is so is so interesting all that you've said there but i mean it also does beg the question why do you think the romans imported let's say the deer and stuff why do they import animals that to the indigenous british population would look exotic all the quick and boring answers that's what people do you just got to look at the victorians and they spent a huge amount of their lives going around their empire and dragging exotic animals and putting them in a big park in regents park yeah

that's kind of human nature in it but it it also makes a statement. And I think 2000 years ago, it would have made a really, it's a statement of power and your resources and the fact you have an empire. But I think locally, it would have been a much more powerful statement because we know that the Iron Age population, they weren't eating wild foods. It looks like they revered nature. And we can see that in the archaeological record. We can see that they're not exploiting wild foods it looks like they revered nature and we can see that in the archaeological record we can see that they're not exploiting wild foods they wouldn't dream of going out into the wilderness and taking things and bringing them back and consuming them because the wilderness was too special for that and the wilderness was kind of sacred and and it's where the where the ancestors

would go you know after they died and they'd respect that but the the Romans arrived and not only did they build this massive very very Roman very very alien thing on the south coast they then sucked in all of these exotic animals and demonstrated that they could keep them they could look after them and they basically could control them so they can control nature and they're doing the same thing with with the formal garden it's a very controlled environment and they're essentially saying to the locals, as well as having all of these resources that we can build this amazing, luxurious palace, you know where your ancestors live. We can control that as well. And that is a really massive thing to say. It's powerful, isn't it?

Absolutely powerful in ancient times, especially. And especially with the culture of the late Iron Age. Absolutely. Yeah. We talked about the garden. We talked about the palace, AD 75 palace, but these weren't the only structures that have been uncovered at the site, are they? Well, the AD 75 palace is absolutely sort of the main one.

There are other tiny hints of there being other structures. I talked about the earlier structures, the masonry buildings, the proto palace. About three or four years ago, I was going through some of the paper archive here, and I found a single-sheet exercise book, torn out of an exercise book. And on that is what I think is probably the only record of a really substantial, abcidal masonry building that is about 100 yards away from the Flavian Palace. And that's all we know about it. It's a sketch plan, and it was found during the digging of Ahsokaway, I think. And the archaeologists who were working on Cundiff's site,

somebody went across and just peered down this hole and made a sketch plan. So we know that, I can't tell you exactly where it is, but we know that in one of the gardens, very close to where we're sat, is a massive apsidal masonry building that we know nothing about.

It is so interesting. And just as a forewarning, I'm not telling anyone listening to go to people's gardens, back gardens in Fishbourne and to go looking for these structures. You would be very much breaking the law. Not you, but if you did, if you dug that hole, you would go to jail. It is interesting to think how many other structures there must have been that there must be in this vicinity that are still underground somewhere absolutely yeah yeah as you're saying that you you remind me of a strange isled building that was discovered in the early 80s they're there they occasionally come to light that that's down

on fishbourne harbour still we know very little about what that was all about either but these these structures are there and don't forget the palace would have sat within an estate it didn't stop at its exterior walls there would have been some sort of an estate boundary and we have no idea where that was but that estate could have been thousands and thousands of acres and could contain villages could certainly farmsteads potentially other villas temples very distant physically distant from the palace but you know all associated with what's going on in this building nicely done not too many more questions to go i promise let's move on in fishbourne's story because and you've hinted at it earlier as especially let's get into the second century first is this a time where we start to see decay the fishbourne roman palace yeah it's really hard

this is a really hard one to to sort of handle because as soon as you start talking about the decline of the palace everybody starts to think oh yeah soon as you start talking about the decline of the palace everybody starts to think oh yeah and you end up talking about the things going derelict you think that it was you know some of the later periods some of the later mosaics you know aren't quite as good as the black and white geometrics of 80 75 ones and people start to think oh yeah it was all thrown up in a bit of a hurry and it all was all a bit tumbled down and then later on they were all on their uppers and they weren't able to afford very very good craftsmanship but they're still laying mosaics yeah they're still the top one percent of the top one percent of the population

they're living in what would still be one of the biggest buildings in southern britain but yeah we can't get away from the fact that quite quickly after 80 75, within 25 years or so, there is a decline. And you can see that through subsidence, but you can also see that through the fact that some of these incredible state rooms are being subdivided into smaller rooms. When you're doing that, you're taking a ballroom in a big English country house and you're turning it into two smaller rooms. That means you're no longer requiring a space which is impressive through its size you know you're and you're making them up to much more practical spaces that are easier to heat you can do different things in each space you know you can see all of this going on but they did start demolishing elements

certainly of the north wing were taken down and that's probably due to subsidence and certainly towards the sort of third century some of these state rooms were being used essentially as workshops much much more practical but still i cannot stress enough that they would have been workshops that's just like a big old farm you know a big old farm has still got workshops and barns and storage spaces and that's what we've got here we've got probably a very rich landowner who's using the building much more practically. Well, keeping on that then, when does this landowner or whoever owned the site, when does he decide to install central heating to the building? We know that because there was an attempt at central heating, at a sort of a hypercore system

in the second century. But in the third century, the feature that we're well known for is, and it's one of the first things you see when you come and visit us, in about AD 275, 280, something like that, they decided for the first time, as far as we can tell, it's time. They put up with being cold every winter for 200 years, and it's time to basically heat one room. And it was one room that they tried to heat. This was a time when there was a lot of home improvements going on. So you kind of get the sense that actually whoever was living here was doing a bit better for themselves possibly or they just got sick of living in a tip and you find things like glass stacked up in some rooms ready for a re-glazing project. You find piles of mortar piled up and piles of tesserae piled up ready to

re-lay floors or re-ground floors or whatever. So there's definitely a home improvement drive. Unfortunately before that hypercoast is finished there was a massive fire and the entire site was so comprehensively gutted you really get the sense the romans just walked off site they never came back that's quite an abrupt end this building yeah like third century yeah i mean the building sort of lay on its side twitching for a little bit as folk came in and essentially mined or quarried the site for any useful materials, building stone, anything like that was all taken away for reuse elsewhere. But yeah, that's the last time it was used, anything remotely resembling home.

Now, a slight tangent, but this has been something I've been very excited to ask about. It's more recent because on Twitter, in the ancient history world, there are some hashtags which just go viral for a small segment of Twitter and are just incredibly entertaining. First, you know, there's been phallus Thursdays, you know, that's quite something in its own right. But the story of Fishbourne and particularly another archaeologist, Dr. Miles Russell and yourself have been engaged in this social media war around this Twitter handle. What the hell is hashtag hypercaustgate? Well, Tristan, we take our responsibility to heritage very seriously here and we really are not keen on amateurs coming in onto our site and standing on hypercaust. It emerged that we'd made

the terrible faux pas of letting Tony Robinson and photographing and tweeting about the fact that Tony Robinson had visited and stood in one of the hypercourts and said, Dr. Russell, he really needs to take a long look at himself. And the timing of your visit is very apt because not yesterday we were besieged by very well disguised Miles Russell with an impenetrable disguise managed to penetrate the height of the hypercourts. And yes, some photographs went up on, well, it was something but yes are you okay are you you guys recovered from well we're talking to our insurance people no it's all been very light-hearted and it's all been hugely

enjoyable actually and i don't know what i'm going to do with my time anymore but his dreams come true and he looked like a little boy on christmas morning it was sweet i mean you just need to type in hashtag hyper cost gate and you can see the legacy of this of this word on social media it is it is quite something i'm so glad we got covered that because that is something of the ancient history modern world which was just so interesting to talk about i feel before we completely wrap up there is that one other artifacts mosaic that we do have to talk about at Fishbourne. Anyone thinks of Fishbourne? The Cupid on a dolphin mosaic.

What is this? It's what people come and visit us for. It is probably what we're most famous for, even more so than the gardens and the building itself in a lot of ways. It's star floor. Funnily enough, it's not associated with the 8075 flavium building that we've been talking about it's a home improvement it was laid on top of an earlier mosaic in about 80 150 160 i think people love it because it's so complete and i think people love it because being a later edition the later fishborn polychromatic they're multi-colored and they're figurative so they've

got images of people and animals on them and this one has it's got cupid riding a dolphin surrounded by sea creatures all laid in technicolor but it is an incredibly remarkable lure the fact that it survived at all incredible but when you look at that design more closely there's some interesting features in it yeah i'm desperately trying to keep my job here desperately trying to not say the words it's not a very good mosaic it is a really lovely mosaic but i will say i'm on record as saying it's not as good in my opinion it's not as stunning as some of those earlier black and white floors and we're looking at you know that period of decline and this is what i was getting at earlier it is a period of decline but people living here are still laying these amazing fabulous floors so they're still very important people. It's just they don't have potentially the imperial backing. They don't have access to imperial level craftsmanship.

So you look at this floor and if you look at it for long enough, and God knows I have, you do start to wonder if you're seeing mistakes. I always think floors, but that's confusing. mistakes. I always think floors, but that's confusing. It's a fascinating debate. It's a podcast in its own right. But if you look at one of the hippocampuses, the seahorses, one of the sea creatures, which forms part of the design, just doesn't look like it's laid perfectly. It looks like maybe you've got an apprentice laying that one, but you compare that to the earlier black and white geometric floors, they wouldn't let an apprentice anywhere near those. And you just get the feeling that standards aren't slipping, but they haven't got access to the imperial craftsman anymore other people would say well actually maybe the romans didn't care what their floors look like because there are some really odd mistakes in them some look like they're deliberate mistakes potentially as a sort of a parlor game you know

you're sitting you're having your meal and you're just trying to spot the deliberate mistakes in the floors but some almost certainly not but some people say yeah you know it's a floor the important thing was you've got a mosaic whether or not all the shapes line up perfectly is actually of no great matter to them we don't know we don't we don't know well i mean exactly and i promise i won't just use that small cut out bit for an audio book on roman britain as you say it is such an incredible place to come and visit to see the roman imprint on southern britain you know from always 2 000 years ago i said on almost always at the top of roman sites to come and visit to see the roman imprint on southern britain you know from always 2 000 years ago i said on almost always at the top of roman sites to come and see in britain you guys

are now back and open to the public it's all up and running absolutely so far touch wood we're open we're welcoming visitors and yeah the schools are coming back in so it's almost like the before times but let's hope that lasts as long as possible brilliant And any big events planned in the near future for Fishbourne? We've got some really exciting research coming up, which I can't possibly tell you about. But yeah, it's half term coming up, so we'll have special events. But we're back and we're firing on all cylinders

and looking forward to welcoming both back. Fantastic. Well, Rob, curator Rob, Rob with the greatest beard in the archaeological circle. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. I'm glad you recognise my qualities. Well, there you go. There was our podcast with Dr Rob Simmons,

all about Fishbourne Roman Palace, the largest Roman residence north of the Alps that we know of to this day in history. I hope you enjoyed that chat. I had a great time recording that interview with Rob. The banter, the terrible banter was going back and forth from Hypercourse Gate to so much more. And if you want more terrible ancients banter, which of course you do, and more importantly, you want more ancient history in the meantime, you can't wait for the next episode then sign up to our weekly newsletter via the link in the description below if you'd also be very kind enough to leave

us a rating on spotify or apple podcast wherever you get your podcast from that'd be greatly appreciated as we continue to spread the ancients love further and further afield lastly but certainly not least my book has come out in the last couple of weeks. If you're interested in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death and what's happened next, the chaos that ensued, the imperial implosion, then why not have a look at that? We'll put a link to that in the description below too. But that's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.