Roman stamped tiles from Gloucester – a rediscovery

Dr Peter Warry FSA is an expert on Roman ceramic building material, and has just published an article on the use of stamped Roman tiles in Gloucestershire. Among other things, in his new article Peter posits that Hucclecote villa, situated to the east of Gloucester, played an important role as a sort of recycling depot for tile.

Peter’s work on the tile was supported in no small way by CA’s Hazel O’Neill, Post-Excavation Supervisor, who managed a team of volunteers as part of the Gloucester Museum Store Project. This successful initiative consolidated a number of unorganised excavation archives and finds assemblages held by Gloucester museum, dating back to the 1980s, ordering the material and bringing the archives in line with modern curation standards.

Dr Peter Warry, recording a stamped tile in the museum store

A stamped Roman tile from Gloucester, found in the museum store

The work of Hazel and her team enabled previously unreported Roman tiles (and other finds) within these excavation archives to be catalogued and reported on for the first time. One box of stamped tile had been missing for several years, having been searched for unsuccessfully by several people previously. It was finally rediscovered lurking in a store by a member of Hazel’s team.

The missing box, from a site at Commercial Road, carried a different site name on the front (the right name was on the back, which couldn’t be seen), was not in the museum’s catalogue and was known only from a 1988 report by Tim Darvill. However, this box contained around 100 stamped tiles – roughly a quarter of the entire corpus of Gloucester civic stamped tiles. Dr Warry was so happy about the rediscovery that he kissed the box!

Peter’s work on the material is published as Warry, P. 2017. ‘Production, Distribution, Use and Curation: A Study of Stamped Tile from Gloucestershire’, Britannia 48, 77-115

An abstract can be viewed online.

CA volunteer, Valentina Perrone, recording a stamped tile