Writing Londinium with the Seven Senses

Trying a garland made by Patty Baker (Kent)

by Caroline Lawrence

[This is a shortened and edited amalgam of two papers I gave in early-October 2018, one for the University of Kent and one for a conference called Sensory Experience in Rome's Northern Provinces hosted by the Roman Society at Senate House in London. Go to #SERNP2018 to see lots more about this]

Archaeologist Lindsay Allason-Jones, a visiting fellow at Newcastle University recently said, ‘It wasn’t until I wrote a book from the point of view of a Romano-British woman that I started to think about things like where did she keep her house key?’  

This is what I have discovered. As I write characters who have adventures in the ancient world, I have to imagine them moving through space with the sights, sounds, smells, and all other sensory experiences in order make it seem real to my young readers. This is especially important for children who need to be grounded in a sensory world. 

Here is how I used the seven senses to portray Roman Britain in my most recent series of books for kids, the Roman Quests, and also in my new work-in-progress The Girl with the Ivory Knife, in which a 12-year-old London schoolboy travels back in time to 3rd century Londinium (Roman London). 

SIGHT is the first of the five senses. For my Roman Quests I wanted to get an overview of what Roman London would have looked like. 

Model of London's port at Museum of London Barbican 

• Ruins aren’t so helpful to me… I need more
• Museums are useful, with their statues, inscriptions and artefacts. The Museum of London and it’s archaeology department MOLA gave me tons of material. 
• Models are very special. Storytellers know the power of the miniature.  
• Interactive maps like the one produced by MOLA are super.

superb Bath Roman Baths

• 3D computer walk-throughs on YouTube are too clean but often introduce light effects. 
• Google maps and Google Earth help me get a birds’ eye view of the terrain or walk along a road from Chester to Leicester, for example. 
• Alan Sorrell’s marvellous paintings and drawings. See my blog about him HERE. 
• Visiting sites like Butser Ancient Farm, Bath Roman Baths & Fishbourne provide 3D spatial and sensory experiences especially when they are peopled by re-enactors. 

Hard to Be a God (2013)

• Re-enactment events provide an abundance of unexpected revelations especially when they are performed by those who are passionate about getting details right. I particularly admire the members of Britannia, the Ermine Street Guard and Leg II Augusta. 
• Watching movies. For my book set in Roman London, a place you would NOT want to visit, I watched Hard to Be a God (2013), like Fellini Satyricon only with more mud, excrement and chickens. 
• Film sets can give you inspiration, too. 

London’s Mithraeum hadn’t reopened when I was writing the Roman Quests and besides, those books are set in the late first century. But I could use the Mithraeum for my new work in progress about the boy travelling back in time.

For my Time Travel book, I tried to think of things we don’t see today that would have been commonplace then. 
• A sky full of stars
• Crucified man on a cross
• People in rags and barefoot
• Indoor darkness – a world with no electricity
• Someone carrying a torch, a very symbolic object
• Someone with a staff (Main purpose? To beat off dogs!)
• The different stages of animal sacrifice
• A mind-boggling array of diseases & deformities
• Especially eye infections, skin disorders and toothache

For the first time I could relate ancient objects to modern ones. E.g.
• A tunic could be described as a big T-shirt and a toga as a blanket
• Mithras’ Persian cap is like a Smurf hat
• A Mithraeum initiation could be described as a flight simulator 
• And the seven grades as ascending levels of a video game...

Sophie Jackson on what smells to put in the Mithraeum

SMELL is one of the most evocative senses, and one of the hardest to convey in words. Giacomo Savani, one of the organisers of the conference, started with a quote from Rosemary Sutcliffe in which she speaks of the ‘blue reek of wood-smoke’. Evidence hints that my time travelling boy Alex might have  smelled burning pine cones in London’s Mithraeum, which he will use as the site of a portable portal to third century Londinium. However, Sophie Jackson (above), one of the key archaeologists involved in recreating the Mithraeum Experience, said the smell of men, cooked chicken and damp might have drowned out any pine freshness! 

A Saturnalia dinner with Stephen Cockings

Other scents from Roman London:

• To Alex, a girl smells like apple pie (clove oil for her aching teeth) and church (frankincense perfume)
• Someone’s breath smells of garlic
• Alex gets headache from breathing oil lamp smoke 
• He also smells the peaty smell of outdoor braziers
• And the roast pork smell of body being cremated 
• With an undercurrent of incense burned against demons

Smelly and Tasteable things

TASTE is one of the easiest of the senses to tap into.
• Posca, water with a splash of vinegar, was often drunk by soldiers.
• I make mine with red wine vinegar but you could use white, too.
(Adding even a little wine or vinegar to water kills bacteria. The Romans didn’t know about bacteria, germs or viruses but somehow they knew adding vinegar to water was good.)
• Honey was a hot food, prescribed for those of a phlegmatic humour. 
• Olives, especially the little bitter black ones are ‘a taste as old as cold water…’ (Lawrence Durrell in Prospero’s Cell)

ELMA mastic gum from Chios

• How did they serve a hot sausage in Roman London? Probably with a cabbage leaf wrapper. A clever idea I got from a fast food stall at a Reenactment event.
• Mastic gum. One of the sniffable objects at the Museum of London’s Roman Dead exhibition (on until 28 October) is something called mastic. I first discovered mastic while reading the first century AD epigrams of Martial. He talks about a man who picks his teeth with a mastic toothpick. But it was mainly used as gum to be chewed to freshen the breath. In fact, we get the word ‘masticate’ from mastic. Read more HERE.

SOUND is harder to replicate than taste in my opinion, especially music. Armand D’Angour has been doing fun experiments into ancient Greek music and I often listen to Indian music to try to get an idea of how exotic Roman music might have sounded. We do know about other sounds, such as: 

interactive sound at Museum of London Docklands

• The crowing of a rooster or cluck of chickens in the street
• Dogs barking in the night 
• The wailing of bereaved, more common and more audible then? 
• The shouts of peddlers, bread sellers, a rag-and-bone woman...
• Tepidarium echoes with the sound of slaps and grunts of masseuse
• Blacksmiths hammering
• Door hinges squeaking
• Bells and rattles to frighten off demons and cover unholy sounds

TOUCH can be experienced not just with fingertips and lips, but also with our bare feet. Here are just a few a time traveller might have encountered in Londinium. 

interactive touch at Museum of London Docklands

• Wet grass against bare legs in a tunic
• Bare Feet on a muddy, gravel-studded road
• Or on a mosaic floor or on London brick
• Glutinous mud of the south bank foreshore
• Warmth of a kiln and hard-baked earth around it
• A piglet snuffling at someone’s armpit
• Itchy mosquito bites on bare legs
• Stepping in squishy, still-warm manure
• loom-woven linen & woollen belt pouch
• Carbantinae (one-piece leather shoes) rub top of feet
(The Roman Dead also has a display where you can touch a replica hobnail boot, top and bottom.)

KINESTHETIC means the awareness of the position and movement of the body. Many of the objects I’ve been talking about are interactive. You have to engage with them in a kinesthetic way. 

Richard and Caroline Lawrence in Nimes

• Wearing the clothes including hobnail shoes on the cobbled streets of a Roman town like Nimes.
• Playing with an oil-lamp or a pigskin lamp
• A Saturnalia Dinner
• Leather bikini bottoms as worn by girl acrobats
• NO Bogus Roman Handshake
• NOT using a sponge stick
• Trying out a wax-tablet
• Using a strigil and oil

Tom, Giacomo and Patty try out a strigil and scented oil

At the Sensory Archaeology Conference, co-presenter Tom Derrick brought homemade oil-based Roman perfume. To demonstrate the difference of smell in the bottle and on the skin he borrowed my replica strigil to let people rub his scented olive-oil on their arms and then scrape it off. One conference member, Mr. Colin Gough, observed, One thing that surprised me was the amount of oil left after a good strigiling (is that even a word?). Unless the Romans were a lot better at it there must’ve been a lot of sticky people leaving the baths plus the oil slick on the water! 

THE SIXTH SENSE is the final sense I want to think about. 

A double flame lamp at a Saturnalia dinner

Have you ever meditated about your site, your text, your historical character, your artefacts, your bones? By meditation I mean a contemplation of your world, characters, etc using your non-verbal visual imagination. It's like a virtual reality game but with added sounds, smells and things you would feel? If you meditate, try it. If you find meditation hard, try writing a fictional piece about your subject. Maybe not the main subject but something peripheral. Someone or something on the edges of your topic. You can even do a poem or haiku. 

At the moment I’m involved in a marvellous project based around the archaeology of the House of Amarantus in Pompeii. I had the idea to write a scene from the point of view of a sixteen-year-old slave girl who has recently arrived in Pompeii from Britannia. She sleeps on a mat in the doorway of her mistress’s bedroom. My idea of showing not telling the kids about the layout of the house is that she wakes up one night in pitch black and has to grope her way to the loo. 

So close your eyes for a moment and imagine waking up in the peristyle walkway of a fairly posh Roman house. Think of five different things your fingers might encounter as you push yourself to your feet and start to grope your way along the corridor. Think of five different things you might hear. Think of five different things you might smell. Where do you have to avoid evil spirits in the house? Think of five different ways your body is reacting to this night-time grope. 


Whether we are scholars, writers, historians, teachers or all of the above, let us study the past not just with our heads but with our hearts and with all the senses.

My Roman Quests are perfect for kids studying the topic of Romans in Key Stage 2. My first time travel book, The Girl with the Ivory Knife, is out early April 2019. It is based on real bones and sites from Roman London. 

Roman London’s ‘Grey Gold’

Caroline Lawrence & Simon Elliott

an interview with Dr Simon Elliott 
by Caroline Lawrence

Last month I went along to the Guildhall Library to hear historian and archaeologist Simon Elliott speak about the origins of Roman London. Simon’s PhD thesis was on the sources and supply of Kentish ragstone from which London was built.  

He agreed to a quick email interview and kindly answered my most burning questions.

The Guildhall Library, London

Caroline: Simon, I loved your talk about early Roman London and how most of the post-Boudican public buildings were built of Kentish ragstone because London has no stone of its own, only gravel, flint and clay. You called the Kentish ragstone ‘grey gold’. What does that mean?

Simon: It references the enormous scale of this industry in the upper Medway Valley which for 200 years provided the principle building stone for Roman London. The men involved at the top end of that industry made huge profits, both for the Emperor and his Imperial fiscus and for themselves. The stone itself is a fine quality limestone which is both wearable and durable, so perfect for use in the built environment.

Caroline: You had the brilliant idea to use meticulously drawn Ordnance Survey maps from the 18th century to locate possible Roman quarries, and you found five of them in Kent. Which is the most exciting of these?

part of London's Roman Wall featuring ragstone

Simon: Of the five Roman ragstone quarries I located during my research, all of which are huge in size, that at Dean Street above Maidstone is exponentially large. Running for 2.5km, it has an area of 356,400 square metres and would be the largest man made whole in Roman Britain, matching in size any of the metalla across the Empire. It was so large it may have had a canal down the middle to facilitate the transport of the quarried stone down to the River Medway for onward transport to London.

Caroline: You mention ‘metalla’. What does that word mean exactly?

Simon: Metalla is a term used across the Roman Empire to describe all mining and quarrying enterprises, especially those larger in nature such as the ragstone quarries of the upper Medway Valley.

Caroline: The Kentish quarries were all located near the Medway, a river which flows into the Thames estuary. You believe the heavy ragstone was shipped to London on a boat like the famous Roman barge found near Blackfriars and excavated by Peter Marsden and his team in 1962. What was special about ‘Blackfriars 1’, as it is now called?

Alan Sorrell's painting of a Roman barge

Simon: The Blackfriars 1 ship was a ubiquitous type of merchant vessel (of various sizes but similar design) found across the North Sea and British Isles region, built in a North Sea tradition rather than Mediterranean.  Crucially it had high sides and a wide beam to help it ride out the rough waters of north western Europe, this also aiding stability when operating in a riverine environment such as the Medway with a heavy load. That excavated in 1962 was important for our studies as it featured a load of 26 tonnes of Kentish ragstone.

Simon Elliott gives a talk at Guildhall Library

Caroline: So Blackfriars 1 sunk with all that ragstone still on board? That’s a lot of rock. Are you a sailor yourself?

Simon: I wouldn’t call myself a sailor, but I have friends who sail and they have kindly taken me along the route of the boats carrying the ragstone to London. It is a difficult journey and I have the utmost respect for them.

Caroline: I also loved your breakdown of a possible ‘pecking order’ of the running of the mines:

• PROCURATOR METALLORUM
(not THE Procurator of Britannia but one of his right-hand men)
• CONTRACTORS 
(probably Roman citizens)
• SKILLED WORKERS 
(e.g. those made iron tools to extract and shape stone)
• OVERSEERS or FOREMEN 
(probably freedmen)
• PAID WORKERS from LOCAL POPULATION
• FORCED LABOUR (CRIMINALS & SLAVES)

Can you tell me a little more about the contractors?

Simon: The contractors would have been metalla mercantile specialists employed by the procurator metallorum to run the operation from top to bottom, though I believe the State may actually have employed the military to run the ragstone quarries.

Kubrick's vision of a Libyan quarry from Spartacus (1960)

Caroline: What about those lowest on the pecking order, the slaves and criminals? You mentioned the opening scenes of the 1960 film Spartacus which shows the terrible conditions of a Roman mine in Libya. Do you think this gives a good idea of what life for a slave or condemned criminal might have looked like in the Kentish quarries (apart from the blistering heat, of course)? 

Simon: I think if you were condemned to work in the metalla as a punishment, or as a slave, your life would have been brutal and short. We have skeletal evidence to show such workers suffered multiple injuries before dying a miserable death.

Caroline: You mentioned that some of the five Kentish quarries had Roman villas nearby, suggesting that mine operators got rich. But I thought most Romano-British villas didn’t appear until the 3rd century. Isn’t Londinium ‘built’ by then? 

Simon:  We have villas appearing in the Medway Valley from the later 1st century AD, and in fact across Kent the villa ‘peak’ was actually the 2nd century AD after which there is a steady decline. The region didn’t feature a late flowering of villa culture as for example found in the south west.

Caroline: Finally, you mentioned a book you are writing about Septimius Severus. Can you tell us the working title and what it will be about?

Simon: This will be called ‘Septimius Severus in Scotland: the Northern Campaigns of the First Hammer of the Scots.’  It will tell the story, in full book form for the first time, of the brutal Severan campaigns in Scotland in AD 209 and AD 210.


Caroline: Thanks very much, Simon. I am hoping to go along to your evening talk on Later Roman London and the End of Roman Britain this Thursday 12 October at 6pm.

Simon Elliott has written Empire State, about the Roman Army NOT fighting in Britannia. His previous book, Sea Eagles of Empire, about the Classis Britannica and the Battles for Britain, won Military History Monthly’s Book of the Year 2017! 

He also features on a couple of episodes of Dan Snow’s History Hit.

And look out for his new book on Septimius Severus in Scotland. 

Jellicoe and the U Boats by Janie Hampton

There has been much in the news this year about the 1916 naval Battle of Jutland and the role of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe
(1859-1953)

But has anybody mentioned another Jellicoe who was also employed by the British Royal Navy and active during the First World War? I doubt it, because the other Jellicoe was a sea-lion. He belonged to Captain Joseph Woodward from Ramsgate, Kent, whose family had one of the first touring sea-lion shows. The sea-lions were trained to juggle, balance balls on their noses and dive for chocolates.
During the First World War, German U-boats were sinking tons of British merchant shipping. Captain Woodward was sure that Jellicoe and his under-water colleagues could help. Sea-lions have excellent underwater vision and hearing; can swim 25 mph (40 kph); dive repeatedly to a depth of 1,000 feet - 300 metres; and are as intelligent as dogs. The British ‘Board of Invention and Research’ agreed it was worth a try. Trials were undertaken first in an outdoor swimming pool, and then in Lake Bala in Wales. Captain Woodward’s idea was that Jellicoe would track the sound of a U-boat engine -however deep it was in the ocean- and swim towards it with a float attached to a cord. The Navy would follow the floats, and know that a U-boat was underneath. The first trick was to encourage them to track U-boats, and not fish. All went well, until they were put to work in the actual sea off Southampton. Despite wearing muzzles, they ignored the Royal Navy submarine, and went straight for the fish. The sea-lions returned home but after yet more training, in 1917 the experiment was abandoned. However, it was agreed that important developments in 'hydrophone science' had been made. Jellicoe and his comrades were demobilized and returned to civilian life. But Jellicoe’s career was not over. Hailed as "the actual Admiralty U-boat hunting sea-lion", he continued to perform in theatres such as The Hippodrome in London.

The Other Jellicoe

I first learned about Jellicoe when I found a yellowing press-cutting among my late uncle’s papers. The  Birmingham Mail revealed that in January 1921 Jellicoe was performing in the Victory Circus at Bingley Hall, Birmingham. This was not far from where my grandfather Rosslyn Bruce (great nephew of the afore-blogged Felicia Skene) was a vicar. He wanted to raise money for the poor children of Birmingham, and he loved animals. He persuaded Captain Woodward that Jellicoe would bring great publicity to the Fund – and, no doubt, the circus too.

Birmingham Mail January 14, 1921.

 "Extra-ordinary scenes were witnessed in Birmingham today," reported the Birmingham Mail, "when the sea-lion ‘Jellicoe’ drove to the Mail offices on his motor cycle combination." The convoy included two motor cars "decorated with flags and red, white and blue ribbons...Jellicoe was apparently oblivious to the flattering reception received from the huge concourse" – estimated to be the largest crowd ever seen in Corporation Street. "He sounded his horn repeatedly when anyone threatened to get in the way. Jellicoe’s instinct, however, is so intense that he requires little help to avoid obstacles. Throughout the journey he never seemed like losing control of his machine." No mention was made of Mrs Woodward, hidden beneath his flippers. "Arriving at the office of the Birmingham Mail, Jellicoe dismounted and proceeded up the steps to the front door. Introductions having been effected, Jellicoe indicated a desire to proceed to the editorial department and was directed upstairs." Around the neck of "this amphibious messenger" was a cheque for £251 8s 8d, raised at a charity concert for the Christmas Children’s Fund. "Jellicoe shook hands, saluted and descending the stairs, made his way to the motor cycle which he at once mounted and drove away, sounding his horn furiously to the great delight of the crowd." In the faded newspaper photo, my uncle Merlin, then aged 11, can be seen sitting in the side car beside Jellicoe as it travelled down New Street.
A year later Merlin Bruce went to Dartmouth Royal Naval College from where he became commander of an early aircraft carrier and was later awarded an OBE for defusing bombs.

Merlin Bruce RN, circa 1930

Since the 1960s, the US Navy has been training California sea-lions to locate sea-mines and lost divers, and even attach leg-cuffs to suspected saboteurs who can then be hauled to the surface. Sea-lions can also film live videos of the ocean floor with cameras attached to specially-designed harnesses. So far, the US Navy has not admitted to training them to drive motorcycles, with or without sidecars.

On friendly terms with its commanding officer, a sea-lion on board a submarine, 'Illustrated London News', 1919

www.janiehampton.co.uk





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Stig and Me by Tanya Landman

 Books can be transporting.  They can carry you into someone else’s head and allow you to see other lives, other ways of being.  They can show you different countries, strange worlds, alien planets. But sometimes the stories that are closest to home are the ones that have the most lasting impact.

As a child I never had any doubt that books were a world that welcomed me in – that the door was open and I was free to explore - because not only did I see myself reflected in them, with Stig of the Dump I saw the landscape of my childhood.  

Clive King grew up in Ash, Kent.  I grew up in Gravesend – not as scenic and certainly not as rural as Ash, but a place where there was evidence of chalk workings everywhere you turned.  

At weekends we’d sometimes go out to Trosley Country Park.  If I shut my eyes I can see the path we used to take through the beech woods (full of bluebells in the spring), and then through the line of smaller, scrubbier hawthorns, finally emerging on to the sunlit Downs .  The chalk hills rose almost like cliffs from a great patchwork of fields and villages that lay spread out at their feet. 

I remember sitting on the slopes, the feel of the sparse grass, the thin, dry soil that could be scraped off with your fingernails to reach the chalk beneath.   If you were lucky you’d feel the hard edge of a flint that could be rootled out with a little patience.   Sometimes you’d find one that showed signs of someone having worked it – Stig, maybe, or one of the other cavemen.  If we were feeling particularly energetic we’d walk down to the Coldrums – a long barrow that dates from around 4,000BCE and was, in my mind, one of the places cavemen could probably be found on Midsummer night.

Coldrum Long Barrow

One of my brothers was – and still is – passionately interested in all things prehistoric and his enthusiasm fuelled mine.  As well as the Coldrums we visited all sorts of sites.  Kent was rich with them.

At Kits Coty, my brother found an arrowhead in the ploughed field we’d crossed to get there.  I knew if I turned round quickly enough, I’d see Stig. He was there somewhere, watching us.  I made myself dizzy trying to spot him that day.

I returned to Stig of the Dump over and over again.  When my children were old enough I read it to them and was utterly delighted to find that it’s as funny and exciting and mysterious and magical as it was when I first encountered it. But I’m also aware that it’s not as profoundly personal to my boys as it was to me.

I owe a huge debt to Stig of the Dump.  It was the book that hooked me on books for life.  

Kits Coty

I think perhaps reading is like putting down roots: once you’ve anchored yourself in familiar soil, you can really start to flourish.  Your tendrils can then grow in any direction and you can explore the unfamiliar territory of worlds beyond your own. Once you’ve found a book that makes you feel welcome and at home, the sky’s the limit.