Dear Father

I went today to the Roman Villa at Brading, and though I made out nothing very definite I will give you an account.² The villa is on a ploughed field which has a fairly regular slope of nearly 3^o towards the S or S.E.

I should not wonder if the field had been in cultivation ever since the Romans; I tried the depth of mould in two places about 4 yards from each other, and it was rather over 3 feet, and 4 feet; but from what I was told by one man, and by the look of a hole in another part, & by the depth to bottom of foundations, I think it is over 5 feet deep in parts. The mould rests on a hard deep red compact sand, so hard that you could not dig it with a spade but required a pick the proprietor & finder of the villa told me.³

The remains consist of tessalated and I think sort of concrete pavements of little squares about 1 inch in size, surrounded by walls of about 1 foot in height. The tops of these walls were covered to various depths, in some cases only being 4 to 5 inches below the surface so that the owner told me that for the last 30 years he had occasionly struck them with his plough, and in other cases as much as 15 to 18 inches. I examined with the owner one spot of 15 inches in dept, and he said there was pure mould to within about 4 or 5 inches to top of walls, & then there was mixed mould and stones mortar and loose rubbish from the destroyed walls. *Where I saw the top of wall only 4 or 5 inches below the surface, there did not seem to be loose rubbish on top of them, but the mould on top did not appear to be so pure. Not far from where the top of walls appear so near the surface I saw by holes that had been dug that the mould was of a considerable depth therefore though the spot where the wall came so near the surface was perhaps 20 to 25 yards higher up in the field than the part I measured where there was a depth of 15 inches, I doubt whether the slope of rather less than 3^o (or 1 in 19.) could have had much to do with it. The proprietor convinced me that the foundations, which were about 3 ft 6 (roughly) below the tessalated pavements and therefore about 5 ft 9 below the surface of the field where I examined it, rested on the hard red sand; therefore I cannot think that the foundations have sunk, but I had no chance of examining whether there were any worms which were working in the red sand, as only a very narrow ditch had been dug close to the wall which had been partly filled in, but we sounded down on to the red sand with a heavy pointed iron bar which came up all red; I saw no trace of red worm casting and I should think the sand would be too hard to tempt the worms down.

The floors of most of the rooms were on the same level, but a few which were supposed to be offices as they had not ornamental pavement varied in level one with the other. On the whole the floors were level, but in 2 rooms which I measured by laying a board along them the floors sloped 1^o degree in the same direction as the field itself.

In one of the rooms with a beautiful tessalated pavement there was an uneven sinking at the lower end below the general level of the floor of 4 or 5 inches (I unfortunately forgot to measure this and I only judge by memory) the pavement was fairly perfect where this sinking was, but he told me that they had taken out 20 tons (probably meaning loads) of stones and rubbish from this spot so that one cannot say how much the weight had to do with it

The largest room which is 40 by 18 at one end and 40 by 15 at the other, was very fairly level, though perhaps sloping a little to S.E. (the cantankerous agent of this part of building would not let me measure and was most indignant at my taking a worm casting) in one part there was a depression, (but not so great as in other room) where the tessalated pavement was gone, which had just the look as if it had been dripped upon thro’ a hole thro’ the roof; this floor had also had a mass of rubbish removed from it, and the agent said he supposed the depression to be caused by falling in of roof, which was made of heavy slabs of limestone or marble split into pieces of perhaps $\frac{3}{4}$ of inch thick.

The field itself was full of worm castings, and I was told by the under agent of the big room, that he had to continually sweep them off, especially on Monday morning. I saw several signs of castings on the edges of the room that had not been swept away, and I send you 3 samples which came up between the small square bits of pavement; these I took up myself from 3 different parts of the building— all the castings I saw looked like pure mould. The proprietor of the part I was able to examine said there were plenty of worms in the rubbish they had removed from the pavements.

Where the hypocaust⁴ had been the floor of which was lower by 1 ft to 1 ft 6 than the tessalated pavement. I was able to examine to the depth of a foot or so the wall which separated the hypocaust from a room covered with pavement.

This wall consisted of large flints lumps of chalk a large pieces of apparently not hard limestone full of shells and lumps of mortar; the interstices were full of mould and worm holes, and here & there was a casting, and it looked as if the mortar had to some extent been replaced by mould. Unfortunately I had no chance of seeing what was under the tessalated p. as they had not touched it in any place, but as the castings appeared all to be of pure mould, and as the floors has so fairly kept their level, it seems probable that the foundation of the pavements was made like the wall I have described as being next to and a foot or so lower than the pavement

Would it not be likely that the worms might be continually bringing up mould through the pavement, and that any interstices in the rubble below would be filled up by worms working from outside, so that the mould would rise on the pavement without much if any sinkage.

If there are any points to be examined I should enjoy going again.

You will see by slip that villa was inhabited till 4^th century. I should like the slip again⁵

I hope to go to Beaulieu soon.⁶

I shall like very much to see Geikie at Christmas⁷

Your affect son | W. E Darwin

*all the walls of the house itself appeared to be about the same depth from the surface namely 15 to 18 inches   where I measured the depth was 15 inches, the agent of part of building where I was not allowed to measure said the depth was about 18— the part where there was only a depth of 4 to 5 inches seemed to be a narrow outhouse or passage with plain concrete bottom, in which I only saw one trace of a worm hole and no castings.