The Lost Palace

 It must have been quite a shock for the employee of the Water Board way back in 1960 when he'd been told to dig a trench in a field for a new pipe to be laid. It didn't happen because he discovered what turned out to be one of the biggest and oldest Roman palaces in the country. The clues were there with other finds from the same period found in the locality, but no one was expecting the extent of it it when that first team of specialists were sent in to survey it. This was only to follow after several years of annual digs. Fishbourne Palace was officially opened to the public in 1968 and generations of children, myself included, have been going there on school trips ever since!

You can see the full extent of the original palace in the first image below. Some of it has been covered up again to preserve what's there and a lot of it has had to remain hidden because it's under a housing estate. However, what is on show is still pretty impressive. It's thought that a client king called Togidubnus lived here. He was the chief of the local British tribe, the Atrebates, who were very pro Rome [unlike some of the others] and this was his reward for looking after the Roman interests in the area. The palace was occupied until c270 CE when it burnt down and was left as an uninhabited ruin. 

One of the things the site is most well known for is its range of mosaics. Some have been damaged in antiquity, others scarred by physical field boundaries or the plough. One has a later burial in the middle of it [one of four found] still in situ. What you get here though is the story of the site's evolution. When it was first built black and white squares and geometric patterns were all the rage and then later on more colour and a wider range of naturalistic motifs come in. In one of the photos you can see where the newer mosaic has been built on top of the original one. The piece de resistance though is the one with cupid sitting astride a dolphin. Its level of preservation is incredible. 

The other remarkable thing which survived was the layout of the original garden. As the archaeologists dug down they came across the planting pits and holes and from this along with contemporary sources they've recreated the design and included plants that are known to have been favoured by the Romans. The garden you can see today is only half the size it once would have been, but isn't it amazing that the layout of those hedges you can see are exactly what they would have looked like all those centuries ago. We were visiting after all the recent storms so the borders had gone over, but it was my first encounter with a cardoon which would have been preserved in honey and vinegar and flavoured with cumin. These type of snippets fire me...the Romans used ivy to make a black hair dye and violets to flavour wine.

This is a copy of a triclinium. They were often under the shade of the vines and were for diners to recline on outside. 

Finally just to round things up I've picked a few of the treasures on display in the small on site museum. The phallus often features on Roman finds because it was a symbol of good luck. In there we also have the charred remains of one of the three wells and an oolithic limestone Celtic Mother Goddess representing fertility.

Even though this is in Sussex I often wonder why I am far more likely to visit this sort of thing when I'm away on holiday. It must be at least 20 years since I last came, but I'm pleased we made the effort. For those who have a BBC Gardener's World voucher you can get free entry for one of you [check entry conditions]. I won't leave it so long next time!

Arilx