A substantial well-preserved chunk of what was an enormous Roman bathhouse complex was found in the 1970s, when 19th-century buildings were demolished. Since it was too fragile to leave exposed, it was buried again.
The most spectacular object in Chichester’s gleaming new museum is also the largest and costliest to display, filling the ground floor. When the £7m building opens to the public on Sunday, local people will be get the chance to see a treasure that has been buried under an unlovely car park for most of their lives.
A substantial well-preserved chunk of what was an enormous Roman bathhouse complex was found in the 1970s, when 19th-century buildings were demolished. Since it was too fragile to leave exposed, it was buried again.
The museum, designed by architect Keith Williams, had to be stepped carefully across a deep pit, which now reveals the Roman remains, 1.5 metres below street level, enclosed by glass cases holding the bits and bobs dropped by the last bathers almost 2,000 years ago: dress pins, ointment and oil jars, a regimental badge.
The concrete back wall is used for a film recreating the glory days, when the city was an important and wealthy Roman base, with fountains, marble columns, statues and frescos.
To the anguish of Annooshka Rawden, collections manager and an expert on Roman sculpture, the evidence is that the site was used as a convenient building-stone quarry as early as Saxon times, and by every generation after. The statues and carvings, useless for building, were probably burnt in a lime kiln.
The baths and the museum are on the narrow Tower Street, a stone’s throw from the market cross and the cathedral, which stand on what was the heart of the Roman town. Rawden prowls the streets looking for re-used lumps of her baths, but little has ever turned up, except for one beautiful bronze arm, and a one-tonne block – a nightmare to move from the old museum – carved with nymphs and an inscription to Jupiter, believed to be the base of a monumental statue.
Other Roman finds on display include what looks like large iron pincers, delicately described as “a farrier’s emasculator”, the only Roman iron animal testicle crusher found in Britain.
Myles Cullen, deputy council leader and project leader, is proud that a local authority has been able to build a fine public museum despite the recession. The price, literally, is abandoning free admission except for children under three (“Needs must,” he said sadly).
Not everyone loves the sleek cream, unashamedly modern newcomer in a city of russet-red brick. Although some locals hate even more the prospect of a commercial block of flats on the rest of the site, which will also help pay for the museum, there have been persistent moans about the design for years in the columns of the Chichester Observer. The museum has been called an eyesore, and likened to a warehouse or a 1930s cinema. One letter writer said the Stalag would be a better name than the Novium.
“Another said it can’t have taken the architect five minutes to design the facade – if only they knew,” sighed Williams. He was also responsible for the award-winning new Marlowe theatre in Canterbury, Kent, another pale building slid into an awkward site in the middle of a conservation area.
“You can’t please everyone, but I hope when people actually come and see it, and the vantage points it also gives from which to enjoy wonderful views of their fine city, they will learn to love it,” said Williams.
The creamy surface is crushed Bath stone, often used even in brick towns for important public buildings. “It says in a very subtle way: ‘look at me, I’m a bit special’.”
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