Their rooms were generally arranged in straight
rows along a corridor or cloister. Sometimes they had only one row of
rooms (Corridor House, Fig. 8); sometimes they enclosed two or three
sides of a large open yard (Courtyard House, Fig. 9); a third type
somewhat resembles a yard with rooms at each end of it. In any case they
were singularly ill-suited to stand side by side in a town street. When
we find them grouped together in a town, as at Silchester and
Caerwent--the only two examples of Roman towns in Britain of which we
have real knowledge--they are dotted about more like the cottages in an
English village than anything that recalls a real town (Fig. 10).

[Footnote 1: British examples have been noted at Silchester and
Caerwent, and in many scattered sites in rural districts. For Gaulish
instances, see Leon de Vesly, _Les Fana de region Normande_ (Rouen,
1909); for Germany, _Bonner Jahrbuecher_, 1876, p. 57, Hettner, _Drei
Tempelbezirke im Trevirerlande_ (Trier, 1901), and _Trierer
Jahresberichte_, iii. 49-66. The English writers who have published
accounts of these structures have tended to ignore their special
character.]

[Illustration: FIG. 7. GROUND-PLANS OF ROMANO-BRITISH TEMPLES. CAERWENT
AND SILCHESTER.]

[Illustration: FIG. 8. GROUND-PLAN OF A SMALL CORRIDOR HOUSE FROM
FRILFORD, BERKSHIRE.

(_From plan by Sir A.J. Evans._)]

[Illustration: FIG. 9. COURTYARD HOUSE AT NORTHLEIGH, OXFORDSHIRE,
EXCAVATED IN 1815-16. (Room 1, chief mosaic with hypocaust; rooms 8-18,
mosaic floors; rooms 21-7 and 38-43, baths, &c. Recent excavations show
that this plan represents the house in its third and latest stage. See
p. 31.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 10. DETAILED PLAN OF PART OF SILCHESTER. Showing the
arrangement of the private houses and the Forum and Christian Church.
(_From the plan issued by the Society of Antiquaries._) (See p. 31.)]

The origin of these northern house-types has been much disputed. English
writers tend to regard them as embodying a Celtic form of house;
German archaeologists try to derive them from the 'Peristyle houses'
built round colonnaded courts in Roman Africa and in the east. It may be
admitted that the influence of this class of house has not infrequently
affected builders in Roman Britain. But the differences between the
British 'Courtyard house' and that of the south are very considerable.
In particular, the amount of ground covered by the courts differs
entirely in the two kinds of h