Rothamsted Roman Mausoleum
About
A circular mausoleum roughly five and a half metres across once stood inside a walled precinct at Rothamsted, built for a single high-status Romano-British family. Excavators in 1936 and 1937 uncovered its flint foundations and two pilasters that likely flanked the entrance doorway, along with grave goods dating construction to the second quarter of the second century CE. Archaeologist Anthony Lowther first identified the ruin, now recognized as a rare surviving example of Romano-British elite funerary architecture. It rose one to two decades after Trajan's death, so it postdates the 117 CE snapshot.
What happened here
The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →