Roman London

The Mausoleum at Southwark

The most intact Roman mausoleum found in Britain, dug up beside Borough Market in 2023 with the largest mosaic London has seen in fifty years, and being kept where it lies for public viewing.

Mausoleum

Roman London did not stop at the river. The bridge landed on the south bank, in what is now Southwark, and a settlement grew there along the two roads that left it, Watling Street for Canterbury (Durovernum) and the Kent coast and Stane Street for Chichester (Noviomagus); its wealthier dead were buried beside those roads. The mausoleum found here in 2023 is a family tomb of some size, perhaps two storeys, with its walls and floors still in place: a mosaic at the centre, a raised platform round it where the burials were laid, and the lowest of its entrance steps. A second mosaic lies directly under the first, so the floor was raised during the building's life; both have a flower at the centre inside rings of border. The building was taken down almost to the ground, probably in the Middle Ages, and no coffins were left in it, but more than a hundred coins, pottery, roof tiles and scrap metal were, and more than eighty burials lay around it with bracelets, glass beads and a bone comb. The same dig found, in 2022, the largest Roman mosaic uncovered in London for fifty years, the floor of a grand building of about AD 200. The site is being redeveloped as the Liberty of Southwark, and the mausoleum and the mosaics are to be kept on the spot, on public view in the new buildings.

Where

Southwark Street at Redcross Way, SE1 1TA

Nearest station

London Bridge · 3 min walk

More in Roman London

• The Bridge9 min walk
• The Bath House at Billingsgate11 min walk
• London Stone12 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Cross Bones GraveyardMonuments & Ruins1 min walk
• The Boot & FloggerWine1 min walk
• Park StreetBeautiful Streets1 min walk

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