Following on from my post about why Roman ghosts were not a nineteenth century thing I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what was mentioned in English language newspapers in Wales about a single  Roman site during the nineteenth century.

I chose Luentinum, nowadays identified with Pumsaint in Carmarthenshire for no other reason that it was mentioned in one of Alis Hawkins’ Teifi Coroner novels set in the mid nineteenth century.

While nowadays it is usually referred to as Luentinum, in the nineteenth century it was more commonly referred to as Loventium, and is close to the Roman gold mines in Wales and sat at the junction of the Sarn Helen, Hen Fford and Fford Fleming roads. It is also mentioned in the seventh century Ravenna Cosmography so was known to antiquarians and classicists – it’s worth remembering that for much of the nineteenth century our knowledge of the Roman world came via the study of the classics and not from archaeology.

Edward Lhwd first identified the likely location of the site in the 1690‘s when tracing the Roman roads in the area.

As the site was well known it’s not surprising it was mentioned several times in newspapers in the nineteenth century, in 1806, 1857, and 1861, but the site remained comparatively remote and inaccessible until the coming of the railway in the mid 1860‘s after which the site became more visited.

As far as I can tell the first excavations at the site were not until 1887 after which time you start to see Field club and local antiquarian society excursions to view the remains and perhaps walk stretches of the Roman roads in the area.

While the site was known, it is only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that it attracts any substantial interest, perhaps (a) because of its increased accessibility, (b) an increase in leisure time and wealth allowing local historical and archaeological societies to sponsor excavations and organise excursions to the site.

Of course there needs to be little bit of care in interpreting these results – in the early nineteenth century English language newspapers in rural Wales would only be read by the English speaking gentry, who would have been a comparatively small part of the population.

The local Welsh speaking peasantry wold have been more concerned with surviving than with Roman remains and it’s noticeable that apart from a single mention of Loventium in 1875, there is no mention of the site in the Welsh language press until the 1890‘s.

So really, it is only with the development of an anglophone middle class with sufficient leisure and wealth to indulge their interests that one gets a critical mass of individuals interested in archaeology and archaeological remains.

Given the late nineteenth interest in self improvement, this is not terribly surprising.

Ideally I’d like to also investigate mentions of Loventium in the guidebooks of the time, but as yet I have not been able to track down any digitised sources …