TURKISH BATH

Evening Star, Issue 20309, 18 October 1929, Page 12

TURKISH BATH

OF ANCIENT ROMANS Further light was recently thrown on the Roman Fort at Mumrilk, near Falkirk, and on the remains of Roman military bathing establishments when bir George Macdonald reported on the conclusions reached by A. 0. Curie and himself to the Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh Gays the Edinburgh correspondent of the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). Sir George Macdonald' said there were sufficient indications that the site had originally been selected by Agricola in A.li. 00. The Agricohin fort had not been occupied for any length of time—perhaps for only a einglc winter. Hut its remarkable size suggested that it bad been the headquarters of (he officer who was in general charge of the isthmus frontier. It seemed certain that the like honour fell to (he lot of Mumrills in the second century, when the Antonine wall was built. The commandant’s residence was laid nut on a scale of amplitude to which no parallel find yet been found in Britain. The commandant's house bad a chequered history. In the first place, it had been a spacious courtyard structure of daub and wattle on a timber framework. It had been destroyed by fire, rebuilt in stone, and its size considerably increased. Apparently the design proved to have been unnecessarily ambitious, for by and by the southern portion was demolished to make room for a suite of baths. All that would seem to have taken place in the first period. With the opening of the second period, the plan of the baths was radically altered, and the south-western portion of the house restored to its . original purpose. In the third period the main innovation was the erection of an unusual apartment evidently corresponding to a modern Turkish bath. The details of the various changes were exceedingly hard to follow, and some of them could never be determined with perfect certainty. But the exploration of the bath house, and a smaller one, afterwards discovered in the north-east corner of the fort, and in all probability intended for the use of the rank and file, had been extraordinarily illuminating.