TURKISH BATH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20789, 7 August 1929, Page 7

TURKISH BATH.

OP ANCIENT ROMAN’S. . Further light was recently" thrown on the.Roinan Port at Mmurills, near Palkirk, and. ba the remains of Roman military bathing establishments when i. Sir George Macdonald reported bn the icohclusions readied by A. 0.. Curie and Mm- ; self to the Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh; (says. the • Edinburgh' correspondent ■■ of the Christian Science Monitor). Vj.. Sir George Macdonald said there. were sufficient indications that the site had originally been selected 'by Agricola in A.D., 80. The Agricolan fort had .not been occupied any length of time—perhaps for. only a single winter, - But its remarkable size suggested that it' had'been the headquarters ,of the officer who- was; in . general charge of the isthmus frontier. It seemed certain that the.like honour , fell to the lot of Mumrills in the second" century, when the Antonine wall was built. The commandant’s residence was laid out on a-scale of amplitude to which ho' parallel had yet been foilnd in Britain, The commandant’s' house had' a chequered history. In the first place, it had been a - spacious, courtyard structure of daub and wattle oh a timber framework; It had been destroyed by fire, rebuilt ’in stone, and its size. considerably increased. Appatently the design proved to have been unnecessarily ambitious, for by and by 1 the southern portion was demolished t 6 make'room for a suite of/baths. All that would seem to have taken'place in the first period;' ■ . ■ i - ■ With the opening of the second priod, 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 ah 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 bathhouse, 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.