The everyday rubbish discarded by ancient Londoners will be the centrepiece of a major new exhibition at the London Museum’s Smithfield home next spring.
Londonium, as it was known when it was founded in 47–50 AD, began as a strategic trading post and port before growing into the capital of the Roman province of Britannia.
At the time, people casually discarded daily-life items, including wax tablets, coins, and even a toddler’s feeding bottle, which now offer valuable insight into the period.
Londinium: The Making of a Roman City brings them together, showcasing hundreds of artefacts never previously displayed to the public.
The objects were unearthed in the City of London during a dig carried out between 2012 and 2014 to make way for Bloomberg’s European headquarters, and together they form the Bloomberg Collection.
More than ten years of painstaking research and promises culminated in the exhibition, which is set to open at the new London Museum next Spring.
Among the most striking pieces is a child’s feeding bottle, a vessel type found throughout the former Roman Empire.
What sets this particular example apart is its decoration featuring Bacchus, the deity associated with wine and fertility.
The everyday rubbish discarded by ancient Londoners will be the centrepiece of a major new exhibition
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One particularly intriguing wax tablet, dubbed the “alphabet tablet”, bears the scratched-out letters of the Roman alphabet, although this was almost certainly not a child’s schoolwork.
Professor Alex Mullen, of the University of Nottingham, who has led much of the research alongside the Museum of London Archaeology, suggested the artefact could show Roman soldiers being taught to write.
“He might be a military guy who has been recently recruited and is realising how important it is in a military context to write to get on, or it may be a trader who realises that everyone’s writing their accounts now,” Professor Mullen told The Times.
Other tablets in the collection are more official, including letters and financial records. One, known as the “account of Crispus”, documents the sale and delivery of beer.
The everyday artefacts give an insight into life in Roman Britain
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The exhibition will be far from a conventional museum display. Journey, the creative company behind War Horse, is producing projections that narrate personal stories from the period and visualise the city as it was constructed under Roman rule.
A meticulously researched soundscape will fill the space with the languages that once echoed through Londinium’s streets.
“We’re putting in Latin, British Celtic, a little snippet of Greek,” Professor Mullen said.
“There are Britons, Romano-Britons, Romans, Gallo-Romans, people from the Eastern Empire, enslaved and free people, soldiers and traders.
“What we’re recreating in the exhibition is the complexity of lives and the range of everyday voices,” he promised.
The exhibition is housed in Victorian vaults beneath the museum’s new Smithfield premises, uncovered seven years ago during the renovation of the General Market building.
It is believed to have served as storage units and will be made accessible to the public for the first time.
The London Museum is due to open at its Smithfield site next month.
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