South Wall

Susanna Blåndman

The south wall is dominated by a 3.72 m wide shopfront doorway towards Via di Nola. The wall above the doorway is missing and the wall will therefore be described in two different parts, the east part and the west part. The wall is placed on the tufa stone foundation that runs along the south side of insula V 1. There are no remains of wall plaster on either of the two different parts of the south wall and no spolia.

The east part
The wall is built in opus testaceum. The bricks are 0.08 - 0.34 m long and 0.02 - 0.05 m thick, most of them are long. The uppermost part is missing. The mortar is brownish and tempered with lava and lime. Mortar is partly missing at the height of 1.18 m and 0.25 m upwards from that level. There is a minor damage in the west part, at the height of 2.25 m and 0.25 m upwards. The foundation beneath the wall is made of one tufa block and one block of Sarno stone. The tufa block, located to the east, is 0.87 m long. The block of Sarno stone is 0.20 m long. The visible height of the blocks after cleaning is 0.10 - 0.18 m. There are no remains of a floor in this part of room 3, but the filling material that now makes up the surface abuts on the tufa foundation. Minor remains of plaster can be found on the foundation, for example at 0.11 m; 0.46 m; 0.68 m and 0.75 m from the southeast corner of room 3.

The west part
The west part is also built in opus testaceum and some bricks are covered by a thin grey coating. The bricks are 0.06 - 0.30 cm long and 0.02 - 0.04 m thick, most of them are long. The uppermost part of the wall is missing. The mortar is brownish and tempered with lava and lime. A smaller amount of mortar is missing at the height of 1.20 m and 0.33 m upwards at the east side. The wall is placed on a single block of tufa that is at least 0.24 m thick, 0.81 m long at bottom and 0.70 m long at top. The bottom half of the north side of the tufa block is full of shallow lop-sided cuttings. No floor remains abut on the block, only filling material.