West Wall

Thomas Staub

W wall: width 3.65 m, max. preserved height 5.35 m (the level of the filling is slightly higher on this side than on the eastern side, thus the floor level of the room is ca. 1.35 m over the filling layer). The west wall of the cellar has, at its south corner, the door opening from room i with a modern door lintel. The southern doorframe is 0.22 m wide and protrudes slightly. The opening is 0.70 m wide and at least 1.20 m high. Whereas the southern frame seems to consist of incertum, the northern one shows some Sarno stone blocks (0.20 x 0.25 m), partly destroyed and covered by modern concrete. After ca. 0.40 m (width of the western part of the dividing wall of the cellar), the west wall recesses for about 0.05 m in relation to the door and the upper part of the wall. The wall consists of a mixed opus incertum of mainly Sarno stone but also lava, cruma, spolias of plaster and reddish mortar covered by modern concrete. The stone pieces are ca. fist large in size, in the lowest part also slightly larger (max. 0.15 x 0.10 m).
The wall above floor level shows more or less the same composition as the south wall, only the mortar appears slightly lighter, but this is probably due to the exposure to the sun. At about 1.60 m above floor level, once again holes are made into the wall, at 1.60 and 2.45 m height above floor level, and at 0.15 and 1.65 m distance from north-west corner (dimensions ca. 0.10 x 0.10 m). A hole visible near the south-west corner probably comes from a missing stone. The wall shows no traces of plaster. It is partly covered by modern concrete.