Roman Glass Research Project

Recycling may be in fashion today – but there is nothing new about it. In 2005 at 35 Basinghall Street London, a large dump of waste from a glassmaker’s workshop was excavated by the Museum of London Archaeology Service for Stanhope plc. This included thousands of fragments of broken glass and production waste which would have normally have been melted in a furnace and used to create new vessels, and it seems to have been dumped and abandoned when a glass workshop went out of use.

When the Romans invaded Britain in AD 43 glass vessels were expensive luxury items imported from the continental glass workshops in Italy and Gaul. Glass was more widely used in the countries bordering the Mediterranean where the invention of glass blowing in the mid 1st century BC meant that glass vessels could be mass produced. In Britain they were quickly introduced after the conquest, perhaps as essential elements of a Roman lifestyle, and are found in increasing numbers in the new frontier boom towns, such as London. With the glass vessels came a new industry – glass working, to supply local demand and the site at Basinghall Street is going to provide important new evidence about this industry.

This website tells the story of the discovery, and how John Shepherd and I, with other colleagues, are working on this amazing collection of glass in order to learn more about the glassworkers of Roman London.