Trevor Bloom – Author

Visiting France this summer, we came across the Roman Baths at Longeas, a small hamlet just outside Chassenon in Charente. Regarded by archaeologists as among the best preserved thermae of their type in the territory of Ancient Gaul, and possibly in the whole of the former Roman Empire, the baths make up only a small part of the large Gallo-Roman town of Cassinomagus, which is recorded in Peutinger’s Table and lay on the borders of several tribal and later Roman districts. Large parts of the town still await excavation.

The baths were part of a large religious complex and were built around a temple dedicated to an unknown deity. There are 49 huge cisterns arranged in a grid pattern by the southern part of the temple, which were designed to stock water for the baths. An aqueduct supplied water to the town and close by are the remains of a theatre with a flattened semi-circular shape.

Particularly interesting was the use of concrete (opus caeminticium) which was made from slurry of lime, mortar and stone. The trace marks of the wooden forms and planking into which the concrete was poured can still be seen in the underground vaults. The limestone paving on the floor of the hot water pools and the brick pillars which once supported the concrete floor above the hypocaust are also very well preserved.

Like other baths, Chassenon had heated rooms (caldarium and sudatio), warm rooms (tepidarium) and cold rooms (frigidarium), much like a sauna or Turkish baths today. A substantial labour force would have been needed to build and maintain the baths, and huge supplies of timber from the surrounding countryside would have been required over the five centuries the baths were active.

The baths were abandoned early in the 6^th century and the site slowly disappeared under layers of earth until archaeologists excavated the area in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.