Women and the recording of mosaics

Early records of Romano-British mosaics by women are in the form of tapestries, such as Mrs George's copy of the Littlecote pavement (c. 1730) and embroideries of the Bramdean and Crondall mosaics made in the 19th century. The first woman who recorded mosaics by means of drawings and paintings was Catherine Downes at Pit Meads, Wiltshire, in 1786-1787. A century later Eleanor Parker and Mary Hartley drew pavements recovered from successive excavations at Fifehead Neville, Dorset. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries Flora Bush drew the central compartment of the mosaic at Brislington, near Bristol, and in the late 1920s and early 1930s Tessa Verney Wheeler made coloured tracings of mosaics at Lydney and Verulamium.