Episode 5

It's September and the villa is rapidly taking shape. Work gets underway on finishing the bath house and finally plasterer Tim can begin the mammoth task of plastering over 3,000 square metres of walls using an experimental Roman recipe. He is determined to do it all on his own and clashes with foreman Jim, who thinks he should accept help. A new carpenter arrives on site to make the windows and doors for the villa, all without modern power tools, of course. Labourer Ben is given the task of laying his mud bricks and covering the wattle and daub with a mixture that includes animal dung. As usual his work rate fails to impress Jim and even his mates despair of the time it's taking him. Brickie Darren has to master the art of stonemasonry as he sets about creating the villa's impressive entrance columns, chiselled out of solid sandstone blocks. And the bath house nears completion, but a test firing of its under-floor heating system ends in a cloud of thick smoke.