EDO3733 - Wessex Court, Charles Street, Dorchester; Trench 3

Trench 3, together with Trenches 1 and 2, comprised the first phase of archaeological excavations conducted by Wessex Archaeology in advance of the proposed Wessex Court retail development, Charles Street, Dorchester. Trench 3 was located just to the south of Acland Road Evangelical Church in order to further clarify the location and form of the Dorchester Late Neolithic Timber Monument and investigate the sequence along the Acland Road frontage. Trench 3 contained three further Late Neolithic postpits of similar form to those excavated at Greyhound Yard (1), and exposed in Trench 1 at Wessex Court. However, they were on a slightly different alignment, more strongly to the SW, giving a tighter than anticipated curve between trenches 1 and 3. The associated external ditch revealed in Trench 1 did not continue into Trench 3. The southernmost of the three pits was excavated. Early Roman features in Trench 1 comprised part of the internal structure of a timber building defined by postholes and a slot, cut into a later 1st century AD layer containing abundant domestic material and structural material including three antefixes and a Durotrigian coin. Other early Roman features were slight and irregular in form, although four pits may be associated with activity within a yard at the rear of the structure outlined above. A well was uncovered in the NE corner of the trench. Part of a late Roman stone building aligned N-S was exposed. Parts of two rooms and a corridor along the east side were defined, with a possible entrance to the east with a chalk path. The northern room contained an oven and a square stone lined tank set into the floor. The southern room contained a pottery vessel set into the floor, empty but covered with a limestone slab upon which an infant burial had been set. Chalk floors had evidence of much use and repair. Three pottery vessels had also been set into the floor of the corridor. Another wall to the east of this building may be remains of an earlier structure or a wall marking the northern bounds of a courtyard. Features stratigraphically above the late Roman levels but still containing exclusively Roman pottery dated from the 5th and 6th centuries AD. These included an extensive stone spread, roughly levelled, east of the late Roman building, cut by or containing possible gullies. A robber trench was also cut by a post-hole on line with it, and a pit cutting the latest levels slumping into the well was locate at the west end of the trench. Further robbing of late Roman walls occurred in the medieval and post-medieval periods. These layers were sealed by a cultivation soil containing some 16th-19th century pottery.