EDO4604 - Somerleigh Court, Dorchester

H.S.L. Dewar and G.N. Aitken, on behalf of the Dorset County Museum, directed rescue excavations close to the south terrace of Somerleigh Court, Dorchester during 1963, when the site was being developed for a new premature baby unit at Dorset County Hospital. Roman building remains were encountered during the initial levelling of the ground and about two or three courses of well-built Roman wall had been removed by bulldozer. The excavations revealed a small room or chamber, which formed part of a larger building. Parts of the walls on all four sides of the room were exposed, but in the eastern end the remains had been seriously disturbed. There was apparently an entrance in the west end of the south wall. The room had a tesselated floor of red and grey coarse tesserae in a chess board pattern with a border of alternating bands of red and grey. The tesselated floor was constructed over an earlier chalk floor, which was laid on top of a thick layer of fill. Painted wall plaster was found overlying the floor suggesting the walls were plastered and painted. At the east end of the south wall, below floor level was a relieving arch over an earlier pit cut into the chalk. To the west of this room, part of an opus signinum floor was uncovered. This is likely to be from the same building and is probably part of the floor of the adjacent room to the west. To the south of the room, another wall was found running parallel and 0.6 m south of the south wall. The damage to the mosaic and walls at the east end was probably the result of the digging of a drain trench in c. 1875, which came across a plain red and white mosaic and a thick wall (2). This mosaic is probably the same one as exposed during the 1963 excavations and the thick wall was probably the remains of the two closely-spaced walls found to the south with rubble infill between. Limestone roof tiles and ceramic roof and flue tiles found during the excavations were probably debris from the building (1). The groundworks for the new premature baby unit were subsequently observed by C.J. Sparey Green (EDO4602) (2).