EDO4690 - Gas Main, High Street, Fordington, Dorchester; casual observation 1903

A small piece of plain grey tesselated floor was found at a depth of 0.9m (3ft), during the laying of a new gas main along the southern edge of the roadway of High Street, Fordington in 1903 (1). "Oct 1 1903. At the south side of High St., Fordington, opposite the foundry, a Roman tessellated floor was found in a trench for laying gas-mains. At the end of each length of pipe the trench bottom was sunk to allow room for the joint flanges. In one of these sinkings, at 3ft 5in below the road level, it was that a piece of floor was uncovered. It was quite plain, of light buff tesserae 1/2in square. The piece seen was (say) about 18” square. After the writer saw the digging, when the tessellation looked like a bit of a worn-floor, it was found that it is part of a narrow strip. This is reported by the Rev. W. Miles Barnes ..." (2) This same floor was apparently encountered again in 1927, when a much greater area of mosaic was exposed and lifted (3) (4). The precise location of the 1903 discovery is not clear. The Ordnance Survey records state that the gas mains "extended NW-SE at a distance of 3.0 metres from the northern edge of this pavement" as shown on a Gas Board plan (5). The map accompanying Moule's manuscript list of Roman mosaics appears to show the location somewhat to the ENE of the mosaic found in 1927 (at SY69609073). Vidler locates the discovery to the SE corner of the mosaic exposed in 1927 (3), at SY69599073. The possibility must remain that the fragment of tessellated floor found in 1903 is from another floor in the same building as that found in 1927.