Monument record MDO18067 - St George's Road structure 01446

Sunken-featured structure terraced into slope found during the excavations at St George's Road in advance of the Dorchester By-pass construction. Undated but possibly late Roman or post-Roman in date.

A sunken-featured structure found during the excavations at St George's Road, undertaken by Wessex Archaeology in 1987 in advance of the Dorchester By-pass construction. The following description is abstracted from the final published report on the site (1). The numbers in square brackets refer to context numbers quoted in the report.

Structure [01466] was a subrectangular structure to the east of the rectangular enclosure on the eastern edge of the excavation. It consisted of a shallow chalk-cut feature 2.2m wide, at least 3.85m long and 0.13m deep. The base was generally flat, suggesting it had been terraced into the slope. The southern edge is bowed but the other sides are unclear because of erosion. The eastern side is beyond the edge of the excavation. A series of evenly-spaced stakeholes were found just inside the southern edge, possibly representing a wattle wall. Four postholes were found in the interior.

No dating evidence was recovered, but this structure was similar to those recorded at Poundbury, especially PR10, which was broadly dated to the 6th-7th century AD.

National Monuments Record, NMR Monument Record, SY 79 SW 57 (Index). SDO9937.

Wessex Archaeology, 1987, Dorchester By-pass (Excavation archive). SDO9385.

Woodward, P J and Smith, R J C, 1987, Survey and excavation along the route of the Southern Dorchester By-pass, 1986-1987 – an interim note (Article in serial). SDO9381.

<1> Smith, R J C et al, 1997, Excavations along the Route of the Dorchester By-pass, Dorset, 1986-8, 21-22 (Monograph). SDO9379.

Record last edited

Feb 7 2006 1:56AM