Monument record MDO18510 - Southfield House, Dorchester; Roman town defences

Part of the Roman town defences of Durnovaria were found during evaluation excavation by Wessex Archaeology at Southfield House, Dorchester in 1987. The outer ditch of the defences was revealed in three trenches but only single slot was excavated by machine through this V-shaped ditch. The counterscarp bank was found just to the south of the line of the outer ditch. From the published section this appears to consist of a primary clay bank about 5.5m wide forming the northern edge of the bank, with a series of clay and chalk rubble dumps behind increasing the width to about 23m. It survived up to 1.25m high. Finds in the makeup of the bank were dated to the 2nd-3rd centuries AD.

Part of the Roman town defences of Durnovaria were found during observations of engineer's test pits and evaluation excavation by Wessex Archaeology at Southfield House, Dorchester in 1986 and 1987 (1) (2) (3). The outer ditch was picked up in Trenches 1, 2A and 5, but only excavated in Trench 2A, where a machine-cut trench through it revealed a V-profiled ditch about 7m wide and 2.2m deep. The lower 0.75m of the ditch was filled with reddish-brown silty-clay with chalk wash on the north side. The remainder of the ditch was filled with dark brown humic soil. No dating evidence was recovered. Only a small part of the southern edge of the ditch was exposed in Trench 5, but the shallow nature of this edge suggested to the excavators that it was part of a ditch terminal. This appears to be confirmed by the results of the observations from Engineer's Test Pit 1, which did not pick up any trace of the ditch just to the west of Trench 5 (3). This part of the ditch is close to the line of the West Gate of the Roman town. Part of the middle ditch was picked up in Engineer's Test Pit 8, where brown clay ditch fill up to 2.5m deep was found above 0.6m of weathered chalk (3)

The counterscarp bank was found just to the south of the line of the outer ditch. From the published section this appears to consist of a primary clay bank about 5.5m wide forming the northern edge of the bank, with a series of clay and chalk rubble dumps behind increasing the width to about 23m. It survived up to 1.25m high. Finds in the makeup of the bank were dated to the 2nd-3rd centuries AD.

National Monuments Record, NMR Monument Record, SY 69 SE 323 (Index). SDO9937.

Trust for Wessex Archaeology, 1987, Southfield House, Dorchester (Excavation archive). SDO10060.

<1> Davies, S M and Thompson, C N, 1987, Archaeological Evaluation at Southfield House, Dorchester (Unpublished document). SDO9489.

<2> Davies, S M and Thompson, C N, 1987, Archaeological Evaluation at Southfield House, Dorchester, Dorset. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 126-129 (Article in serial). SDO9490.

<3> Pearce, P, 1986, Southfield House, Dorchester (Unpublished document). SDO9673.

Record last edited

Aug 22 2024 7:29PM