Monument record MDO18612 - Colliton Park, Dorchester; Roman Building IV

The remains of a small Roman building were exposed in the SW part of Colliton Park during excavations in 1937 and 1938. Building IV comprised a rectangular block aligned roughly E-W and divided into three rooms, with a porch on the middle of the south side. The walls of the building were generally well-preserved, except for the porch. They were well-constructed with courses of herring-bone flint or coursed limestone and limestone quoins. The floors were generally fairly poor, constructed of chalk and patches of mortar. An infant burial with a coarseware pot was found beneath the western internal partition wall. A number of earlier features, including an oven were found beneath this building. This building was thought to have been built in the 3rd century and continued in use through the fourth century. Its precise function was not determined.

The remains of a small Roman building were exposed in the SW part of Colliton Park during excavations in 1937 and 1938. Due to the outbreak of World War II, the excavations were never completed or written up. The following account is based on the interim report <3> and the Royal Commission Inventory entry <5>.

The complete plan of a small Roman building, comprising a rectangular block aligned roughly E-W and divided into three rooms, with a porch on the middle of the south side was exposed. Another fragmentary wall was found immediately to the west, but its relationship to this building is not recorded. The walls were well-preserved and survived to a height of 0.75m, except for the porch, where only the lowest course remained. The walls were well-constructed of courses of herring-bone flint or coursed limestone and limestone quoins. The south wall was faced externally with limestone. The internal walls were more irregular. None of the walls had any evidence that they were originally plastered.

The western room had a rough floor, apparently using the natural chalk surface in the south and in the north it had been levelled up with chalk and mortar. It contained no internal features, but there was an infant burial with a coarseware pot beneath the internal partition wall. The central room had a floor comprising patches of mortar on a hard-packed chalk surface. In the two southern corners of the room there were two small rectangular stone bases built roughly of limestone with traces of burning on them. A third small stone base was found against the north wall , but this was not burnt. A number of earlier features, including a possible robbed-out oven were found beneath the floor of this room. The eastern room the floor comprised a layer of mortar with a packed chalk surface above. The remains of an earlier oven lay beneath the northern end of this room.

This building was thought to have been built in the 3rd century and continued in use through the fourth century. <5>

(Centred at SY 69009090) Six Roman buildings found in Colliton Park, by Lt. Col Drew and Mr. Collingwood Selby prior to the erection of a new County Hall. Building 4, was of three rooms with well preserved flint and limestone walls, and roughly floored. Probably a 3rd century building deliberately destroyed in the 4th century. (3-5)

Rigg, J, Field Investigators Comments JR, F1 JR 01-SEP-54 (Unpublished document). SWX1255.

Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1939, Journal of Roman Studies, 219 (Serial). SDO20471.

Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1998, Britannia: a journal of Romano-British and kindred studies 29 (Serial). SDO19422.

Barton, J G, Various, Field Investigators Comments JGB, F2 JGB 10-OCT-80 (Unpublished document). SDO11900.

<1> Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1932, Journal of Roman Studies 22, 45 (Serial). SWX3247.

<2> Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1938, Journal of Roman Studies 28, 193-4, 206 (Serial). SWX2199.

<3> Drew, C D, and Collingwood Selby, K C, 1938, 'The Excavations at Colliton Park, Dorchester: Second Interim report; Excavations carried out in the season of 1938' Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 53-57 (Article in serial). SDO9765.

<4> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1937-1938, Colliton Park, Dorchester (Excavation archive). SDO10066.

<5> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 2, 560 (Monograph). SDO149.

‘Monuments (182–187), in Colliton Park, now occupied by the County Council offices, were excavated in 1937–9 by C. D. Drew and K. C. C. Selby. Interim reports appeared in Dorset Procs. LIX (1937), 1–14, and LX (1938), 51–65. Where the following accounts differ from these reports they are based on unpublished finds and site notebooks in D.C.M., and on a re-examination of the visible remains including the re-exposure in 1959 of the floors of rooms 14 and 18 of Monument (182). For the street and water conduit also excavated by Drew and Selby, see Monuments (180) and (227b). (185) BUILDING, probably a small house, S. of (184) and on exactly the same alignment as the S. range of (182), was a well-preserved rectangular block of three rooms, entered by a central porch to the S. The significance of a length of wall to the W. is uncertain. (68959081; Building IV in interim report, Drew and Selby, op. cit. (1938); Figs. below and p. 554, Plate 222.)

The building measured 51 ft. by 21½ ft. overall. Its main walls, surviving, except in the porch, to an even height of 2½ ft., perhaps the original height for a timber frame, were neatly constructed, mainly of herring-bone flint courses with lime-stone quoins, and were probably not plastered; the S. wall was faced externally with limestone. The floors, however, were poor, consisting largely of packed chalk. In the S. angles of the central room two small platforms of stone slabs showed signs of burning, as did the adjacent wall; a larger platform against the N. wall was unburnt. Both this room and the E. room overlay earlier pits, some containing shale (?) ash, and under the E. room was an oven, the stokehole of which accommodated some of the footings of the N. wall; the significance of post-holes here and in the porch is not discussed. The rooms communicated by doorways near the S. wall. An infant burial with a coarse ware pot of c. 250 or later underlay the W. dividing wall where it carried under the doorway (see Burial 215e). The porch, robbed more thoroughly or perhaps dismantled before abandonment of the building, was 8½ ft. wide internally and projected about 7½ ft. with dowel holes for a wooden door-frame set in limestone blocks 6¼ ft. apart. The building was thought to have been built in the 3rd century and to have been used until the end of the 4th century.’

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 453300 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Aug 22 2024 7:30PM