Monument record MDO18629 - County Hall; earlier Roman activity west of Street 575

A series of early Romano-British features were found to the west of street 575 during the 1988 Wessex Archaeology excavations at County Hall, Dorchester. These features consisted of a shallow N-S aligned ditch, parallel to the street, a kidney-shaped depression or scoop interpreted as a chalk quarry, and three other isolated features. This latter group comprises two post-holes and a pit sealed below the floor of the late Roman building 572. These features are poorly dated but probably represent activity dating between the late 1st to the late 2nd century AD.

Found during the excavations carried out by Wessex Archaeology in 1988 prior to the construction of the New Computer Wing and car parking facilities at County Hall, Dorchester (1) (2). The numbers in square brackets below refer to the context and feature numbers used in the published report (1).

To the west of the the N-S Roman street, several early Roman features were discovered, comprising a ditch, a quarry pit and three other isolated features dating to the later 1st and 2nd century AD. About six metres to the west of the Roman street was a ditch [435] about 1m wide and 0.27m deep, which ran parallel to the street. No dateable material was recovered from the fills of the ditch, but its alignment suggests it may represent an early boundary associated with the laying out of the street in the later 1st century AD.

In the area between ditch [435] and the Roman street was a chalk quarry, comprising two scoops forming a kidney-shaped depression or scoop 3.2m in diameter and 0.6m deep with a flat base. The fill comprised chalk rubble in a light brown soil matrix, which produced a single sherd of a 2nd century pottery vessel, perhaps indicating that the quarry was dug around the middle of the 2nd century AD.

Three other undated features probably belong to the late 1st-2nd century AD on stratigraphic grounds and comprise two post-holes [520] and [527], which lay on either side of ditch [435] and a pit [523] immediately west of the ditch. Pit [523] was circular, 0.64m in diameter and 0.2m deep, filled with dark grey silt loam dumped over the remains of at least 5 individual sheep burials.

Wessex Archaeology, 1988, County Hall, Colliton Park, Dorchester (Excavation archive). SDO10074.

<1> Smith, R J C, 1993, Excavations at County Hall, Colliton Park, Dorchester, Dorset, 1988 in the North-West Quarter of Durnovaria (Monograph). SDO9660.

<2> Smith, R J C, 1988, 'Excavations at County Hall, Colliton Park, Dorchester, 1988' Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 147 (Article in serial). SDO9661.

Record last edited

Aug 22 2024 7:30PM