SDO14082 - Stratton House Campus, Dorchester, Dorset. An Archaeological Field Evaluation

‘Context One Archaeological Services Ltd (COAS) carried out an Archaeological Field Evaluation on land at Stratton House Campus, Dorchester, Dorset (centred on NGR SY 69106 90775) over three days from the 23rd to the 25th August 2011. The Site was made up of tarmac-surfaced car parks north of the town centre and slightly north west of the centre of the Romano-British town, Durnovaria. It is in an area which has produced a rich harvest of Romano-British remains development led archaeology over the past 25 years. A total of five trenches were machine and hand excavated. All the trenches dug into deep brown soils which are a clear sign of ancient occupation of the Site and in one trench, in an area north of Shire Hall, a 2nd or 3rd century tessellated floor was found. The walls of the building surrounding it had been robbed. A similar floor was found in 1957 about 15m further north west. Another trench, north of Trinity Cottages, found a possible ditch or foundation trench of roughly the same date. Modern walls were discovered in two trenches, one of which also revealed a probable garden wall of the 18th or 19th centuries. The evaluation has shown archaeological features of the Roman period survive at depths varying from 0.75m to 1.40m below the surface and that any future development of the area would need to take account of this. A review of the archaeological literature also shows that extremely important Neolithic (New Stone Age) remains might be found if building work cut into the natural chalk.’