SDO9749 - Excavation at Wollaston House, Dorchester. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society

Excavation in the playing field of the junior department of the Gramar School was concluded early in the year. Since the excavations noted in PDNHAS, 71, 64-5, the construction of the Roman street has been examined at the point where it had been revealed in 1950 at the southern side of the field close to the back-yards of Wollaston Road and beneath the bank rising from the levelled playing field to the boundary wall (SY 69469053). The total road width was 16 feet, with a central 8ft wide cambered portion. The construction comprised a bottoming of flints in a sandy soil and four distinct layers of grouted flint metalling, with the three uppermost forming the central cambered section. The whole was sealed by a stony earth layer that contained some wall plaster. The street was possibly flanked by a side ditch or gutter cut in the chalk subsoil along the northern side. A deep vertically sided pit or well preceeded construction of the road on the south side with a small roadside gutter cut into the upper filling.