SDO9901 - 'Excavations at Somerleigh Court 1963' Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society

H.S.L. Dewar and G.N. Aitken, on behalf of the Dorset County Museum, directed rescue excavations close to the south terrace of Somerleigh Court, Dorchester during 1963. The site was being developed for a new premature baby unit at Dorset County Hospital involving the initial levelling of the ground. When Roman building remains came to light Dorset County Museum were contacted. It became apparent that two or three courses of well-built Roman wall had been removed by bulldozer. The resulting excavations showed that the wall was the south wall of a room or chamber with three phases of structural alteration. The latest phse included a coarse mosaic of red brick and grey limestone set in a chessboard pattern with a border of alternating bands of the same colours. The west wall was an interior one consisting of plastered panels above floor level. Earlier walls lay below the mosaic. Digging down against the inner face of the south wall, a well-built arch was found, filled with mortared flints. This was interpreted as a relieving arch above a pre-existing chalk cut pit. The east end of the mosaic was missing and seems to correspond with an excavation conducted by Moule in c. 1875 in which he found a plain red and white pavement. Fragments of what may have been a mid-Victorian opaque lampshade where found in the soft fill into which the bulldozer had sunk at this point. The east wall of the chamber could still be traced. Excavation outside the south wall revealed another wall 2ft beyond it. The space between the two walls contained material exclusively of 1st-2nd century date and may help date the building. Below the mosaic floor two earlier levels of floor could be discerned. To the west of the mosaic floor a small exposure of opus signinum was made. Limestone roof tiles, imbrex and tegulae tiles and hypocaust tiles were found during the excavations.