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Late Extra from the Underground

Page history last edited by Tess Barrett 13 years, 1 month ago

 

The Trust is now well advanced in the preparation of the first of its fascicules in which the final reports on its excavations are to be published. Here, Ben Whitwell, Deputy Director of the Trust, summerises the final report on the excavations of the Roman sewer in Church Street (INTERIM vol 1 no 1).

 

The history of the area from late Saxon times onwards is discussed by David Palliser. Just the period, sadly, for which archaeological evidence from the excavations is lacking, destroyed mainly by the digging of 19th century climate and inevitably further obliterated by construction work for the very development which led to the discovery of the sewer and the Roman building beside it. However, the walls of Roman buildings stood hereabouts as ruins in late Saxon and early medieval times. The fragment of wall excavated by the Trust on the corner SW of Swinegate where Peter Dominic’s shop now stands bears witness to that, as levels containing 11th to 12th century pottery ran up to the wall which stood to some height at the time. The name of the street which continues the line of Swinegate to the SE, Patrick Pool (in use by the 13th century), may imply the collection of water in subsistence over collapsed Roman buildings in the area. The street was marshy and impassable by the time of the 1249 inquisition and the ruins of Roman buildings and of the fortress wall and rampart may well have been responsible.

 

Records show that numbers 28-30 Swinegate were by 1836 occupied by the Lord Nelson public house, and this may well tie up with 19th century finds in the sewer. A brick-lined well was constructed over the sewer at about the right spot for numbers 28-30 and broke through one of the enormous brimstone roofing slabs and was thereupon abandoned and filled up with debris. Hence the numerous clay pipes which entered the sewer amongst the debrief they probably originated from the pub.

 

Paul Buckland, James Rackham, Harry Kenward and a number of colleagues have studied the environmental evidence obtained from the fillings of the sewer channels which must represent the last phases of use of the system in the 4th or 5th centuries. Their evidence suggests that the system may have had a variety of drainage uses. There is no fauna specifically associated with human faeces; though a particular concentration of fragments of the pupae of Psychodid flies, known as sewage finest, together with other species, in one side-passage (5) could be regarded as compatible with the use of this passage for sewage disposal. In alignment 2b the environmental evidence suggests use as a drain for waste water perhaps from the bathhouse. The noisome smell endured by Tony Sumpter in excavating the fills of this channel must presumably then be of other than faecal origins!

 

Tony Sumpter reports on the Roman pottery from the sediments in the sewer. The range in date is from 2nd to 4th century and points to the difficulty in explaining how the accumulation actually took place. Apart from the Victorian intrusion mentioned above, the majority of the fills contain only Roman material. Some material may have been deliberately dumped in the sewer when building operations were taking place above. These might disturb earlier levels and account for a wide date range in the pottery. However the site behind blocking A contain no pottery or finds later than the late 2nd or early 3rd centuries, and this must be the period when the diversion to alignment 2 took place. This pottery from the fillings does not of course help to date the construction of the sewer, though it is likely that its initial layout will have accompanied the construction of the fortress buildings in stone in the early 2nd century.

 

Arthur MacGregor reports on finds other than pottery, and there is quite a variety ranging from intagli to window glass. A number of glass vessels are unguent flasks of the type which would be expected in Roman baths.

 

The present writer describes and discusses the excavation of the sewer and the adjacent building excavated with great speed and efficiency by the Minster Archaeology Group. Enough has been said of the sewer itself time did not allow the total excavation of the building whose first phases of use and hence its relationship to the original sewer layout had to be left unexplored. The phases which were explored showed that a plunge bath complete with a plughole for drainage was converted into a hypocaust which was then bisected by a large drain. The internal width of the bath at nearly 6 metres suggests that this was part of a very large building. This impression is further enhanced by the provision of vaults across the sewer, each approximately two metres wide, to carry the weight of major structural walls. Could the building involved be linked with the bath building preserved below the Roman Bath Inn in St Sampson's Square? The legionary fortresses at Chester and Caerleon are now known to have internal bath buildings on a massive scale, and internal legionary baths have long been known in fortresses elsewhere in the Roman Empire. The principal function of the Church Street Sewer may have been to drain the baths. It does not lead into a main sewer running round the interior of the whole fortress, a system commonly adopted, but presumably had its own outsell under the main gate in King’s Square.

 

An objective of any future excavation in this area must certainly be to establish whether or not the legionary baths did in fact stand here.

 

 

J.B. Whitwell

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