EDO4623 - Marks and Spencer's, 48 South Street, Dorchester; excavation 1936

In foundation trenching during 1936 for Mark's and Spencer's Store, 48 South Street, Dorchester, remains of a substantial roman building and a large 3rd century hoard of 22, 000 coins was discovered. A limestone wall nearly 3ft wide was noted 17ft E of the pavement of Trinity Street, running N-S for over 45ft with a return to the west for over 11ft at the N end. Close to the NE angle of this building were traces of the apparent SE angle of another building, well faced in stone. Other disconnected lengths of wall between the long wall and Trinity Street were associated with cement floors and apparently belonged to at least two periods. The long wall was associated with a concrete floor overlying an earlier cement floor containing a worn coin of AD 87. This earlier floor was associated with a flint wall which ran beneath the long wall. The long wall was also overlain by a tesselated pavement which almost certainly belongs to a fragmentary floor of coarse tesserae at least 20ft x 16ft in extent and running W-E from beneath the pavement of Trinity Street. No walls can be associated with this floor but it appears to have had a red swastika pattern on a white background. The position of a second tesselated pavement was not recorded but probably lay to the north of the first and measured at least 18ft x 12ft and comprised a simple red on white pattern of concentric rectangles. To the east of the long wall, further walls were on a different alignment, as well as an infant cremation of the 1st-2nd century AD in a jar and a silver coin hoard, probably a bank hoard deposited in or soon after 257 AD. It contained numerous coins with similar die identities suggesting that they had not been in normal circulation. The hoard was found in a pit and contained within a bronze jug, a plain bronze bowl and an item of coopered furniture [1].