Monument record MDO18270 - Wessex Court, Charles Street, Dorchester; Late Roman Structure 4

Structure 4 was a stone-walled building found in the SE corner of Trench 6, during the 1990 excavations at Wessex Court, Charles Street, Dorchester. It comprised a suite of three rooms with opus signinum floors aligned E-W with a fourth room to the south at the east end, which was provided with a tessellated floor. The eastern and southern extent of this building was beyond the excavated area. A rectangular stone walled annexe was added to the west end at some time during the life of this building. An oven was inserted into the central room of this building and later dismantled and floored over. The floors had all been patched with chalk and soil on numerous occasions. Coin and pottery evidence suggests that this building was constructed in the early 4th century AD and went out of use in the late 4th or early 5th century. This building was probably a substantial town house may have had more than one storey.

Found during the excavations carried out by Wessex Archaeology in 1990 in the proposed Wessex Court retail development area between Charles Street, Acland Road, and South Walks, Dorchester (1) (2) (3). The numbers in square brackets below are context and feature numbers used in the report and archive (1) (3). Structure 4 was a substantial stone building aligned roughly E-W, comprising a suite of three rooms, with an annexe on the west side and another room to the south at the east end. The full plan of this building was not exposed and it continued eastwards and southwards beyond the excavated area. The stone walls had been heavily robbed, with only the foundations surviving in most places. These were of roughly coursed flint and chalk rubble bonded by mixed clay and chalk and were 0.9m wide. The depth of the footings in the west end of this building were particularly substantial (up to 1.8m deep), perhaps suggesting that this building had more than one storey. Pottery dating to the 1st-3rd century AD was recovered from the footings. This building was on the same alignment and was constructed directly on top of the remains of the early Roman building, Structure 3, with many of the floors laid directly on top of the floors of the earlier building. The western room measured about 9m by 5.5m and had an opus signinum floor. 1st-3rd century AD pottery was recovered from the floor base and a coin of Constans (AD335-337) was recovered from the opus signinum. In the eastern part of this room the floor had subsided into an earlier pit and had been made up and patched with a chalk surface. A small pit [2298] lay immediately outside this room to the south. This pit had been dug to hold the bottom half of an North African amphora. It was filled with occupation debris. The central room measured about 5.5m by 6m across and it was originally provided with an opus signinum floor. This had been much repaired and patched with chalk. A coin of Valens (AD364-378) was recovered from one of the repairs, suggesting this particular repair took place about 30-40 years after the construction of the building. Other later repairs and occupation debris contained pottery of 4th-5th century AD date. An oven [2209] was inserted into the west side of the central room early in the life of this building. After a short period of use, the upstanding part of the oven was demolished and incorporated into the floor of the room. The base of the oven was covered in layers of ash which contained 2nd century AD pottery and a bronze coin dated to AD348-378. The full extent of the eastern room was not exposed. It originally had an opus signinum floor, but this had been extensively robbed in the northern part of the room. The southern room lay to the south of the central and eastern room and only a very small part was exposed in the excavation trench. Only a small part of the western wall footings were exposed and these appeared to be of one build with the main suite of rooms to the north. A small fragment of a tessellated floor survived next to the west wall. This floor had been repaired with chalk. The mortar base of the tessellated floor contained pottery dating to the 3rd-4th century AD. A stone-walled annexe [2105] had been added to the western end of this building, butting against its western wall. This annexe was about 4m wide and 9m long, projecting south of the line of the main E-W suite of rooms. It effectively filled in the gap between the main part of Structure 4 and the stone-walled courtyard [2334] to the west. The flint footings were very shallow and a short stretch of the overlying wall comprising dressed mortared limestone blocks survived to the north. No floor deposits have been recorded from this annexe. There was no definite evidence to determine the specific function of the various rooms of this building. Its substantial nature and the provision of opus signinum and tessellated floors suggest that it was a domestic building of some status, though it must be noted that the later repairs to the floors were rather inelegant and haphazard, perhaps indicating a change in status or function later in the life of this building, which appears to have been constructed in the early part of the 4th century and continued into the late 4th or early 5th century, on the basis of the pottery and coin evidence.

Record last edited

Dec 6 2023 12:14PM