EDO4822 - Former County Hospital Site, Dorchester; Watching Brief

Excavations were conducted by Wessex Archaeology prior to redevelopment of the former Dorset County Hospital site, adjacent to and south of Somerleigh Court, in the SW corner of the Roman town of Dorchester. The fieldwork took place intermittently between October 2000 and December 2001. The principal archaeological works comprised three separate excavation trenches corresponding to the proposed footprints of new buildings: Blocks 1 & 3 (a single N-S aligned trench along the eastern side of the site; Block 2 (an 'L-shaped' trench in the southern part of the site); and Block 4 (a sub-rectangular trench in the western part of the trench). There were also three evaluation trenches to the west of Block 4 and a watching brief was maintained on a new service trench across the site and two areas of unscheduled ground reduction. A 'strip-and-record' programme also exposed archaeological remains immediately south of Somerleigh Court, which were preserved in situ. The excavations revealed a sequence of structures, associated features and deposits which document the development of this part of the town from the 1st century AD until the early 5th century. The watching briefs associated with the excavations on this site comprised the observation of a service trench along the route of Chesil Place and a 'strip and record' area to the south of Edgecumbe Manor, recorded prior to ground reduction. These works identified a range of buildings on an upper terrace, above the level of the buildings exposed in Block 2. These remains were exposed but not excavated. Two corridors met at right angles, one with a mortar floor and the other bearing the remains of a plain tesselated floor. South of the E-W corridor lay a small patch of probably external flint cobbling. Another room lay in the angle between the corridors with quarter round opus signinum coving, although the upper floor surface was an umortared and crudely executed limestone tesselated floor resting on dark loamy soil. This floor included a deliberate quarter circle gap around a presumably pre-existing fitting. To the west there had clearly been post-Roman robbing of masonry, but no distinct robbing trenches. A large flat setting of mortared tabular limestone may have been a fragment of un-robbed floor. A number of these elements had been observed during previous archaeological works on this site.