Monument record MDO47761 - Somerleigh Court, Dorchester; Roman building

Roman building remains, with fragmentary mosaic and tessellated pavements have been found at Somerleigh Court since 1862. They may belong to a large house, or to several different houses.

SY69089048. A room, floored in part by a tessellated pavement, was excavated in 1963.1st or early 2nd century pottery found is thought to have been contemporary with the original construction. It is suggested that the building extended to the north. <1>

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 3, 562, no. 189c (Monograph). SDO150.

‘(189) Building Remains with fragmentary mosaic and tessellated pavements have been found at Somerleigh Court, now the Maternity Wing of the County General Hospital, during building operations since 1862. They may belong to a large house or several houses, probably fronting on a street (178) to the E. … (c) A room 13½ ft. E. to W. by 9½ ft., floored in part with a coarse red and grey tessellated pavement of chessboard pattern flanked by alternating strips of the same colours, was excavated in 1963 immediately S.E. of (b) (69089048). The flint walls, 2 ft. thick and at least 4 ft. high, evidently with timbered superstructure, had been plastered in a painted panel design; there was a door in the S. wall and, in its E. end, a relieving arch of bricks and stone tiles in the wall face over the filling of an earlier pit. Some small pieces of wall plaster in situ well below the level of the tessellated floor suggested that the latter was an insertion; the excavators considered that there had been two earlier floors, the lower possibly of flagstones forming an original basement room. The E. end of the room was much disturbed, but there was no evidence that it had been tessellated. Both the S. wall and a parallel wall 2½ ft. to the S. had corbelled overhangs suggesting an original arched passage some 5 ft. high. Its filling contained 1st or early 2nd-century pottery thought to have been contemporary with the original construction, and some small sherds of 4th-century New Forest ware, regarded as intrusive. The gap was sealed over by fallen masonry, which with little doubt serves to identify the remains with those seen in 1875 when a flint wall said to be 6 ft. thick was found E. of (a) adjoining a coarse red and white tessellated pavement. Part of a concrete floor adjoining the chamber, to the W., showed that the W. wall was a party wall; the relationship of this floor to the tessellated pavement (b) seen later 7 ft. to the N. is unknown. (Moule, 34; Dorset Procs. LXXXVI (1964), 155–7.)
Further observation in 1963 suggested that the building also extended to the N. The most significant remains were of a thin cement floor believed to extend for some 30 ft. in both directions on the N. side of the tessellated room, overlying remains of an E. to W. wall of Ham Hill stone and a deposit assigned to the later 2nd century. To the N.E. a stone well-head of hexagonal plan with a circular shaft 2 ft. in diameter contained late Roman material in its partially excavated upper filling (69099050). (Information from Mr. C. J. Green.)
From this area and from (d) came several sherds of Claudian type, including Belgic terra nigra and terra rubra. A bronze harness ring, from below the cement floor, and a rectangular bronze platelet perhaps originally decorated in niello and attached to leather, from a 2 ft. wide gully running N. to S., 6 yds. E. of the tessellated room, may be early military equipment.’

<2> Greene, J P, 1993, Excavations at Dorchester Hospital (Site C), Dorchester, Dorset. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society (Article in serial). SDO9894.

<3> National Record of the Historic Environment, 1410232 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Aug 22 2024 7:41PM