GLOUCESTERSHIRE

(1) Barnwood: (a) land at Centre Severn (SO 8610 1890): evaluation encountered ditches containing second- to fourth-century pottery, together with a hearth and two inhumation burials.Footnote ²⁸⁴ (b) 167 Barnwood Road (SO 8585 1818): an evaluation and subsequent excavation and watching-brief revealed significant deposits dating to the first to early second centuries. Two first-century parallel ditches were cut by a square enclosure 10 m wide and enclosing a post-built structure. A lead urn containing cremated bone was recovered from a pit within the enclosure suggesting that the post-built structure may have been a roadside mausoleum beside Ermin Street. Gravel quarries were placed along the edge of Ermin Street. Their backfills were cut by a pit containing a large and important artefactual assemblage including South Gaulish samian and other imported wares of Neronian date as well as military equipment, including a harness pendant and a bronze vessel. Evidence for continued gravel extraction from the medieval through to post-medieval period was recorded across the site.Footnote ²⁸⁵

(2) Chedworth, Chedworth Roman Villa (SP 05273 13491): an area measuring 8 m east–west by 11 m was excavated on the east side of the North Range bath-house to determine the position and condition of footings revealed by Sir Ian Richmond in 1963, thought by him to relate to the earliest phases of the bath suite, and marked out in paths of cement with concrete kerb-stones defining five turfed spaces interpreted as rooms of the early baths based on the excavation of five small trenches. This is in the area known as 25b, immediately east of the elevated fourth-century baths Room 21 and south of the apsidal Room 24. Removal of turf and topsoil, however, showed that all five spaces contained remains of the same mosaic floor (fig. 17). This was bordered with red and white stripes and contained panels framed by swastika meanders and groups of diamond designs interspersed with guilloche mats. The mosaic is part of the 25a floor found in 2013 immediately west of Room 26; the complete mosaic was thus 18 m long and 6 m wide and probably floored a grand reception area for the guests of the villa's owner. The wall lines shown in concrete were only found in Richmond's south and north excavation trenches, that is, branching north from the western continuation of the north range corridor alignment and south from Room 24. They were not located in the central areas of the excavation but may lie more deeply buried.

FIG. 17.

Chedworth, view of mosaic pavement looking south-east across excavation area. (Photo: NT - widerSE)

The 25a/25b mosaic overlay and continued to the outer edge of the corridor wall and was particularly well preserved at its south-west corner. Here it abutted a line of 0.6 m-wide stone paving blocks forming a stylobate used to support a line of columns seen in Room 20 to the west, investigated in 2013. On its west side, the mosaic abutted a line of 0.1 m-wide limestone kerb-stones which abutted the south side of the south-east corner of the raised baths (Room 21) and continued for 2 m south to abut the north side of the stylobate. This kerb was supported by the east edge of the continuation of the west wall of the courtyard structure which was traced as far as Room 21. A structure jutting south into the courtyard from the corridor wall alignment comprised a wall 0.8 m wide with dressed faces enclosing a space 3.4 m east–west and 3.0 m north–south. A 1.2 m-square trench dug within the south-west corner of the courtyard structure revealed deposits related to a possible garden water feature, perhaps converted from an earlier cold plunge bath.Footnote ²⁸⁶

(3) Cirencester (Corinium Dobunnorum), King's Head Hotel (SP 0235 0202): a corner of a probably second-century mosaic was located during building works within Insula XXXIII. It had been cut away to the east by one of the hotel's cellars but part of the stone wall from the room in which it was located survived on its north-western side. This had been robbed out on the south-western side of the mosaic to reveal a small area of Roman surfacing within the rooms beyond. Only the border of the mosaic survives but it appears similar to mosaics found in Victoria Road, Cirencester and Fishbourne. The mosaic is notable in that it is the only visible in-situ mosaic in Cirencester and is displayed through a glass panel in the floor of the hotel. A second fragment, presumably from the same mosaic, is also on display in the hotel.Footnote ²⁸⁷

(4) Filton, Wyck Beck Road/Fishpool Hill, South Gloucestershire (ST 5772 7983): an evaluation revealed the remains of a Romano-British settlement and associated field-systems, comprising a complex of ditches and pits, as well as occasional structural remains. All of the associated features contained artefacts, the finds including pottery, animal bone, iron implements and building debris.Footnote ²⁸⁸

(5) Gloucester (Glevum): (a) King's Quarter (SO 8346 1860): evaluation within the walled town identified Roman limestone surfaces and walls, most probably dating to the second century a.d. A mid- to late fourth-century building with pilae stacks was also identified; it incorporated large re-used masonry blocks that may have originated from a civic structure. Outside the line of the city wall, a beam slot for a wooden Roman building was found with associated surfacing.Footnote ²⁸⁹ (b) The Former Golden Egg Restaurant, King's Square (SO 8337 1853): evaluation exposed a possible limestone surface and a wall, both probably of Roman date.Footnote ²⁹⁰

(c) Gloscat redevelopment, Brunswick Road (SO 8310 1820): a watching-brief and excavation were undertaken within the southern corner of the Roman town, following previous recording which had identified Roman burials.Footnote ²⁹¹ The earliest datable features were pits and ditches containing Iron Age pottery cut through or, in some cases, sealed by a buried soil. Directly overlying this soil was material forming an earthwork bank, interpreted as the rampart of the Roman defences. Clay ovens had been cut into the inner side of this rampart. Parallel with the early defences were beam slots tentatively interpreted as the remains of barrack blocks. The defences underwent remodelling, being both strengthened and heightened, and the wooden barrack blocks were rebuilt on stone foundations. Further limestone and mudstone walls associated with this phase indicated the locations of additional buildings. Associated surfaces were constructed from gravel, opus signinum and a mosaic. An overlying demolition layer included a miniature limestone altar with a low-relief carving depicting sacrificial implements.

Outside the line of the city wall, ditches formed a first- to second-century a.d. field-system cut by late Roman burials. Around 160 Roman burials were excavated in total, generally aligned parallel/perpendicular to the south-eastern side of the Roman town wall. Preservation of the skeletal remains was good, with many buried in coffins. Few grave goods were present but notable examples were a jet necklace and a small glass bottle.Footnote ²⁹²

(6) Hardwicke, Mayo's Land (SO 8060 1280): an excavation subsequent to evaluation identified late Iron Age to early Roman remains. These included two enclosures containing features including a rectangular post-built structure and ring ditches. Further ring ditches, pits and ditches were found outside the enclosures, along with a cremation burial. During the first to second centuries a.d., a possible rectangular double-ditched enclosure was laid out. This contained an internal division and several pits and was associated with a field-system, while a trackway was also laid out in this period. A single inhumation burial was identified, while undated features included pits and post-holes.Footnote ²⁹³

(7) Kingswood, land off Chestnut Park Estate (ST 7447 9182): an evaluation recorded a set of parallel ditches probably indicating a trackway leading to the known Romano-British settlement immediately to the north-east of the site, together with associated field boundary ditches. No evidence of the settlement itself extending into the evaluation area was observed.Footnote ²⁹⁴

(8) Longford (SO 842 208): area excavation revealed a range of later prehistoric features, of which the most substantial was a ditch up to 4 m wide and over 1 m deep defining a regular north-east–south-west-aligned enclosure c. 60 m square with an entrance in the south-west side. The enclosure ditch was partly re-dug in the early Roman period, while a further ditch defined an internal sub-enclosure within which were two pottery kilns of slightly different construction. The ditches and a few pits nearest the kilns contained large amounts of wasters from the production. The pottery has similarities with material from other Gloucester kilns and dates to the later first to early second century. Amongst the products are flagons, mortaria and fragments of several ceramic pipes of uncertain function. Other features included a pit with pot bases placed on a layer of clay, a very large pit with four near-complete vessels in the base, and two substantial stone-lined wells. The site was extended to the south-west during the first to second and through to the third century, with a network of ditches subdividing the landscape. Two third-century coins include an issue of Trebonianus Gallus, in good condition, from the ditch forming the western boundary of the Roman site. There is almost no evidence for activity in the fourth century. Peripheral features included a group of four inhumation burials located at a junction of boundaries north of the main enclosure area. Another isolated burial was seen outside the north-eastern corner of the large enclosure ditch.Footnote ²⁹⁵

(9) Over, The Wave, Washingpool Farm and Over Court Farm, South Gloucestershire (ST 8513 8292): a nine-trench evaluation and associated borehole survey identified a number of ditches suggesting occupation and utilisation of the landscape during the second to fourth centuries a.d.Footnote ²⁹⁶

(10) Winchcombe, Greet Road (SP 022 293): an excavation was located west of Greet Road and a service corridor that extended to the east of Greet Road was also monitored. The site is situated adjacent to a Scheduled Monument, an enclosed Iron Age settlement and a Roman villa. Evidence for late Iron Age/early Roman settlement comprised a possible roundhouse, several isolated pits and two linear features that may be naturally formed erosion gullies. The Roman period was mainly represented by a metalled trackway and field-boundary ditches and smaller ditched enclosures, which clearly formed part of the organisation of land on the northern and western peripheries of the villa. Particularly notable was a stone culvert that presumably provided a water supply to the villa from an unidentified source, most likely a spring further up the valley side.Footnote ²⁹⁷

SOMERSET

(1) Cannington, Cannington by-pass (ST 2500 4000): excavations in advance of the construction of a new by-pass around Cannington were focused on sites identified during a geophysical survey and trial-trenching. The new route runs for about 1.7 km around the western side of the village, passing not far from the quarry where a late Roman to early medieval cemetery was excavated in 1962–3.Footnote ²⁹⁸ An Iron Age and Roman enclosure occupied the spur of a hill at ST 2513 4004. The earliest phases of activity, dating to the Iron Age, included the construction of a ridge-top ‘dyke’, later respected by a series of curving ditches enclosing the hilltop and containing at least two structures. These buildings were replaced in the Roman period by three rectangular buildings with stone foundations, interpreted as a probable villa with a detached bath-house and barn. The remains of the villa house comprised the rubble foundations of an east–west-aligned corridor, measuring c. 20 m in length and 4 m in width. Rectangular rooms extended both north and south of the corridor; evidence was found for remodelling of the southern room. The functions of the rooms could not be identified as for the most part only the foundations survived, but a dressed sandstone block wall was recorded in one part of the building.

The bath-house was 50 m north-west of the villa and 20 m west of the barn and was a fairly complex structure with a number of phases of alteration and remodelling. Originally the building appears to have comprised two rectangular rooms forming an L-shaped footprint. Early alterations include the insertion of a third room with stone-built under-floor channels which may have functioned as drainage conduits. Extensive later remodelling included the splitting of the westernmost room into two smaller hypocausted rooms, the addition of a north-eastern room and the abandonment of the under-floor drainage channels. It is possible that the size of the rooms in the western part of the building was reduced when the hypocaust was created to enhance the heating of the baths. Two possible phases of construction of pilae were identified suggesting that the under-floor heating system may have undergone repair or replacement. Later modifications saw the demolition of the hypocaust and the creation of crude opus signinum floors in the western rooms. Demolition material overlying both the bath-house and villa contained stone roof-tiles, stonework and fragments of box-flue tile.

The barn lay 50 m north of the villa house. A simple rectangular building, it consisted of two rooms with rough clay-bonded rubble foundations and probable earthen floors, and lacked evidence for dressed or faced upstanding stonework. The east room had an open eastern side possibly indicating that it may have been used for the storage of vehicles, holding of livestock or for loading/unloading. An external rubble surface with a T-shaped channelled feature butted the northern wall of the building and may have been associated with processing crops.

More than half of the interior of the hilltop enclosure had been quarried away in the medieval and post-medieval periods and, as a result, the full extent and plan of the villa and bath-house were not recoverable. Dating of the buildings awaits analysis of finds, which include a large collection of pottery, tile and bone, as well as a copper-alloy brooch, coins, bone hairpins and a pair of copper-alloy tweezers.Footnote ²⁹⁹

(2) Frome, ‘Frome II’: 13 silver siliquae are a further part of a hoard that now totals 141 siliquae, 1 miliarensis and 1 half-siliqua to a.d. 395.Footnote ³⁰⁰

(3) Kingsdon: 2 silver siliquae; the later, notably, a contemporary copy of Jovian (the prototype issued c. a.d. 363–4).Footnote ³⁰¹

(4) Lympsham, land at Wick Farm (ST 3166 5468): an evaluation was carried out on farmland between Lympsham and Brean, on the Somerset Levels, revealing a series of alluvial deposits and a Romano-British ditch sequence. The evidence indicates late Iron Age to Roman industrial activity. The animal bone and pottery assemblages can be paralleled at late Iron Age–Roman rural sites on the Levels, the former including evidence for horn-working, whilst the latter consists of middle/late Iron Age and second- to third-century a.d. sherds from the alluvial deposits, and late Iron Age/early Roman material from the ditch and later deposits. The small quantity of iron slag probably derives from iron smithing, whilst fuel ash slag implies high-temperature, pyrotechnical activity, such as salt boiling. The remains of a possible salt-evaporation tray and the lining of the tuyère hole of a hearth or furnace were found. The environmental evidence indicates settlement activity in the vicinity in the later phases, whilst it appears that no attempt had yet been made to reclaim the land.Footnote ³⁰²

(5) South Petherton: a hoard consisting of an irregular as (of Claudius I), a sestertius, a base silver denarius and 7,555 radiates. The latest coin, of Aurelian, is of the fourth series at Milan (to a.d. 274).Footnote ³⁰³

(6) Yeovilton, RNAS Yeovilton, Project WINFRA (ST 5527 2430): an excavation close to known extensive Iron Age and Romano-British settlement and agricultural remains revealed a Romano-British rectangular field-system, evident across most of the site, and two inhumation burials. A nearby pit contained a large amount of pottery, two shale spindle whorls and part of a copper-alloy brooch.Footnote ³⁰⁴

DEVON

(1) Seaton: a hoard of c. 22,900 AE radiates and nummi, to c. a.d. 347. This is the largest Constantinian nummus hoard known from Britain.Footnote ³⁰⁵

(2) South Brent: 11 AE sestertii, the latest of Severus Alexander TR P III (a.d. 224).Footnote ³⁰⁶