today’s finds from Greyfriars/All Saints’ House

Today (20th February), a small group of modern glass and ceramic items and fragments was found in a trench immediately behind All Saints’ House on East Hill, during works which are part of the renovation of Greyfriars and All Saints’ House and their conversion to a ’boutique’ hotel.

Greyfriars and All Saints’ House are both listed buildings. Greyfriars is a fantastic Grade II* listed building and it was, until recently, the Colchester Adult Community College. Essex County Council sold it for conversion. It is an 18th-century building with a mid 18th-century front, a later 18th-century garden front, and two early 20th-century wings. It has a very large walled garden and car-park, and the whole property is on the site of the medieval Grey Friars friary. The 18th-century block was built by the Rev. John Halls, rector of Easthorpe, who also laid out the garden behind it. During its long history, Greyfriars has been a convent and even, for a while, the premises of the Colchester County High School for Girls. All Saints’ House is a Grade II listed 18th-century building, with a late 18th-century red-brick front block. It might have been built by James Halls esq., nephew of John Halls, who inherited Greyfriars in 1795 and sold it in 1813.

Trust archaeologist Don Shimmin is conducting a watching brief on the renovation works, which began in February 2012.

Today’s finds look as though they are late 19th-early 20th century in date, and include complete or almost-complete glass and ceramic bottles and jars, and fragments of a large ceramic bowl, possibly a wash bowl. These represent domestic rubbish which was, perhaps, dumped in a pit behind All Saints’ House, against the rear wall of the building. One of the bottles is marked ‘MAILLE’, and another ‘E T PROSSER  COLCHESTER’. These items show an interesting link between trading premises and the upper-class houses in Colchester. No 7 Head Street was a chemists’ which was acquired in 1866 by Evan Thomas Prosser; after his death in 1877, the business was carried on by his executors, including Mrs Jane Prosser. The business was sold in 1899, renamed, and moved to a different address. A jar in the group is marked ‘PORPHISE OIL’ – ‘FOR NOURISHING & WATERPROOFING ALL KINDS OF BOOTS’.

The images show the trench and some of the finds today, fresh out of the ground (the bottle in the middle is from E T Prosser’s chemists’ shop).

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