#RomanCircus20 Blog – Peter Herring

Today for #RomanCircus20 we have some words from Peter Herring, the creator of Colchester’s Circus Mosaic [pictured].

“I first became interested in Colchester’s history in 1989 when I was out on a walk across Gosbecks (now the Gosbecks Archaeological Park) and came across people digging big holes in the ground. I spoke to one of them who told me it was the remains of a Roman temple. That was it – I was hooked on Colchester’s fascinating history! At that time I was hardly ever in Colchester as I commuted to London and my job also involved a lot of travelling. Roll forward to 2004. I was flabbergasted to read all about the discovery of Britain’s only Roman Circus. How could we have lost something so large?! I retired from my job in December 2004, so early in 2005 I just wandered into CAT’s offices and asked Philip Crummy if there was anything I could do. The rest is history – the Roman Circus mosaic project was born and is detailed in the attached articles.

The whole episode was very rewarding and allowed me to get to know Colchester’s fantastic community of volunteers. With the failure of the local council to do anything to celebrate the Circus this led to me being part of the “Save Colchester’s Circus” fundraising campaign that set out to raise funds to buy a property near the Circus site. Although we raised £200,000 plus, this was not enough to purchase (and then renovate) the former Sergeants’ Mess Building so we had to press the button on Plan B – which was the former Army Educational Centre and which is now the HQ for CAT and The Roman Circus Centre. It has been a fascinating journey and there are still many chapter to come as further parts of the circus are hopefully brought into the public domain.”

You can view the mosaic in all its glory at the Roman Circus Visitor Centre.

Thank you so much to Peter for all of your hard work on this amazing project!

Below attached are the PDFs of the original articles (in the CAT magazine!) about Peter Herring’s work on Colchester’s Circus Mosaic: