fascinating story of a Roman stone fragment

Yesterday (27th February), Trust volunteer Gillian was given the task of very carefully cleaning a large fragment of Roman worked stone. This was hand-carved from sandstone, and it looks like a decorative architectural element, perhaps a finial, from the top of a funerary structure such as a mausoleum. We found the stone fragment in the Roman cemetery which we excavated in late 2012 on the site of the Butt Road car-park. The car-park lies within the site of the former Artillery (Le Cateau) Barracks and not far from our building Roman Circus House. The stone fragment was found in a Roman ditch in the northern part of the site, near Butt Road, and near the robbed-out foundation of a Roman mausoleum. The stone fragment was found with fragments of pottery, building debris consisting of stone and brick, and some building material which looked like part of a collapsed wall, except that the bricks were not mortared together. We think that the stone fragment, the building debris and the collapsed ‘wall’ had all been part of the mausoleum. The mausoleum contained the poorly-preserved skeletal remains of a person who had been buried in a coffin with a pottery beaker  in one corner of the grave. The stone fragment is about eighteen inches high, and it is lucky that the stone ‘robbers’ didn’t take it away for re-use.

Trust archaeologist Ben Holloway, who supervised our Butt Road car-park excavation, says: ‘… This was the first fragment of finely-carved decorative Roman architectural stone which we have found at the old garrison. However, we have found fragments of Purbeck marble from several of the archaeological sites at the old garrison, consisting of fragments of veneer from Roman tombstones and part of an inscription …’

Colchester is one of the most important Roman archaeological sites in the country. It has produced significant evidence of the large Roman cemeteries which surrounded the walled town centre. High-status Roman burials were positioned along the main Roman road leading west out of the Balkerne Gate to London, especially in what is now Lexden. Our investigations of the site of the old garrison at Colchester, ahead of redevelopment, have produced considerable new evidence of Roman cemeteries and burials, including mausolea. A mausoleum is a small free-standing building which functions as a burial chamber for one or more people, often including decorative architectural elements. Mausolea can contain cremation burials or inhumation burials, and were high-status, stand-out, ‘statement’ burials. Roman mausolea are rare finds. However, we have uncovered evidence of several Roman mausolea at the old garrison. We found the remains of two at the Hyderabad Barracks site, and of one near the Arena Club. Our most recently-discovered mausoleum and its worked stone fragment were, of course, found just a stone’s throw from Roman Circus House… We have previously found evidence of other Roman mausolea around the town, for example, the remains of the spectacular mausoleum or temple-tomb at the Colchester Royal Grammar School in 2005 (where we retrieved the complete ground-plan) and one or two from the Butt Road police station site in 1976-9 and 1988. The Colchester Archaeological Group has also discovered the site of a mausoleum, at Beverley Road in Lexden. A finely-carved stone sphinx deriving from a Roman mausoleum was dug up during the building of the Essex County Hospital in Lexden Road in 1821.

The stone fragment will now be studied by a specialist, who will produce a report on it for inclusion in our report on the excavation. The skeletal remains will also be studied by a specialist and, hopefully, we will find out a bit more about the person who was buried in the mausoleum.

For more information on the Roman cemeteries and burials of Colchester, see Colchester Archaeological Report 9 and our CAT reports on individual archaeological sites, which are available online. Our report on the archaeological investigations on the old garrison site, 2000-2014, is now in preparation, as well as our report on the Butt Road car-park excavation.

The images show the archaeological story of the stone fragment, so far:
The remains of the mausoleum (in the foreground), with the Artillery (Le Cateau) Barracks water-tower in the background;
The remains of the mausoleum;
The skeleton lying within the coffin stain;
The stone fragment being excavated by Trust excavator Nigel in late 2012, with Roman Circus House in the background;
The stone fragment exposed with its associated building debris;
The stone fragment today in the pot-washing room at Roman Circus House, after cleaning.

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

.