Yesterday (30th July), local builders’ merchant Collier & Catchpole delivered the building materials for our new external store room at Roman Circus House. They have generously supplied the bricks to the Trust at a discount and also donated many of the other items free of charge!
Tim Rowbottom, Managing Director of Collier & Catchpole, says: ‘… “Colchester’s Roman past is very much part of the town’s identity today and Collier & Catchpole is very proud to play a role in this development, which is bringing this extraordinary construction back to life. As a family business with roots in the community going back almost 200 years, history is important to us. As a local builders’ merchant, with wide-ranging expertise and supplier contacts, we are pleased to be able to source the most appropriate materials to help Philip Crummy and the Colchester Archaeological Trust revitalise what is, after all, Britain’s only known Roman circus.” …’
Collier & Catchpole is an independent family business with premises at Stanway near Colchester and in Ipswich. Visit their web-site at www.colliercatchpole.co.uk/ .
The Trust is extremely grateful to Collier & Catchpole for their support. Trust director Philip Crummy said: “Collier & Catchpole’s support is brilliant and will make the building much more affordable. The new store room will help us improve the Roman circus centre by releasing another room in the main building for public access and display.”
The Trust is building an external store room for our equipment and archaeological material so that we can use the former NAAFI kitchen in Roman Circus House as a room for our archaeological volunteers instead of as a store room. Visitors to the circus interpretation centre will also be able to go into the room, watch the volunteers processing finds and have a chat with them. Some of our volunteers have been helping the Trust for decades – it will be a bit of a change for them to be part of the interpretation centre!
The store room is of an appropriate design, using appropriate materials, so that it fits in with the former garrison buildings around it. Trust archaeologists have excavated the foundation trenches and infilled them with concrete. We will now be calling in a profesional bricklayer to build the store room and then a roofer to construct the roof.
The image shows Trust archaeologist Chris Lister (left) thanking Dave Spurgeon of Collier & Catchpole (right) for the delivery of building materials for the archaeological store room at Roman Circus House.
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