Archaeological monitoring and recording at the Sixth Form College, North Hill, Colchester, Essex: February 2005

Roman floors were recorded during archaeological trenching 3m from the west edge of the Sixth Form College tennis courts in 2003, one ‘tessellated’ and the other plain mortar. These were the floors of a building, presumably a house, which stood here in the Roman period in Insula 1 of the Roman town. In 2005, the opportunity arose to test whether the floors continued to the east, and a trench (Trench 2 or T2) was excavated into the west edge of the tennis courts. A floor identical to the plain mortar floor of 2003 was found in T2, as well as indications that a tessellated pavement had stood here, but had been demolished some time in or after the Roman period. A trench dug in the medieval period to quarry away the Roman stone foundations was on the identical line to one found in the 2003 trench. This combination of wall and floors makes it quite certain that the 2005 remains are part of the same Roman house as that found in 2003. In addition to the archaeological work, monitoring was carried out on various geotechnical exercises. These consisted of another two trenches in the tennis courts (T1, T3), two trenches in the north-west corner of the site (T4, T5), and three window samples in the tennis courts with three more outside the tennis courts to the south. The results of the monitoring are either discussed in the text below, or tabulated at the end of the report.