An archaeological evaluation on land adjacent to 9 Walters Yard, Colchester, Essex: April 2009

This site is on the eastern side of Insula 11 of the Roman town.
An archaeological trial-trenching evaluation established that the highest significant archaeological horizons were Roman in date, and were at depths ranging from 1.0m to 1.4m below present ground-level. The Roman horizons were overlaid by a considerable depth of post-medieval and modern strata.
As would be expected in the Roman town, the post-medieval soils contained a quantity of Roman brick and tile and other building material derived from the robbing of Roman buildings in the vicinity.
A robber trench marked the position of the wall of a Roman building (robbed out in the medieval period) which stood in the north-eastern quarter of the insula, and an adjacent fragment of compacted clay represented the floor of a Roman building probably pre-dating the robbed wall.
Historic maps indicate that this was an area of gardens in the post-medieval period. That fact, combined with the gradual infilling of previous garden areas with new buildings during the 18th-20th centuries, would explain the depths of modern and post-medieval soils identified on the site.