Archaeological evaluation at Sheepen Road car-park, Sheepen Road, Colchester, Essex, CO3 3GT: March 2016

An archaeological evaluation was undertaken in advance of the construction of a new office building with associated access, car-parking and landscaping at the former Sheepen Road car-park, Colchester, Essex. The development site lies beyond the NW corner of the Roman town wall and to the east of the Roman trading depot and quayside at Sheepen. At the north end of the site, modern layers were identified to a depth of 2.60m below current ground-level (bcgl) and at the south end to 3.27m bcgl. They possibly
sealed a Roman accumulation layer (L6b), but the trench was too deep for this to be fully investigated. The modern layers (L1-L6a) appeared to be associated with the modern car-park (L1-L4) and late Victorian/early Edwardian rubbish-dumping (L5-L6a).