#PhilipWeek A wall, a mosaic and a circus..

A lot of #PhilipWeek has been a #Throwback but today’s blogs are about three major aspects of Roman Colchester – the town wall, the mosaics and the circus! Did you know that there have been over 40 mosaics found in Colchester in the last two centuries? Or that is wasn’t until a press interview that Philip realised we had uncovered a Roman circus!

What’s your favourite mosaic found in Colchester?

The Middleborough Mosaic or, to give it its official name, The Mosaic of the Wrestling Cupids. I particularly like the fact that, despite the evident quality of the craftsmanship and design, whoever assembled the mosaic plainly didn’t understand how the design was composed and messed it up big time! Once you lay a mosaic, you can’t rub bits out and correct it. We’re all human and make mistakes! [See In Search of Colchester’s Past, pp 48-9.]

An even better mosaic could have been the one found at Lion Walk in the early seventies. This was of very high quality featuring leafy scrolls and figured scenes arranged in a circle complete with inscriptions. The mosaic obviously told a story but unfortunately the pavement was too fragmentary and damaged to reveal much about the content.

What are your favourite facts about the Roman town wall?

1) It’s the earliest town wall in Britain
2) Quite a lot of it is visible above ground (unlike nearly everything else Roman in the town apart from what’s on display in the museum of course).

3) Anne and Jane Taylor (of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star fame) used to sit on it near North Gate watching the sun go down

Do you remember how you felt when you realised we had a circus in Colchester?

Surprise and big time excitement was the order of the day! The developer, Taylor Wimpey, had decided it was time they got a good news story in the press about the archaeological work they were funding in Colchester. Consequently a reporter from the Midlands was tasked to pay us a visit and put together a story with an eye-catching headline. We hadn’t found the circus at this stage and, given what we had found, it was going to be a bit of a challenge. I do though remember what happened very well.

We stood in the middle of what we refer to as Site J, the current site at that time, surrounded by various pits and trenches that we had been excavating.

The reported asked, “Have you found anything interesting?”

I thought for a little thinking this going to be hard and said, “Well we have found about 600 human burials so far.”

The reporter looked a bit disappointed and said straight off, “That’s no good. Burials don’t sell houses! Anything else?”

I thought hard for a bit longer, “Well we’ve come across two lengths of Roman wall foundation. They appear to line up exactly suggesting the wall had been at least 340 m long and continued in both directions. We can’t figure out what this all about.”

“Hmmm,” says the report not impressed. “Have you found anything else?”

By this stage, things were getting desperate.

“Well, we did find some hard-packed gravel over there,” pointing to location of the far end of the wall. “It could have been part of a Roman road.”

The reporter was not impressed and we all fell silent. Then his face lit and he says with a grin, “I know what you need. You need to find a chariot on that road!”

And there was the answer – Roman circus! Who’d have thought, archaeologists in Britain were getting used to the idea none had turned up in Britain simply because there were none to find! I rushed back to our offices in Lexden Road and started looking for ground plans of circuses known elsewhere.

Later on that day, I phoned up the head man the Taylor Wimpey on the Colchester Garrison works and said “You know that strange wall I told you about, well it’s looks like its part of a Roman circus!”.

The line fell silent and after a while, a little voice meekly asked, “Couldn’t it just stay a wall?”

But not too worry, we managed to recover the complete ground plan of the building and a lot more besides and, at the same time, Taylor Wimpey (a good client to work for, were always very helpful and positive) were able to complete their development in the way they wanted!