Roman remains at the historic George Hotel in Colchester

On the 20th January, an item was posted on the Daily Gazette web-site titled ‘By George! Town centre hotel set for £10 million revamp and new site across the road’ – at www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/By George – hotel_set_for_£10_million_revamp . The George Hotel has been bought by Flying Trade PLC, a local company which is going to renovate the historic, Grade 2* listed hotel and provide it with an annexe (in St Nicholas’ House over the road). The George Hotel is at 116 High Street. It is a great building* with an interesting history. The core of the current building dates to the 15th century and it has been progressively extended and modified since then. The first reference to the George is, apparently, in a document of 1494 and, in the 18th century, it was one of the town’s major coaching inns.

The Roman remains which are exposed in the south wall of one of the George’s two medieval cellars, behind a glass panel, are to be made permanently viewable by hotel guests and visitors. Flying Trade PLC also own the One Castle Park development, just along the High Street from the George, which stands on part of the site of the remarkable monumental arcade of the Roman Temple of Claudius. The Trust investigated part of the foundations of the arcade in 2015-16. This part of the foundations is now exposed and Flying Trade PLC and the Trust held a popular open day for the foundations in February 2016. The exposed foundations will be permanently viewable from within the cafe on the ground floor of One Castle Park. In the Daily Gazette item, ‘… Flying Trade chief executive officer Suki Dulai said: “We want to ensure that whilst we bring the hotel up to date with facilities, we don’t want to lose the historical atmosphere of the building. We aim to open up the cellar of the George and to emulate the One Castle Park project, by exposing the remains …”…’.

The Roman remains at the George consist of layers of archaeology which have been exposed in section by the excavation of the cellar. Trust director Philip visited the George Hotel last year (2016) and examined the exposed remains from the side: he trowelled some of the remains and also photographed them. Philip discovered that the remains include a red tessellated ‘pavement’ which represents the floor of a house. This is the same sort of complex urban stratigraphy which we excavated within the Williams & Griffin store (now Fenwick) at the opposite end of the High Street in 2014. The remains at the George show layers – ‘stratigraphy’ – which represent centuries of Roman activity on the site of the George, ie the building, demolition and rebuilding of a sequence of Roman buildings (probably each a house fronted with a ground-floor shop unit or units). The digging out of the two medieval cellars of the George would have destroyed a large amount of archaeology…

There is a reference to the Roman remains exposed in the cellar of the George, and displayed behind a glass panel, in the book Roman Colchester (by M R Hull, 1958). Hull says that these remains represent a Roman building in Insula 21, next to the major Insula 22 which consisted of the Temple of Claudius and its precinct and monumental arcade. Parts of Roman ‘pavements’ have been uncovered next door to and in front of the George. The probable Roman house on this site, probably fronted with a ground-floor shop unit or units, fronted onto the main street of the Roman town, which would have been lined with houses and shop units. This building was next to the temple and its precinct, which would have functioned as the town’s forum or market-place. The temple was associated with the Roman circus, and the Roman or Romano-British people living in the probable house on the site of the George would have been able to come out of their door to see religious processions just after setting off from the temple and moving through the gateway of the arcade, and even join them, to process to the Roman circus for a day of chariot races…

Colchester is one of the most important archaeological sites in the country and, below ground, the town centre is packed with archaeology. The Trust regularly conducts archaeological projects in the High Street and it is always interesting.

You will soon be able to view exposed below-ground Roman archaeology in two buildings in the High Street at Colchester – and here at the Roman circus centre, as well! The viewable remains at the George will be the only place in town where you can see stratified archaeology in section. The town centre includes above-ground Roman remains, of course, including the floors and stumps of walls of a Roman house in the Castle Park, not far from the High Street.

The images show the front of the George Hotel in 2010; Philip’s photo. of the exposed remains at the George from 2016; and an area of Roman red tessellated pavement which the Trust excavated at the Culver Street site in Colchester in the 1980s (from our popular book City of Victory – the history of Colchester, Britain’s first Roman town). [Image to follow.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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* There is a description of the George building in British History online: ‘… [the] George Hotel … is of three storeys, timber-framed and plastered; the roofs are tiled. There are remains in the middle of the house of a 15th-century building with a main block and cross-wings; the cellars also are mediaeval but probably of rather later date. The building was probably brought into its present form in the 17th century when the earlier house was entirely enveloped and wings were added at the back. Inside the building the cellars consist of two parallel rooms running E. and W. and each of six bays with heavy ceiling-beams and rubble walls; in the dividing wall is an early 16th-century doorway with chamfered jambs and two-centred head of brick … On the ground floor the kitchen has a ceiling-beam with a curved brace resting on a corbel carved with a bearded head. On the second floor at the head of the stairs is an original king-post … it apparently formed part of the middle truss in the hall of the 15th-century house. In the roof are the original moulded wall-plates of the former E. cross-wing …’ – at www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/essex/vol3/pp20-74 .

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