special photo.s of Roman circus remains

Today (22nd January), Dr Tim Dennis came to Roman Circus House to photograph the remains of the Roman circus which we exposed in our recent excavation on part of the site of the circus, in front of our building. He used his ‘pole camera’ (a camera on the end of a long pole) to take very high-resolution vertical shots of the excavation site and the circus remains. Tim designed and made the pole camera himself.

During our excavation on this part of the circus site, we uncovered some of the remarkable below-ground remains of the circus: part of the arena surface, part of a public entrance-way (vomitorium) into the seating-stand (cavea), the foundations of three of the buttresses which supported the external wall of the cavea and a length of the foundation of the external wall, and a robber-trench which defines the line of the inner wall of the cavea.

Tim kindly took these special photo.s of the exposed circus remains before we fill the site in with the earth which we removed in the excavation. Part of the remains will be kept exposed for public viewing, inside a special structure, by special permission of English Heritage.

Tim is now running a programme to combine all the vertical shots into one vertical image of the whole excavation site. As soon as it is completed, we will post the image on the web-site.

Many thanks to Tim for taking these special photo.s of our remarkable circus remains, for the archive and for display in our circus centre.

The images are of Tim at work today in front of Roman Circus House, assisted by Trust archaeologist Mark Baister (with the former Sergeants’ Mess in the background), and one of his vertical shots, showing the remains of the circus.

.