welcome to the Roman circus! – stumps of starting-gates finished!

Last Friday, the Trust finally finished building the ‘Roman’ stumps of the starting-gates and part of the seating-stand of the circus, in the garden of the former Sergeants’ Mess, next door to Roman Circus House. This week, our renovation volunteers have been hard at work tidying the garden up, now the building works are finished, to get the garden ready for visitors. It has been very exciting for us to build part of a Roman circus – and there it is! Welcome to the Roman circus!

We have built ten ‘Roman’ stumps of walls for the eight starting-gates and the central arch, and two lengths of wall for the ends of the seating-stand. A racing-chariot (quadriga), drawn by four horses and driven by a charioteer, would have stood in each starting-gate waiting for a chariot race to start, and then raced off round the arena. Our ‘Roman’ stumps of the starting-gates are built precisely to the plan of the actual circus remains below ground, which we based on the evidence from our investigations on the site, and precisely on the footprint of the circus remains. (The actual remains are safely protected below ground, under the stumps.) We have only found fragmentary evidence of the walls of the circus, so Trust director Philip based the construction of our ‘Roman’ stumps on the chunks of later Roman wall which have been excavated in Colchester town centre over the years and, especially, the Roman town wall.

Our ‘Roman’ stumps are of ashlar construction, just like the town wall – that is, they are walls faced with square-cut stones and brick and filled with rubble and mortar. The stumps are built of blocks of stone, rectangular red bricks and a special mortar. The circus was built in Kentish Ragstone, but we have used a similar stone substitute, which is limestone from the Chicksgrove Quarry in Wiltshire. The red bricks were hand-made by the Bulmer Brick and Tile Company. The special mortar was hydraulic lime mortar. The brick and stone were shaped by hand and laid in alternating bands of four courses of stone with four courses of brick, with brick corners.

The best-preserved evidence of Roman walls in Colchester is to be found in the town wall, on the inside of the guard room at the Balkerne Gate and the remains of the towers around the wall, and also on the inner side of the wall, low down, in areas where the wall was protected by banked-up earth. The Trust has been able to uncover and observe several well-preserved lower parts of the town wall around the town centre over the years. Philip has also used Roman walls dating from the 2nd century in Colchester as the model for our ‘Roman’ stumps, chunks of which have been recorded by the Trust at the Lion Walk site, and at the Roman church by the Maldon Road roundabout.

The Roman circus at Colchester is the only known circus in Britain, and it is the most northerly circus in the Roman empire. Now it is represented on the ground by our ‘Roman’ stumps. The only surviving, standing remains of actual Roman circus starting-gates (carceres) are at Bovillae near Rome and, which are the best-preserved, at the circus at Lepcis Magna in Libya. The carceres in the circus at Jerash in Jordan are standing, but they have been reconstructed. The remains of starting-gates have been investigated at various Roman circuses around the Roman empire, so what can be seen at some are the exposed foundations of carceres, as in the circus at Tyre in the Lebanon, as well as the few standing remains. You can see four arches of the carceres at Bovillae, the piers of nine of the carceres at Lepcis Magna, fragments of the carceres at the Circus of Maxentius in Rome, and the stone bases of the carceres at the circus in Merida in Spain. (See images of the reconstructed circus at Jerash at www.romanheritage.com/en/contenido/?idsec=2657 .)

Now, at last, the ‘Roman’ stumps of the starting-gates at the Roman circus here are finished, and a little bit more of the Roman empire is now made visible in Colchester. We look forward to seeing you at the circus site and centre, and we hope that you like the stumps of the starting-gates as much as we do! (The circus site and centre are open every weekday, 10.30am-4.30pm; entry is free.)

The Trust was given special permission by English Heritage to build the ‘Roman’ stumps on the site of the circus, which is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. A lot of work has gone into the building of the stumps, by contractors, Trust staff and Trust volunteers, but we think that the result is great.

With thanks to everyone who helped to build and finish the starting-gates and do all the work in the garden.

The images show our ‘Roman’ stumps of the starting-gates and the seating-stand, the garden, and the former Sergeants’ Mess yesterday (2nd May).

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