The Roman Town Durobrivae | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

Exploration of the Roman town Durobrivae near Castor, uncovering Roman and Saxon archaeology through excavation and historical research.

Key Takeaways

Durobrivae was an important Roman town with substantial archaeological remains still visible today.
Historical antiquarian work by Edmund Artis provides valuable but sometimes unreliable records that modern archaeology tests and confirms.
Roman and Saxon artifacts found at the site show a long history of occupation and reuse.
Geophysical surveys combined with trench excavations are essential for mapping and understanding buried structures.
Collaboration between amateurs, students, and professionals enriches archaeological research and site interpretation.

What the video covers

The video explores the Roman town of Durobrivae near Castor, Cambridgeshire, highlighting its proximity to the Roman road Urban Street.
Antiquarians and archaeologists have uncovered Roman artifacts and structures over 400 years, including Roman floors, walls, and mosaics.
Edmund Artis, a 19th-century antiquarian and artist, played a key role in early excavations and documentation of the site.
Modern archaeological methods such as geophysics and trench digging are used to verify historical findings and map the site.
The team investigates Roman buildings, baths, and cemeteries, confirming the presence of significant Roman remains beneath the churchyard and school playing field.
Saxon pottery and early medieval artifacts are also discovered, indicating continued occupation or reuse of the site after the Roman period.
The video discusses the challenges of interpreting antiquarian records and the importance of combining historical drawings with modern archaeology.
Students and archaeologists collaborate to create detailed maps of the site, locating known archaeology and new finds.
Despite weather challenges, the team uncovers evidence of large Roman structures and floors, contributing to understanding the town’s layout.
The episode highlights the significance of Durobrivae as a rich archaeological site with layers of history from Roman to Saxon times.

Chapters

Who was Edmund Artis and what was his role in the archaeology of Castor?

Edmund Artis was a 19th-century antiquarian, artist, and chocolate maker who excavated Roman sites around Castor. He documented his findings with detailed drawings and worked with the landowner to conduct excavations.

What types of Roman remains have been found at Durobrivae?

Archaeologists have uncovered Roman floors, walls, mosaics, roof tiles (tegulae), and evidence of Roman baths, indicating a significant settlement with complex structures.

How do modern archaeologists verify the findings of early antiquarians like Artis?

They use geophysical surveys to detect underground features and open trenches to physically examine the remains, comparing these results with historical drawings and records to confirm or refine earlier interpretations.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

Castor is five miles west of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire. Nearly 2,000 years ago, it was right next to the important Roman town of Durobrivae and less than a mile from Urban Street, a major Roman road that's still visible from the air today.

Speaker A

from the air today [Music] and over the last 400 years antiquarians archeologists and even grave diggers have been discovering nuggets of caster's intriguing past when you've been here before haven't you you're an old friend of William and his

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[Music] And over the last 400 years, antiquarians, archaeologists, and even grave diggers have been discovering nuggets of Castor's intriguing past.

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interest and something that I ought to be concerned about this kind of stuff absolutely I'm just an enthusiastic amateur but even I can recognize distinctive Rimmer material like this Tegeler it's a Roman Chavez Ridge it's a peel i rims hip across bricks

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When you've been here before, haven't you? You're an old friend of William and his gravediggers.

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me into the grave which was which is pretty good nerving and peculiar but in the base of the grave it was obvious that they had in fact got something like a Roman floor and I could just make out

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Yes, I used to look after the archaeology in this area, so yes, I know William well.

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no bodies paid here what this this strip along here but even without any graves geophys we'll still need to scan this narrow strip of churchyard before we open any trenches we're also surveying the playing field of the next-door school as this is where

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Why don't you keep coming here?

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47 in veil 50 99th year of his age Edmund artists and a remarkable mix of talents a chocolate maker and a budding artist he waggled himself a job working for landed gentry in the castor area he then found he had a passion for

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Well, every time a grave was dug, a mass of Roman material would come out, so you know it was obviously of interest and something that I ought to be concerned about.

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archaeological sites and obviously he's going to have the blessing of the landowner because because he worked he's working for him yes that's right ideal or it absolutely yes yeah they're wonderful stories for example if he makes great him through severe winters

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This kind of stuff?

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to show the location of lots of Roman buildings in and around the churchyard but antiquarians as we know can be a bit unreliable so we're going to test just how much of what artist says is here can actually be found on the ground

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Absolutely. I'm just an enthusiastic amateur, but even I can recognize distinctive Roman material like this tegula. It's a Roman roof ridge, it's a pile of rims, ship, opus bricks.

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would get some idea of where these features were there are enough common features in there to be able to roughly work out where his buildings were and their orientation and sort of roman building roman builders that's right now

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What's this stuff you found here?

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to be more well you might have one site the other size out you try and match on this side and this size all out so basically what just doesn't match and this is pretty critical to sort out the orientation and alive into these

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Well, about a couple of years ago, the grave diggers called me to say that they thought they'd gone through a Roman building when digging the grave. Now obviously, I wanted to have a look, and they actually lowered me into the grave, which was pretty nerve-wracking and peculiar. But in the base of the grave, it was obvious that they had in fact got something like a Roman floor, and I could just make out this sort of thin band of Roman cement.

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new student Henry are going to make their own map of caster and mark on it the precise location of all the known archaeology job made easier by the massive chunks of roman wall still visible in the lanes around the

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I would dearly love to know what this was part of.

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can only be solved by digging I don't have to pass so ignoring some underwhelming GF is so what are these colored blobs along here then Mick decides it's still worthwhile opening a trench close to where Ben was lowered

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Are you happy about sticking in your grave?

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but this is reality this will tell us whether there is anything there is that roman in ready pieces of roman mosaic flooring called Tessera are turning up yeah Williams said you get a story and the graves here finally John figures out

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Absolutely. It doesn't seem quite right.

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staggering amounts of Roman archaeology granade band artists comes here in the 1820s he refers to all standing in considerable hive if we look at this which is a newspaper report from Edmund artists a 7th of December 1821 that's

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No, this area has not been dug before. There are no bodies placed here.

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floors are all destroyed that's massively high isn't it so that's as high as the walls in here actually yeah back outside it's now raining cats and dogs on our archeologists in trench one but despite the weather and the geophys

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What is this strip along here?

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early 12th century rent at the time the church was built so they're quite possibly robbing out the roman buildings for stone to build the church and we've got our first bit of early middle saxon handmade pottery five six seventh

Speaker A

But even without any graves, geophysics will still need to scan this narrow strip of churchyard before we open any trenches. We're also surveying the playing field of the next-door school, as this is where an intriguing 19th-century antiquarian said he found some Roman baths.

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but it looks like there's something coming out of the trench field yeah this is the crucial thing Tony as Paul says we are beginning to get Saxon pottery these are the first levels that we're actually coming down on to they could

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He was a man obsessed with the past as archaeology, and he's buried right here.

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what do we find next probably snow afternoon of day one here at the fabulous castor parish church in Cambridgeshire where we're looking for what could be some very intriguing Roman buildings already fields put in a trench over there on the far side of the

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Sacred to the memory of Edmund Artis, who died the 24th of December 1847, in the 99th year of his age.

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and some excavations were conducted in the 1970s which confirmed little bits of wall through keyhole trenches so we know this stuff under here but the problem is these are all the tiny little bits we don't know whether this range extended

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Edmund Artis was a remarkable mix of talents: a chocolate maker and a budding artist. He wrangled himself a job working for landed gentry in the Castor area. He then found he had a passion for archaeology and became a one-man Time Team, digging all over the area and illustrating his efforts with beautiful drawings.

Speaker A

that just just through those trees there yeah so you can see it's quite a long way down if we can find some of these features we can then get the orientation we can map them and we can add them to

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When there were slack periods during the work on the estate, Artis borrowed labor from the estate and used it for his excavations into archaeological sites. And obviously, he was going to have the blessing of the landowner because he worked for him.

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decided to put a third trench in this corner of the school field this is another spot that our antiquarian artists and later archeologists have explored and it seems to have been an artist favorite because he drew the remains of this impressive Roman

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Yes, that's right. Ideal, or it absolutely was.

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so we like to get to any Roman remains as we start to get to grips with this site I'm getting a feeling that there's something special about caster goodies for archaeologists seem almost guaranteed here this is an amazingly

Speaker A

Yeah, there are wonderful stories. For example, if he makes great him through severe winters where all the workmen clear off because it's too cold but leave Edmund Artis digging away to his heart's content. So he's really a driven man.

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because it has greyhounds or dogs chasing you it comes up the hair there's not a lovely senior it's wonderful than that yes but it's finds like this painted wall plaster that may be the key to unlocking the secrets of caster or

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Actually, Artis also surveyed the whole village and published this map in 1828. It claims to show the location of lots of Roman buildings in and around the churchyard. But antiquarians, as we know, can be a bit unreliable, so we're going to test just how much of what Artis says is here can actually be found on the ground.

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north of the church could this be a complex of swanky Roman buildings if so our trench in the Old Rectory garden could be right on top of one but if artists this plan is accurate it's the North graveyard where we really need

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It's obviously a commonality doing what he mapped and what's still here. What's doing, guys?

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like anything else in the churchyard is it no no up until now I mean there's been the odd reflection but they've looked like they could just be stone casket or a slab lined grave but I mean this is much much bigger and it's about

Speaker A

Well, what we're trying to do is look at first of all what Artis mapped in the early 19th century, and we've overlaid them against the modern base maps to get some idea of where these features were. There are enough common features in there to be able to roughly work out where his buildings were and their orientation and sort of Roman building, Roman builders.

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illustrations and if our antiquarian site plan is to be trusted it makes sense that GFS are getting a strong signal here it's slow-going yeah a bit of a challenge I'll leave you to it thanks but over in trench - at the

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That's right.

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Roman coins as well which is a late first century of they're about I mean most of the pottery is kind of late 3rd to 4th century I mean any time within that span really I mean it looks like a

Speaker A

Now the problem comes when you add that this overlay, which is where various bits of what he found have been reactivated over the years, these bits in yellow, trying to match things together when it doesn't. And just looking at this, I mean, it seems to be more, well, you might have one site, the other side out, you try and match on this side, and this side's all out. So basically, what just doesn't match. And this is pretty critical to sort out the orientation and align these walls to understand what is here.

Speaker A

it the top of it is very loose it's very homogenous thick deposit so where I think we may be looking at where artists died one of these holes really so Matt could be on to a posh artist building

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So what are we going to do?

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turning into a bit of a nightmare why's that well we've got these little pockets of upstanding Roman archaeology all these little yellowy orange two patches down there this stretch here everywhere else Asus is just dug into it it doesn't look like I expected it to

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Well, there's only one way to really do that, and that's almost kind of throw away some of this stuff and draw a new map.

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demolition material it may be that this is over the top of something it certainly has painted wall plaster in it but if we've got that painted plaster then we know it's Roman oh yeah and we've got these tiles and stuff so it

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Exactly, create our own map.

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day one and as the rain at last gives way to sunshine something's going on behind the church that must mean something here than to rob and raid to use yeah what are you guys doing here all the excitement's on the far side of

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So you have got quite a big job. A new student, Henry, is going to make their own map of Castor and mark on it the precise location of all the known archaeology.

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back of the church artist had a theory that all the Roman buildings to the north of the church were one giant structure and Stephen thinks this is how it might have looked well it's a pretty enormous building Tony I mean from where

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Job made easier by the massive chunks of Roman wall still visible in the lanes around the churchyard.

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something that size actually be let's go back to artists he called it a priori what's a Praetorian well in artists its terms he were used to digging villas of fairly modest size and this was the biggest thing that he ever saw and ever

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This another, I see another large chunk out the car. That's more like it.

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nightmare absolute nightmare with all the graves it's been one of the most difficult surveys he's done the problem I've got is what we're not seeing in these results are massive Roman walls foundations or rooms the same way we

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And this looks to be part of a wall that was heading in that direction through the churchyard.

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church' we can dig in this church one day one day the dass has given a permission very excited we need to grab the charm that's what one day only one day only so we've got just a single day to find this

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But the mystery of what lies beneath Castor can only be solved by digging.

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a Praetorian which is a massive Roman building thought to lie somewhere in this graveyard but we've only been allowed one day to dig it and the second problem and hopefully our osteo archaeologist Jackie's going to be able to help us with this one is that

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I don't have to pass, so ignoring some underwhelming geophysics, so what are these colored blobs along here then?

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gray stones around here we're not gonna be able to dig this to the Machine we're going to have to do everything by hand now there's no modern graves here the other thing we can see is either late 18th or 19th century so presumably

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Mick decides it's still worthwhile opening a trench close to where Ben was lowered into that grave, and under the watchful eye of Phil and Raksha, time out digger gets trench number one.

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dug a grave they will have hit graves that weren't marked and bones would have been disturbed disarticulated this articulated bones they were far more robust about these things in the past as long as they didn't leave the consecrated ground of the graveyard and

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See what we're getting is lots of reflections close to the surface, which John doesn't really confuse us to. His radar was showing there could be that.

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series of mysterious structures if we can confirm key parts of his plan then we could be on the way to getting our Praetorian a very special and building we've only got one day Ben what do you think our overall strategy

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But this is reality. This will tell us whether there is anything there. Is that Roman in?

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to try and tie it to the other buildings and sort out the alignment yeah then I think we need to do something similar in the west part of the churchyard just here you know few years you can see that

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Ready pieces of Roman mosaic flooring called tesserae are turning up.

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depict it to this spot just north of the church to help jack eating a new trench in the graveyard [Music] and rakshasas opening a trench as well in the area that Ben's interested in but why though might the Romans have chosen

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Yeah, William said you get a story and the graves here.

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important place in Roman Britain is it oh yeah definitely and then let the local roman town dear Abreva which is had a kilometer from here is immensely important it's 44 acres within the walled area but the significance of dura

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Finally, John figures out where his geophysics has gone wrong.

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important north-south roadway that's become the a1 it's along that route that some of the significant characters have Roman written with a par speaking like Hadrian and constant time and that hatreds particularly important yes or the family exactly I mean Hadrian was very keen on draining

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We've got the Roman filter on.

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insignificant or sort of tucked away this is somewhere that sort of at the hub of of Roman Bryn by the 3rd century caster was perfectly placed with dura breve I on one side and the Imperial Fenland estates on the other it may have

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What, you feel or the Roman?

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lumbered by what artists or how artists used the term praetorium and if we look at his book he shows for example all the villas that he excavated the ones here and here and here as comparatively small structures but look at the size of that

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Oh yeah, that imaginary filter would have to be pretty effective because when Artis first came to Castor, he claimed to have found staggering amounts of Roman archaeology.

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clearly significant and probably more significant than the surrounding villas but there are things called Pretoria around the Roman Empire of course there are yeah I mean they're normally associated with the residences of state officials or even military officials the

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Granade band Artis comes here in the 1820s. He refers to all standing in considerable height.

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in a sort of context a framework we're still eating good clues still looking for clues meanwhile down in the school field what measurement do we have Stuart has mysteriously changed into period costume six meters 60 Stuart you look

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If we look at this, which is a newspaper report from Edmund Artis, a 7th of December 1821, that's the local paper.

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artist that's me absolutely and what I'm going to do is to get myself back into his mindset and the problems he would have had linking all together all these bits of Roman finds and trenches into an existing map so I'm good to try and do

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That's the local paper, Gray Card Stamford News.

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or easy or how difficult or what problems he would have encountered doing it but you're not on your own are you hang on a minute here is Matt your long suffering servant sir park with which I empathize somewhat what are you gonna be

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And the report says on the north side of the church, five rooms have been discovered, the walls of which are beautifully painted and from 10 to 11 feet high, but the floors are all destroyed.

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officially might shame and that is the term would have been used for for the role that matt has around and you're gonna do with a I'm gonna be legging it around the fields as Stuart and Matt go to work antiquarian style and the other

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That's massively high, isn't it?

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that Matt is actually made of one two three four five individual Tesori all mortar together that's the surface that they would have walked on looks a nice nice piece but we've also got the walls as well because we glass the wall

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So that's as high as the walls in here, actually.

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relief to all of us with over 20,000 burials in this churchyard it's not gonna be easy finding any evidence for our Praetorian but in the rectory garden trench which phase now taken over from Matt we may be on to something

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Yeah.

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feel with you now that's what's interesting cuz where I am I've got nothing I've got a great big rectangular hole with no archaeology in it and my only explanation for that can be that this is where artists shoved his trench

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Back outside, it's now raining cats and dogs on our archaeologists in trench one, but despite the weather and the geophysics results, this trench is turning into something of a gold mine.

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have left something at the bottom like a hyper core system or something that would be good I think it's a fair bit more today yeah serve some good news faze trench may have a Roman structure but there's still

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We've got supplies. We're getting loads of finds out already. This is just a—so actually, there's this stuff which is kind of Saxon, so Norman dates, the 11th, early 12th century, right at the time the church was built.

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excuse me excuse me beg your pardon yeah time yeah I think the pegs come out who put the peg in Matthew sorry sir were nothing again that's your wages docked here's my stranger let's the rectory garden next Matthew and then you say mr. Ainsworth

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So they're quite possibly robbing out the Roman buildings for stone to build the church.

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and we have actually that's lovely we've got herringbone wool they're forming one side and another one on this side and it's it's forming a channel running up here to the remnants of this larger wall here this has been roped off for this

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And we've got our first bit of early middle Saxon handmade pottery, 5th, 6th, 7th century, something like that.

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was open after artists excavated it out so you think people care and nicked it basically houses it yeah yeah yeah but I probably didn't look quite like that when artists discovered it anyway I mean I I doubt very much whether all the

Speaker A

What about this chunky stuff?

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embellishment going on here sizable bathhouse but we don't yet know the relationship between it and what's up behind the church back in the graveyard Phill and Jackie are up against the clock digging carefully around lots of human bones they've now only a few hours

Speaker A

Well, we've got Roman as well. There's some bits of Roman color-coated pottery, which is late 3rd, 4th century, a bit of a mosaic tessera as well, possibly.

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lots of bones on top of each other well we've had a lot of loose bones spread about turning up all the way across here but the difference here is you can see we've got about five skulls all dumped

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Cracking selection of finds already.

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don't we that we've got lots of bones and lots of smashed mosaic but no structures whatsoever what we can be certain of is that in places the grave diggers have been through the Roman floor otherwise we wouldn't have this

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But it looks like there's something coming out of the trench field.

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graveyard looks to have got something more substantial but this trench in here to find what we thought was a wall coming through there and lo and behold we have a huge offal that was actually poking out the ground

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Yeah, this is the crucial thing, Tony, as Paul says. We are beginning to get Saxon pottery. These are the first levels that we're actually coming down onto. They could be Saxon buildings here.

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isn't it this is the first time that we have seen anything like the kind of monumental wall so Edmund artists thought yeah this is that this is the only trench where we actually have huge wall mhmmm and it's our failure so far

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This is really rather extraordinary for us. We always have a problem finding Saxon on Time Team. To find it great, but they define it on the site when we're looking for Roman is a little bit more difficult.

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of Hell in these reenactments but it's only been three and you're practically finished I mean once we got a system going between us rolling out the chains and back again it really really would didn't take very long at all and what

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What do we find next?

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what we've what we actually know about this site from modern methods these excavations and the seventies and so on these are the only in black where bits of wall have been found so you know how do you how do you join all those

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Probably snow afternoon of day one here at the fabulous Castor parish church in Cambridgeshire, where we're looking for what could be some very intriguing Roman buildings.

Speaker A

starting to have my doubts mhmmm beginning to disappear the trouble is on our Praetorian diagram we're only certain that the black bits all the other colors depend on our antiquarians observations so how reliable do we now city is well very interesting thing to

Speaker A

Already, Phil's put in a trench over there on the far side of the graveyard and has come up with some Roman stuff, but now we've moved on to the old Re—

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done geophys and radar in all the failure in here and there's no other additional what lines to add to that yeah I can be extremely skeptical about the work of antiquarians it's not always what it's cracked up to be

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I don't think that's fair in the case of artists I will defend him to the hilt in some places I mean look he's a fantastic draftsman his plans are in some cases backed up provide beautiful general views and the details of where the walls

Speaker A

go you always match the relevant plan especially as these red artists walls have often been confirmed by more modern activation hadiza okay I'd endorse that as well having mapped this village where he shows them on here in the similar

Speaker A

techniques and you come up with similar answers in where he's positioned yeah we've got it down in the bath house at the bottom we've got his plan and we've beginning to find the walls all right I'd say this red stuff is right Ben but

Speaker A

there's still a lot of other colors here well I saw a wall fragment here as well and okay was only part of a wall but it was a whacking great wall and the Romans didn't build bits of whacking great

Speaker A

walls for no reason this substantial wall must be part of a bigger building so on one hand we've got this mega building which should be casting its long shadow over us right now and on the other hand as far as things that we can actually

Speaker A

100% guarantee we've got there and we've got just one day left I've got some work tomorrow guys beginning of our final day here at castor in Cambridgeshire and we've just had some fantastic news the diocese have given us permission to

Speaker A

dig in the graveyard down there for one final day although whether we'll find our big Roman building the praetorium is a huge question [Music] so we're spreading our bets today in the Old Rectory garden where we're looking for what could be the East Wing of our

Speaker A

Praetorian we now have two trenches but our main hopes lie with these trenches in the graveyard rat showers at the western edge and films just north of the church beneath these bones we're trying to find this roman structure

Speaker A

marked as f on the plan that artist drew it's here that he said he found a brightly colored mosaic floor so you know how I said I was getting a lot more building material and big blocks of Tessera or Wow now I'm getting lots of P

Speaker A

grit which is coming this fine grit and look what it's coming down on to the floor it looks very like a floor and this is an institute burial that's myung directly on top of it rather look at all

Speaker A

that is good stuff blimey we could be just inches away from finally getting evidence of a big Roman structure and crucially it's slap-bang in the middle of our Praetorian plan back in the Old Rectory garden phase getting really stuck in and the sweat

Speaker A

and graft is starting to pay off hi there Fay cool this looks a bit different than yesterday your well down but fantastically we've got a huge great big section of the big Roman walls man yeah without a shadow and we're a bit

Speaker A

worried yesterday about the sort of relative heights of all this I mean there's a there's a surface very much higher than the Roman wall you can see where artists put his trench which is basically this lying down in this

Speaker A

section here and I actually think that level there is working this staggering which is why it's so complete footprints roots to the earth this is a wonderfully complex trench isn't it you can see where artist was actually digging for

Speaker A

the first time and try and sort of understand how we unpicked the site and how he's he saw it yeah so this is actually a fascinating trail and it's also a very significant chunk of walling on the east and side of what we think is

Speaker A

one single building phase discovery of this massive Roman wall previously dug by artists is a really good sign maybe we can rely on our antiquarian after all meanwhile there's breaking news from the graveyard we've spent the last 36 hours poking around in this

Speaker A

graveyard trying to get permissions to dig it getting permissions to dig it then finding nothing but Roman rubble and a tumble of old bones but a laugh feel we've got something exciting and we we have got articies floor look if you

Speaker A

look down between that pair of legs you can see a mosaic floor actually in sit you you're smiling with him I've really excited about this if artists are right about this he might be right about the praetorium yesterday I think you were a

Speaker A

little bit disappointed with the attitude of some of our archaeologists who were slightly rubbishing the eyes when I was cause proton means a lot to a pass I mean I've got my Greek New Testament here the word is used Joey

Speaker A

here we are they took Jesus from the house of Caiaphas estou praetorium to the praetorium and asks his day he would have heard the word Pytor and when he went to church because that word used to describe him

Speaker A

where Jesus was arraigned in front of Pontius Pilate so he was tried in Pretoria but God are we going to say this is so important to what we're trying to do we've now got the floor you can actually begin to see some sort of

Speaker A

an alignment on the tannery we might be able to actually say exactly what the alignment of my building was but it tells us more than just the alignment as they were the scale of the thing which he insisted was a plate or a big

Speaker A

official palatial type of building finally our efforts in the graveyard are being rewarded if you take off the more conjectural parts the working outside is nearly done to everything we've looked at so far has been on that on a flat

Speaker A

plan hasn't it you know I can see here you've had a new dimension what you're trying to do well what I thought is still partly based on conjecture there's one feature that stands out we're on the edge of a valley slope here aren't with

Speaker A

a bit the building the structures are on the skyline up there and the bath sit down on the lower slopes towards the river below and if you were approaching the site from from down here then whatever was up on the hill whether it

Speaker A

be one big structure or lots of other structures it's actually on the skyline are actually quite impressive wouldn't it feeling whatever some there's gonna be really visually it's stunning back outside in our outlet graveyard trench rat shell has found something stunning

Speaker A

as well Raksha this is awesome I love this this is fantastic it looks a lot different than it did yesterday it's a lot different raksha's revealed a huge section of wall and a step foundation the classic herringbone style shows that this is

Speaker A

definitely Roman people were bit skeptical yesterday I talked about finding this big herringbone wall and I suspect that people didn't quite believe we did kind of think that you're going slightly crazy but just to prove that you were right as always we carried on

Speaker A

down and know behold here it is as you can see there's this huge wall coming through we have this step foundation so what does this tell us been about the significance for Hill building does it add to our picture of the building well

Speaker A

this looks remarkably similar to what was found on the other side of the church in the 50s yes I remember that I've seen photographs yet it's on a similar line and he found step foundations like this this is a photo of

Speaker A

those step foundations excavated at castor in the 1950s they're more than a hundred metres away from our trench but they're virtually identical to those found by raksha so I think we're looking at something that was constructed at the

Speaker A

same time basic and probably the same building one large building rather than settles well you have to say same construction techniques on a similar sort of living dimensions exactly so suddenly we've got two bits of building both of which have steps and both of

Speaker A

which we think a line on this Stoke slope so again that's pretty exciting stuff I think we've been walking across the floor of a room and buildings been here for nearly 2,000 years just astonishing and as the last few hours of our diggit cast to

Speaker A

tick by the news just gets better and better so what's the story of this trance info basically we have a room in building and actually down there we've got a room with what looks like hyper core system so is this stuff that

Speaker A

artists film that we've confirmed well artists did Mac on some walls he did suggest there is a hyper core system there but the locations of the walls and the size of the walls aren't entirely right right so this is new in fact yeah

Speaker A

it is and what's also news we've got that that higher level up there we've actually got a two level building so what did they do fill it in or cover each Opperman build something on top or they had stairs that took you up to

Speaker A

another really hard right right right a building on two levels makes sense because the Romans had to factor in the slope of the hill here in the Old Rectory garden and on the western side of the church [Music]

Speaker A

down at Tracy's trench to the South our excavation of the Roman Baths is coming to an end and the finds are telling a good story well I've got a couple the selection of finds here this one's from Tracy's trench right

Speaker A

down the south end of this site and this is some of the stuff that's been coming out a face trench which is right over the north end of the site now the stuff from Tracy strange I'm afraid to me

Speaker A

looks like generic issue Roman pottery so I think Steve probably electors Committee on this subject I think he's gonna kick you out well there are differences having quite marked differences actually the bulk of the material in this trench comes from an

Speaker A

earlier period and second into third like this large shirt here and these assured tsar beakers very typically local beakers and it makes the real contrast from the southern part of the site to the northern part of the site

Speaker A

where you've got essentially a third and fourth century assemblage so caster has to clear roman phases which means the baths south end of the site will almost certainly build an earlier date than the big building up on the hill where fills

Speaker A

now finished in the graveyard you got to be pleased with that mosaic Yankee I am Tony but I think I'm pretty more pleased about the probable wall well we have another wolf now you know you can't actually see the wall but she looks

Speaker A

disarticulated pieces of bone down there well when we actually got down to the edge here I totally missed I wonder if it could be a robb war so I thought it may sound ah I'll get Henry to plot out

Speaker A

the position artis is building on the ground from the mapping so that's what he's done one corner of the building probable building is obvious yet red pegs over there here yeah that's one corner there yeah and then you see those red pegs there

Speaker A

between the other two grave stones over there it's truth all the way over here Adam run yeah what all this is is one building know that when you Lowen up over there give or take a meet or allowing for the scale it puts the wall

Speaker A

Loing straight through here not only that the alignment of the attesa is just slightly skewed round to the alignment of the church and that's exactly what the tesserae and the plan do exactly the show so regardless of what might be elsewhere we know that

Speaker A

there was a massive construction here so it looks as though artist was right after all well it looks like he doesn't it from what we can see yeah yeah after a roller coaster three days here at castor just

Speaker A

what have we learned then how do you think the Praetorian theory is holding up now pretty well it's not a villa villas are surrounded by farming estates they've got ancillary buildings have got farm buildings barns workers housing there's nothing like that here what else

Speaker A

it's a grand grand building what do we think this building was for well again let's just return to admin artists he first termed it a Praetorian which would mean to him an official residence perhaps of an official linked with the

Speaker A

state and that's exactly what it is how do you feel about artists now well artists and his plans still live yeah that's absolutely the way we have tested his plans we found them to be right and the other

Speaker A

wonderful thing is of course they're very very beautiful it is his impressions his general views are gorgeous they're pretty as well as being informative everybody likes something to be pretty as well as functional like my hat [Music] the massive roman wall that Bradshaw

Speaker A

found at the western end of the graveyard nearly 2 meters wide was built to support a building possibly 3 stories high and at an extrordinary a hundred and ten meters in length this is the largest roman building time team has ever

Speaker A

excavated it would have had a vast red tiled roof bright whitewashed walls a truly astonishing structure Mick I can't remember another dig quite like this one it's been fantastic to be able to dig in the church other than it absolutely

Speaker A

fantastic three days ago I don't think any of us could have dreamt of what we got absolutely you know and this is so exciting to find this mosaic here underneath these bodies we've got artists telling the truth it's a real

Speaker A

thing the praetorium exists in my mind quite wonderful wonderful absolutely [Music]

Topics:DurobrivaeRoman townCastor CambridgeshireRoman archaeologyEdmund ArtisRoman road Urban StreetSaxon potterygeophysics archaeologyRoman bathsTime Team

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