Site Event/Activity record ECH2344 - Excavations at Weaver Road. Roman Northwich.

Rescue excavations were undertaken on the north side of Weaver Street between August 1987 to July 1990, when work to level a garden area cut into an existing bank to a depth of 2m revealing large quantities of Roman pottery. An L‐shaped area, cutting into the hillside, was excavated; three main phases of activity were identified. Phase I comprised a number of construction trenches, circular post-holes and pits cut into natural red boulder clay, possibly coincident with Flavian I fort. Above the Phase I deposits there was a 2.5m build up of redeposited material (Phase II), comprising a mixture of pebbles, sandstone, pottery, soil, with some stratification involving layers of charcoal. This material, which appears to have been dumped from the hilltop, the area of the Flavian fort platform to the north-west, was concentrated on the western side of the excavations in a bowl-shaped depression. It contained a large quantity of Romano-British pottery including grey wares, red wares, locally made orange wares, mortaria, a stamped amphora handle from Spain and a small quantity of Samian, also some slag and tile. This phase may represent the clearance activity of the Roman army at the beginning of the Flavian II fort. Cut into the Phase II deposit were beam slots and signs of burnt clay and charcoal. At the southern end of the investigated area, a bowl-shaped feature was sectioned (possible hearth). Also recorded was a possible drainage ditch alongside a trackway, potentially giving access to the site. Phase III could represent industrial re-use of the site contemporary with the 2nd Flavian fort. The excavation archive is held by the South Trafford Archaeology Group. (Sources 1-3) A later report revised the number of identified phases to five. (Source 4) Source 5: Report/Printout generated from a database created by the University of Manchester (Maude and Faulkner) to record the Weaver Road Roman pottery (some of the same graphs feature in the 1993 Manchester Archaeological Bulletin article, source 3). Finds report, produced in 2020, for the Roman Samian pottery found at Weaver Street. Much of the samian ware was fragmentary and abraded, making the forms difficult to identify. About 480 sherds were examined, including scraps and flakes. Where forms could be identified, excluding scraps, this amounted to at least 224 vessels. Slightly more than half (55.5%) came from the large rubbish deposit (context 2a). 59% of the material was South Gaulish, from La Graufesenque, 41% from Central Gaul. Of the Central Gaulish ware, a third (14% of the total) was from Les Martres-de-Veyre, two thirds (27% of the total) was probably all from Lezoux. The date-range of the material was extremely limited, c. AD 80-90 to c. AD 140, in line with the results of previous excavations at Roman Northwich. (6) Finds report, produced in 2023, for the Roman glass found at Weaver Street. A total of 195 glass fragments were recovered and, of these, 158 fragments were identified as Roman. The Roman assemblage consisted of 124 fragments from a minimum of 12 vessels (table wares and bottles), 28 fragments of cast window glass, and five glass objects including a bracelet/anklet fragment and four beads. Most of this material was recovered from Context 2a, the large dump layer. The general condition of the glass was good with little abrasion and reasonable fragment size. The date-range of the material was extremely limited, c. AD 80 to c. AD 140, in line with the Samian ware analysis and the results of previous excavations at Roman Northwich. (7) Notes produced by Prof G.D.B. Jones on excavations on Castle Hill, Northwich, for lecture at Cheshire Archaeology Day 1992. The presence of a pottery kiln in Waterloo Road, together with the considerable quantity of dumped first/second century AD pottery found at Weaver Street, could indicate that Northwich was important for pottery production. (8)