Site Event/Activity record ECH5044 - Chester Amphitheatre Investigations Summer 2001-2003 (Amphitheatre Site II)

Following on from work carried out in 2000 (ECH4299), this excavation was designed to find out what information the surviving deposits might contain. Four trenches were excavated, one in the eastern entrance (Trench 1), one on the grass seating bank north of the east entrance (Trench 2) and one to the east of the north entrance (Trench 3). Trench 1: foundation trench for the wall of the entrance dated to the late third century when the amphitheatre was redesigned. Trench 2: complete succession of archaeological deposits was revealed from its initial construction to its abandonment, through the Saxon period and the gradual robbing of material in the medieval period followed occupation from the thirteenth century and its subsequent clearance in the 1950s. Trench 3: More foundations of St John's House and another earlier seventeenth century building as well as evidence of Civil War activity (1).