Site Event/Activity record ECH5822 - Watching Brief for Land at Handbridge, Chester, 2013

A programme of archaeological monitoring was carried out at Handbridge, Chester, during trenching for the installation of cables for a new high voltage main. The fieldwork was carried out between 12 - 22 August 2013 by Dan Garner of L-P Archaeology on behalf of Scottish Power Energy Networks. Historic research places the site along the main thoroughfare running south from the Old Dee bridge, which, along with its predecessors has probably provided a crossing of the River Dee from the city of Chester since the Roman period. A trench 0.35m wide and 0.7m deep was mechanically excavated between the zebra crossing on Queens Park Road and a length of Handbridge road ending at the traffic lights at the southern end of the Old Dee Bridge. The deposits and features encountered related to earlier road surfaces, a nineteenth century brick culvert and a rock-cut pit of possible Roman date.