Monument record 1189/1/22 - Roman Road - Whitchurch - Nantwich - Middlewich (Margary route 700)

<1> Rubicon Heritage Services (UK), 2016, Archaeological Watching Brief at Rookery Grange, Nantwich (Client Report). SCH8167.

Watching brief identified a stone surface with two flanking ditches which were interpreted as the remains of the Roman road.
The surface consisted of a single layer of small to medium (c.1‐8cm dia.) sub‐rounded and rounded stones laid in a light brown‐yellow sandy clay matrix with occasional larger stones (c.10‐15cm dia.). It was roughly linear in shape, and aligned northeast‐southwest and extended beyond the limits of the excavated area.

The Roman road was in poor condition due to extensive modern ploughing which had scattered much of the stone surface of the road into the fields either side. This had also obscured much of the associated flanking ditches, the remains of which were fairly ephemeral. Due to the shallow nature of the ditches and the poor preservation of the stone surface it is possible that these features were very heavily truncated and would originally have been quite robust, so the stone surface uncovered could have originally been a foundation layer to a more substantial road above.

The recovery of medieval or late medieval pottery sherds from the road surface could date from the initial ploughing of the area, rather than representing a continuing use of the feature, as they were very abraded fragments despite being found directly on the road surface