Monument record 8703 - Excavated Early Roman Ground Surface, Princess Street

<1> Oxford Archaeology North, 2020, Northgate Redevelopment, Phase 1, ‘Grassy Knoll’ and Bus Station, Chester: Archaeological Evaluation and Watching Brief Report, R4491 (Client Report). SCH8977.

In 2019, archaeological evaluation of trenches located on the 'Grassy Knoll', undertaken as part of the Northgate re-development, identified a buried soil overlying the natural bedrock. This is thought to represent a relict soil that formed the ground surface in the early Roman period. It was recorded in two trenches just to the north of Princess Street (trenches G and H).

Trench G, situated in the southern part of the ‘Grassy Knoll’, was 14m square, being excavated to a depth of 1.74m. The area had been extensively truncated by a cellar, the remains of a nineteenth-century building that had once stood on the north side of Princess Street, which exposed the natural sandstone bedrock at 24.23m aOD. This was overlain by the relict ground surface deposit, comprising a thin layer of pale brownish-yellow, silty sand, the top of which lay at 24.43m aOD. Although largely removed by the cellar, what remained of this deposit yielded fragments of Roman tile and a single sherd from a ceramic Roman oil lamp. It was directly overlain by a sequence of late post-medieval deposits, lying directly beneath the modern topsoil, representing infilling of the nineteenth-century cellar.

Trench H was excavated in the south-western part of the 'Grassy Knoll' site and was aligned north-north-east/south-south-west. It measured 16 x 4m and was excavated to a depth of 2.16m. Upon removal of a post-medieval cellar wall, significant archaeology was identified, at a height of 24.05m aOD, as a 0.5m-thick layer of sandstone rubble, from which two sherds of samian ware were recovered, dating to the second century AD. Below this, at 23.55m aOD (visible in the cut for the cellar wall), the relict ground surface deposit was again identified as a layer of orange-brown silty sand. This yielded three fragments of Roman pottery, including two joining fragments of a small bowl in a hard-buff, oxidised fabric likely to be of second-century date, also a piece of samian, the form of which was unclear. Overlying the Roman deposits was a sequence of dark soils of medieval/post medieval date (see CHER 13008), in turn overlain by modern topsoil.