Monument record 8391/1 - Roman Barracks Block (Latera praetorii west) at Hunter Street, further evidence

<1> Oxford Archaeology North, 2022, Chester Northgate Redevelopment: Phase 1 Post-Excavation Assessment Report, R4690 (Client Report). SCH9431.

Further evidence of one of the barrock blocks in Insula XXII (OAN Building 801) was recorded in 2020-1 during the excavation of the lower foundation pile mat for the market and cinema on the south side of Hunter Street, as part of the Northgate redevelopment scheme. The corner of a stone or stone-footed building, thought to be the north-east corner of the barrack, was recorded along with a compacted clay floor. The corner was defined by an L-shaped sandstone wall footing, 0.6m wide and surviving to a height of 0.3m, that extended to the south and west. It was built of roughly squared rubble with a core of smaller, undressed stones bonded with pale cream-brown mortar. Internally, the earliest deposits recorded comprised possible levelling/make-up layers of soil and some rubble, beneath a probable floor of mixed, compacted clay.

Strata associated with the wall, including those inside the building and external deposits immediately adjacent, produced pottery of late first to second century AD. Apart from a handful of later Roman sherds, all the pottery from the Roman levels within this area is of this period, since almost all later Roman remains had been removed during archaeological excavations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, prior to the construction of the former bus exchange (Strickland 1982, source 2). It is likely that the footings relate to the postulated early second century reconstruction attested elsewhere in the fortress (Mason 2012, source 3).

A few wall fragments (771, 786, 767) were recorded further west and potentially formed part of the veranda on the north side of the contubernia block.

<2> Strickland, T.J., 1982, Chester (Article in Journal). SCH6299.

<3> Mason, D. J. P., 2012, Roman Chester – Fortress at the Edge of the World (Book). SCH7101.