Dig gives new slant to Romans in Britain

0:00am Fri Dec 12, 2008

Finds from the archaeological dig in Southwell may rewrite the way historians view the Roman occupation of Britain.

Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of a large Roman temple during their excavations of the former Minster School site on Church Street.

Nottinghamshire County Council’s senior archaeologist, Ursilla Spence, described the potential discovery as extremely significant.

“Archaeologists and specialists are very excited about this site,” she said.

“It is certainly very exciting and could well rewrite the archaeology of the region and may impact on our understanding of the Roman invasion.”

The archaeologist believes the temple could have been built on an earlier sacred pagan site.

She said: “If it is early Roman it could affect the way we think about how they moved in territories we thought were hostile around the country.”

Ursilla Spence said more about the significance of the remains would be known when carbon dating had taken place on pieces of wooden scaffolding found at the site.

The remains may solve the centuries-old mystery of why Southwell Minster was built where it is.

Historians have struggled to explain why the minster was built on low-lying land with seemingly no major historical importance, but archaeologists believe if the site was a temple, it would explain why.

They believe remains of the temple could be under the minster itself.

Ursilla Spence told Southwell Town Council that it was the discovery of a 4ft high Roman wall in November that led them to believe there was once a temple on the site.

An investigation in 1959, before the school was built, found evidence of what archaeologists believed was one of the largest villas in the East Midlands.

Ursilla Spence said the wall they found turned away from the building thought to be the villa, indicating there was another large structure on site.

The discovered wall could be the outer wall of the temple.

Ursilla Spence believes there may be a sacred pool under the minster that would have been enclosed in a courtyard in the centre of a temple.

She now believes the building thought to be a villa was accommodation for people visiting the neighbouring temple.

She said: “I always assumed that the villa was the reason for the minster being there but the temple means that we’ve had to reassess the importance of this.”

A lack of finds such as broken pottery, animal bones and shells supports the archaeologists’ belief.

Ursilla Spence said villa sites usually contained a lot of material while more important sites such as temples and palaces did not.

A waterproof concrete area dating to Roman times was found near the Potwell Dyke. It is thought it was used as a quay when building materials or goods for the temple were brought down the stream.

Other important finds include four skeletons towards the middle of the site laid out East to West in the manner of a Christian burial.

Ursilla Spence said: “Because they are a Christian burial we would expect them to have been buried a metre below the surface but these were very near to the top.”

She said those building the school found skeletons but they were left in-situ and covered with a thin layer of road stone.

Ursilla Spence said in places there was not much archaeology left because stones had been removed in Saxon and Medieval times.

She suspects stones and artefacts, taken during Medieval time, were still in the town.

“In many cases these sorts of stones end up in people’s rockeries. We don’t want people to bring us these pieces of stone but we would like to record them,” she said.