Half a century of digging for clues

It has been 50 years since an excavation revealed Roman remains at Church Street, Southwell, but experts are no nearer to discovering what the building on the site was used for.

Photographs in the Advertiser archives, taken in June 1959, show archaeologist Mr Charles Daniels on the site with a large section of mosaic he had unearthed.

At the time Mr Daniels said the mosaics were of a better quality to those usually found in the area but there was nothing that gave him a definite idea of the nature of the building, except that it was Roman.

Mr Daniels and his team also discovered the painted plaster wall of a bath house, which now hangs in Southwell Minster, and about 30 skeletons.

Mr Daniels believed the remains were a villa.

A further dig in 1971 revealed more than 200 skeletons while excavations last year revealed a large stone wall on the site.

The size of the wall led Nottinghamshire County Council community archaeologist Ursilla Spence to believe the building may have been a Roman temple.

Dr Will Bowden, of Nottingham University, believes the remains are those of a very large villa.

Dr Bowden said little more was known about the remains now than 50 years ago.

He said: “What is remarkable about the site is that since the dig was done and Daniels published his findings, which was fairly shortly after, it has been fairly quiet.

“One of the major discoveries since then was when a trench was dug on the other side of Church Street from the school site and Roman remains were found there, which would suggest that the villa was much larger than Daniels thought.

“We have also had excavations on the Minster School site recently that revealed the foundations of the big wall but that still remains rather enigmatic and so we are rather stuck at that point.

“We lost the evidence of burials on the site, which were machined out in the 1970s when the original Minster School was extended, and that was a bit of a catastrophe because they could have provided some very important information.”

Dr Bowden said the 1959 investigation was very important.

He said: “Before that dig they knew something was there, from evidence discovered in vicars’ gardens in the early 18th Century, but they didn’t know what.

“What they found suggested it was really quite a very exceptional site for this area.”

Dr Bowden said archaeological techniques had changed over the last 50 years.

He said: “We have a range of techniques available to us that simply were not available to Daniels and we can do a lot more with a lot less actual excavation.

“We can do quite a lot with geophysics but if, for example, a skeleton is dug up we can do tests and find out a lot more about them such as how old they were, what they died of, and what their diet was like.

“Another thing that has changed is that Britain has quite strong antiquity laws. The priority of English Heritage and county council archaeologists is preservation in situ — preservation from archaeologists as well as preservation from developers.

“If we leave the remains in situ they will be left for the future when archaeology is better.”

Dr Bowden is working with Southwell Community Archaeology Group and hopes more work will take place on site.

He said: “We are trying to secure the strip of land that we know the remains of the villa are under, then that would be available for excavation. There are also remains under the Dean’s garden and there is the possibility of doing geophysics on the playing fields.”

Dr Bowden said the site was potentially of international importance, particularly because of its proximity to the minster.

He said: “There are lots of villas in the East Midlands but none like this, and none on this scale.

“There are lots of villas but none have this sort of relationship with a major cathedral and are in such a relatively untouched condition.”