4.9.2a : Romano-British rural settlement

Brockley Hill / Stanmore Road - Machining in Progress

Considerable evidence of Romano-British activity was identified at Sipson Lane, Harlington, including extensive farmstead features (enclosures, droveways, gravel quarries, a building platform, pits, postholes, a timber-lined well, and a midden), an inhumation burial (the first in West London), and three cremations. Provisional ceramic dating points to two broad occupation phases of the first to second and third to fourth centuries AD; stratigraphic evidence suggests continuous use of some key features. Other Romano-British field systems were recorded at Brentford, beside a Roman road on the edge of the roadside settlement. Occupation throughout the Roman period was identified by the presence of extensive spreads of Roman material at Stanmore (west of Watling Street and at the foot of the hill on which the Sulloniacis Roman pottery production site stands), although spreads of limestone rubble foundations in one area, and a large water-hole in another, suggest a dispersed rural settlement rather than one concentrated at the roadside. The remarkably well-preserved remains of the main London to Colchester road were revealed by excavation at Lefevre Walk Estate, Old Ford. Successive construction phases spanned four centuries, and quarry pits to the south of the road dating from the earliest years of the Roman occupation are probably contemporary with its primary construction. On either side of the road numerous boundary ditches indicate substantial agricultural activity. Roadside clay and timber buildings were also recorded, together with a small group of inhumations dating from the second half of the Roman occupation. A small sub-rectangular timber building, possibly from the third to fourth century was excavated in the context of widespread occupation evidence including pits, postholes, ditches, and wells, at Hunts Hill Farm, Upminster.

The site of St John's Vicarage, Old Malden revealed numerous pits and postholes of late Iron Age and Roman date, assumed to be part of a small enclosure. At Summerton Way, Thamesmead, excavation of a third-century rural settlement located on the alluvial floodplain immediately adjoining the Thames provided evidence of pottery production possible indicating an association with specialised craft production sites further along the estuary.

4.9.2b : Romano-British urban development

The site of a Roman military building recorded by Grimes in 1957 at Shelley house, 3 Noble Street, in the City of London, was re-excavated, providing evidence that the stone fort was built after at least one earlier timber building had already been burnt down. Further east at the excavations on the site of 1 Poultry, also in the City, some of the deepest deposits were finally excavated 10m below the current ground level, (see also section 4.14). There was evidence for land modelling in the form of terraces along the slope of the western bank of the Walbrook from as early as the mid-first century AD, and a clay and timber building higher up the slope. Further east, on the site of Baltic Exchange, investigation identified a significant ditch (at least 50m long), filled with high quality pottery and amphorae fragments, which has been interpreted as a boundary marker for the edge of the early Roman city. Excavation on the site of Suffolk House, 5 Laurence Pountney Hill, and 154-6 Upper Thames St, in the City, revealed a pair of timber structures which could have been from a north-south quay, acting as timber braces constructed with wood from trees felled in 84 AD.