LONDON ARCHAEOLOGIST 1975 vol 2.14

All Museum of London, Dept. of Urban Arch.

50 Cannon St. TQ3244 8097 (A. Boddington).

Salvage excavation produced five wood-lined Roman drains and part of a post-hole building.

G.P.O., Newgate St. TQ 3205 8135 (A. Thompson).
Bronze Age pottery and traces of (?) Roman and Saxon structures found at N end of site. At S end three distinct phases of St. Nicholas Shambles have been distinguished and over 200 skeletons removed for study. WC.

New Fresh Wharf. TQ 3295 8066 (J. Schofield).
A second trench 18m by 3m discovered a long length of the Roman water front, partly robbed in the mid-Saxon period and used as the basis for a rough bank of brushwood around pointed stakes, possibly defensive. The site has produced 5th/6th c. Palestinian amphorae so far unknown in Britain, and a notable group of German mortaria. The whole site (including the 1974 trench) is now approaching publication.

5 Pilgrim St. TQ 3178 8112 (J. Schofield).
A brick cellar produced a good group of early 17th c. pottery, imported glass and clay pipes.

10 St. Swithin’s Lane. TQ 3270 8098 (L. M. B. Miller).
Boudiccan and Hadrianic fire levels succeeded by a ragstone building and possible road (all disturbed by later Roman pits and medieval and post-medieval tenements have been recorded.

Trig Lane. TQ 3208 8086 (M. Harrison).
Excavation to N of area detailed last year has disclosed an early 14th c. timber waterfront associated with masonry foundations, possibly for a crane, and further information on the early shore-lines WC.

LAARC Archive

Billingsgate Bath-house, 100 Lower Thames Street, EC3. TQ 33125 80705 (J. Maloney).
Two ragstone walls of the 1st c were set into natural clay. To the W was an early phase of timber piles and planks and an area of natural hillside revetted to prevent landslip. Post-dating this was a 1st c dump in which a timber-lined water tank with a hollow log pipe had been placed.

Upper Thames Street (Baynard’s Castle), now Baynard House, Queen Victoria Street, EC4. TQ 31940 80910 (C Hill).
Observation and limited excavation on this site recorded 115m of the Roman riverside city wall (Fig*BC75). C14 and dendrochronological dating suggested a building date in the 4th c, probably after 330 (this has been modified to 255–70 by Sheldon and Tyers 1983). In the western part of the wall were 52 sculptured blocks reused as building material (Fig*BC75 Mars). They are derived from at least two major monuments, a free standing monumental arch and a Screen of Gods (Fig*BC75), both of early 3rd c style. Also recovered were two mid 3rd c altars from temples. Fragments of the wall had been undermined by the rising Thames in the post-Roman period; one section had fallen northwards, suggesting demolition. The earliest levels of Thames Street over these fragments dated to the 12th c. Parts of medieval timber waterfronts were recorded to the west of the East Watergate of the Tudor Baynard’s Castle (see BC72 and BC74)