Roman Buildings, Alcester.

1 Excavations in this area by BW Davis in the early 1920s located ‘some Roman wall and building’. Later refs mention stone floor and tesserae. Exact location within the field is not known but thought to be on line of Roman Road here.
2 1973. Excavation in advance of the construction of flood barriers. An area some 118m long and on average 8m wide was stripped between SP091570 and the junction of the Stratford and Oversley roads. At a depth of about 0.3m throughout the entire length cobbled surfaces were exposed, with traces of stone walling and other features. At the S end large quantities of decorated wall-plaster and a number of robbed-out walls indicated the existence of a substantial building. Quantities of Roman material were found in the topsoil. The building extended E and W beyond the threatened area. Two rooms were located and partly excavated, producing large quantities of decorated wall plaster. At least two phases of timber buildings associated with hearths preceded the stone building. The earliest hearth dated from the C2. The stone building was succeeded by a building incorporating pillars or posts. This was in turn succeeded by a building consisting of a loose platform of sandstone with wooden timber-slots at the edges. The building with plaster may date from the C3 or C4.
3 Included in Alcester sites list.
4 Report on three sites investigated including this one. The other two produced no evidence of Roman occupation.
5 Observation was carried out across the length of the floodbank, including across this area previously excavated in 1973. Material encountered in this 2006 observation included a quantity of freshly broken pottery and ocassional fragments of painted wall plaster. This came from a large area of rubble originally interpreted as a destroyed post-medieval agricultural building. However, it may well represent rubble from a Romano-British building which has been reused as a hard surface for the footings and yard of an animal pen. An additional building, probably of 2nd-century date, fronting the road, was excavated during this programme of work.