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Trench XII was located to the east of the North Entrance to the monument. In addition to uncovering parts of the foundations of St John’s House, parts of an earlier building were located. Consisting of sandstone blocks set in mortar, it is of typical seventeenth-century construction, which fits well with an inscribed datestone found in the 1960s, recording a structure of 1664. Elsewhere in the trench, deposits dating to the mid-seventeenth century were identified (including, intriguingly, one that contained a musket ball, which is very significant in view of the known military activity in this part of the city during the Civil War). |
The most unexpected discovery in this trench was that part of the so-called ‘concentric wall’ of the Roman amphitheatre survived to just 10 cm below the modern ground level. This means that the wall may stand up to some 1.8 m high. The ‘concentric wall’ is part of the outer masonry superstructure of the Roman building. It supported the rear part of the seating and joined the outer wall by vaulting over a corridor that ran around the perimeter of the structure. The 1960s excavators had concluded that the ‘concentric’ and outer walls had been too extensively robbed in the Middle Ages to justify their excavation and consequently did not seek them. This trench suggests that they may have reached their conclusion too hastily. It will be important to see if any other sections of the ‘concentric’ or outer walls survive as well as this elsewhere on the site.
The discovery of part of the superstructure of the ‘concentric wall’ allows further analysis of the sequence of building on the site. Since 1960, it has been believed that the stone amphitheatre was preceded by a timber structure, in common with many of the military buildings inside the fortress. Certainly, a timber framework was in place when the sand excavated from the arena was dumped over its foundations. However, we can now demonstrate that so, too, was the ‘concentric wall’; moreover, the concentric wall was faced from the arena side and must have been built before the timber framing. This means that the timbers do not belong to an earlier building but represent the support for the front part of the seating. The 1960s excavators were puzzled by their inability to locate these supports; it now emerges that the supports were there all along, carefully recorded, but completely misinterpreted.
The excavation has shown that much of what was previously believed about the Roman amphitheatre is wrong in detail. In particular, the survival of Roman masonry is much better than had been thought and the significance of some of the post-Roman archaeology is much greater than predicted. Moreover, a strong case can now be made for relating the timber framing discovered in the 1960s to the stone building and not to an earlier, entirely timber-framed structure; more work will be required to see if this is indeed the case. We can also be confident that the narrowing of the East Entrance is a post-Roman feature, perhaps connected with the Middle Saxon St John’s Church.