The majority of the post-medieval finds from the excavations were found in area B but some came from the backfill of the 1960s trenches on area A. Fragments of pottery, glass, clay tobacco pipes and building materials make up the bulk of the material; there are also a number of metal objects including coins dating from the reign of George II to the 1960s.
The pottery varies in date from the 16th to 19th centuries. Apart from a mid-19th century group of almost complete vessels most of this pottery is made up of broken fragments and it appears that no complete pots can be re-constructed The pottery is a mix of tablewares such as teapots, cups, saucers, plates as well as stoneware bottles and large storage pots, which may have been used in the kitchen or for storage in a workshop. Some of the tablewares from area B are quite attractive and of good quality, such as the remains of a creamware teapot which appears to be painted with a picture of Aurora, goddess of the dawn, it was made in the second half of the 18th century. This and others including fragments of Chinese porcelain would probably have come from prosperous townhouses. Less glamorous are pieces from blue decorated grey stoneware chamber pots imported from Westerwald in the Rhineland in the 18th century. Another much later item of personal hygiene but from closer to home is the lid of a late 19th or early 20th century toothpaste jar printed with the name of a Manchester company of chemists.
Numbers of clay tobacco pipes, wine bottles, as well as pottery counters, dice and a domino piece suggest leisure time activities of eighteenth and early nineteenth century Cestrians. One of the wine bottle fragments has been stamped with a seal showing initials, probably of the owner. Another 18th century bottle fragment from area A has a stamp showing that it held mineral water from Germany.
Tobacco smoking became a common habit in the seventeenth century and most of the tobacco pipes found on the site would have been made in Chester. There was a tobacco pipe factory just outside the Newgate and also several claypipe makers in Love St not far from the amphitheatre. These places may have been the origin of fragments of tobacco pipe kiln waste and wasted pipes that were also found.
Further evidence of Chester’s industrial past is an almost complete but smashed pottery sugar cone mould from the back-filled cellar. The mould would have been used in sugar refining to make sugar loaves. From the late 17th – early 19th century there were a small number of 'sugar houses' in Chester refining sugar imported from the Caribbean; this mould is probably waste from one of these.
Also amongst the cellar fill was a 16th – early 17th copper alloy counter; counters such as these were used to help people perform calculations such as might be done by a tradesman, banker or a housekeeper to draw up accounts. Many of these counters were made in Nuremburg, Germany and exported to Britain.
A number of items were of personal use, these include buckles and buttons for items of clothing and shoes. Pipe clay wig-curlers are a reminder that wigs were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Another item which may have been related to hairstyles is a long flat needle or pin with a large eye. Pins like these are sometimes known as bodkins. One use for them is to thread laces or tape but they were particularly fashionable in the Low Countries in the early 17th century as hair or headdress ornaments. Randle Holme, a 17th century Chester resident, wrote ‘The Bodkin is a thing useful for women to bind up their hair with and about, they are usually made of silver and gold the inferior have them of Brasse, but the meanest content them selves with a skewer or sharp pointed stick.’. This one is made of copper alloy and so was obviously an ‘inferior’ type.
It is difficult to know whether all these objects can be related to activities or buildings that may have once existed on the site of the amphitheatre but there are two groups of objects whose origin may be easier to identify. Over 40 pieces of lead shot have been found in area B which is a far greater number than can normally be expected from a site in the city. They may be evidence for Parliamentarian gun emplacements in St John’s churchyard during the Civil War siege of Chester. Some of the shot has been flattened presumably by impact, perhaps it came from Royalist guns inside the city walls shooting at the Parliamentarian soldiers in the churchyard? A lead cap from a gunpowder flask was also found and is similar to ones used in the Civil War. It is possible that once all the ironwork from area B has been x-rayed pieces of guns might be identified.
The second group includes crisp packets and bread wrappers marked in pre-decimal prices, milk bottles, 1960s coins and a shovel. These seem to been left behind by the 1960s archaeologists; little did they know that nearly 40 years later the remains of their packed lunches would be excavated!
Mixed up with this wide variety of objects is debris from demolished buildings such as bricks, tiles, pieces of painted wall plaster, mortar, window glass, roof slate and chimney pots. Until further work has been done it is difficult to know what all these finds represent, whether they come from buildings close by or whether they were rubbish from elsewhere dumped on the site. Whatever their origin many of the objects give an interesting glimpse into the everyday life and concerns of the past inhabitants of Chester.