ULAS
University of Leicester Archaeological Services

Sanvey Gate

The Town Defences

A large stretch of Leicester's Roman defences has recently been excavated by ULAS. This work was carried out for Thomas Fish and Sons Ltd as part of the Leicester Square housing development on Sanvey Gate.

The first defences around Roman Leicester were probably built in the second century AD. The earliest evidence discovered on site was the rampart, a great earth bank still surviving at modern ground level. In front of this was the town wall, most of the stone of which had been taken away or 'robbed out' in later times. However, the 2.9m wide foundations of the wall were still intact in places, indicating that the wall may have stood a massive 5m high.

During fieldwork, a section of the Roman town wall was exposed to the north of its original position. The wall had toppled over and had been reused in a later period as a property boundary. This fragment of wall has provided new information about construction methods. For example, the face of the wall was made of narrow courses of hard granite with a smooth surface. The hard mortar bonding had nevertheless weathered considerably. Whether the wall collapsed or was deliberately toppled is uncertain, but we know that Roman buildings were in ruin and their stone was being robbed during the medieval period.

A series of large ditches ran around the town beyond the wall. The picture here shows just how deep they were, as much as 3m below ground level. The defences were very imposing features, and though in part to discourage would-be attackers from storming the town wall, they were at least partly constructed as a symbol of civic pride. There were probably three Roman ditches, and later, two medieval ditches cut through the silted up Roman ones as shown in the above reconstruction.

Inside the town

Two Roman stone walled buildings were found just inside the town defences. Building A (see plan left) was a courtyard building, perhaps a town house, which had at least four rooms looking on to the courtyard, and two further corridors. The building had large foundations, and probably had two storeys. It is interesting that a substantial building like this was so close to the defences. It  fronted onto a major street that continued south into the town. This street originally had drainage ditches both sides, but these were replaced by walls in the Roman period. Building B also had at least four rooms, and was most likely a strip building more than 20m long and 6m wide. There was little evidence that they were high status unlike the Vine Street townhouse, although the courtyard building had patches of mortar floor surviving that could have held a tessellated pavement. A dump of tesserae was found in a pit nearby.

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