A watching brief was maintained during a new housing development at the north end of St. Albans Road. A substantial part of the site was lowered because of the natural slope. The new buildings were erected on piles. The topsoil on the site was up to 4 m deep and appeared to contain recent material all through it. The piling indicated 3 to 4 m of topsoil overlying 1.0 m to 1.5 m of sandy loam over clean sand. The sand layers were probably natural. The stratigraphic sequence for all the piles was as described above except for a group of four near the southern boundary of the site. Here, beneath approximately 3 m of topsoil was a 1 m thick layer of Roman dumped material in situ. It consisted of sandy loam containing fragments of charcoal, tile, oyster shell and pottery of 2nd to 3rd century date. The Roman dump may have been a pocket of material left in situ in an otherwise severely eroded slope. The topsoil may have been dumped on the site during other construction work in the area and was reputedly left after the digging of foundations for St Mary's Hospital<1>