An excavation was carried out by Colchester Archaeological Trust in 2000 at the old Post Office, Head Street, in advance of the redevelopment for a new Odeon Cinema. The work revealed multi-period occupation, principally Roman in date.<1> There was only one pre-Roman feature, but pre-Roman finds were more plentiful. They included prehistoric flints, a Bronze Age awl, Bronze Age pottery, and two silver Iron Age coins. The Roman period remains included a fortress-period plinth building (Period 1: AD 43/44 to 49) with a contemporary gravelled street; colony period buildings (Period 2: c AD 49 to 60/1) which were burnt in the Boudican revolt (Period 3: AD 60/1); a Flavian and Antonine period house with mortar floors and rubble-in-mortar footings (Period 4: c AD 80 to late 2nd century); and a late Antonine period house with tessellated pavements and an apsidal basin (Period 5: late 2nd to late 3rd century). There were no Anglo-Saxon period features, but a Serie A sceatta, dated to pre c.710, was found in a residual context (medieval pit). Medieval features consisted of a few pits and a series of robber trenches dug to remove the foundations of the Period 4 and Period 5 Roman houses. This may indicate that the site was open ground in medieval times. The post-medieval period is represented by a large number of rubbish pits dug in the rear plots of houses on the Head Street frontage. Principal post-medieval finds include a post-medieval cobble-floored brick structure, good groups of late 17th- and early 18thcentury glassware, and a dump of ceramic mould debris from the 17th-century manufacture of bronze cauldrons. A trial trenched evaluation was undertaken by AOC Archaeology in 1998.<2>