A robbed-out Roman wall foundation was observed during the excavation of a pipe trench in Castle Park in 1983 (ECC375). The foundation ran north-south. To the north the wall foundation met an east-west robber trench/wall foundation (see MCC1291) which bounded a hypocaust (MCC1290).
The foundation separated two tessellated pavements, presumably in different rooms (see MCC1293 and MCC1294) the western one of which (MCC1294) was defined along its southern edge by another robber trench/wall foundation (see MCC1295).<1>
The wall may have been previously exposed in 1928/9 when Rex Hull undertook minor excavations against the fence on the west side of Hollytrees Meadow (see ECC797) where he exposed the remains of a wall 2ft below the surface. This later proved to be a two foot thick, roughly built wall of septaria which was part of an L-shaped fragment SW of a tessellated pavement. 'Later trenching exposed remains of several walls and plain red tessellated floors all in a very fragmentary condition. The walls generally consisted of the foundation layer of mortar only, but here and there some blocks of septaria remained in position....The west wall of the room had been robbed'.<2> All these remains are likely to represent three or more rooms of a Roman building.