During excavations at Lewis's Gardens in 1955 (ECC667), the remains of a Roman masonry building (House III) were discovered, its foundations lying 4.5 ft. below the modern ground surface. The remains consisted of two parallel walls running north-south which were followed, one for 62ft. and the other for 40ft. These apparently flanked a corridor into which rooms of varying sizes opened on the east and west. The full extent of the building could not be ascertained, although a pebbled surface set in mortar may have represented an external yard or courtyard. However, the east wall of the corridor appeared to continue northwards along one side of this metalling. This wall was built on a foundation of broken flue-tiles, opus signinum and mortar which had presumably come form a wrecked building. The wall itself was constructed of faced septaria blocks with rubble fill between.
The corridor and one of the rooms on the west had surviving tessellated pavements as floors with quarter-round moulding some of which survived in situ along the edge of the wall trench. Fragments of red and green wall plaster was also recovered. The building appears to have been built in the late 2nd century and was occupied into the 4th century.<1>