During excavations on the NCP car park site at North Hill in 1965 (ECC949) a number of early Roman and later features were found in addition to the main buildings, structures and streets.

The earliest activity on the site was represented by five oval pits dug into the natural subsoil at various places on the site. The pottery from them was Roman and of Claudian date with no evidence for pre-Conquest activity in the site. The pits appear to have been latrine pits and one of them may have contained the remains of a tile hearth; see MCC2066). A gravelled surface in the north part of the site also belonged to this phase which appears to have been military in origin.
Other early Roman features were located beneath the east-west street (MCC1975) which ran to the south of the site. Beneath the earliest road surface was a burnt clay floor cut by two gullies and a pit filled with burnt daub which were obviously open at the time of the Boudican fires suggesting that the street was not part of the original colonial layout or that it was narrower than its predecessor.
Many pits were found dug into the Boudican destruction levels, suggesting that these were excavated by 'looters'.
Rubbish pits dug into one of the mosaics in the latest Roman building on the site (MCC2059) indicated that by the latter 4th century it was derelict and a small pit dug into the northern corridor of this building contained coarse hand-made pottery of the early Anglo-Saxon period. Five large post holes which were also cut through the floor may have been connected to this pit, 'perhaps part of a large hut', but there were no levels associated with it.
The earliest activity on the site detected within Insula 18 was represented by a firm gravel surface cut by a small round pit and an east-west gully. In the south the gravel was covered by a layer of ash over which was accumulated over a foot of hill wash material suggesting the site had been open for some time before the construction of the first masonry building (MCC2060).<1>