Excavations in August 1932 on Lexden Dyke Middle.

Site 1
A single datable object was found embedded in the top of the last tip of gravel 0.5m down from the surface of the present day slope. This was a Roman bronze plate brooch dated to c.AD 100. This could indicate that the rampart was slighted before this date, and the brooch dropped in still loose gravel.

Site 2
Almost 30 fragments of pottery, a fragment of tile, a scrap of iron, part of a Roman looking file and a Roman bronze coin were recovered. Warn and indeterminate Roman pottery was found in the gravely soil which overlaid the metalling mentioned above. The rest was from the entrance itself, some Roman some pre-Roman found in the overlying silty soil.

Two sherds were from the rampart, presumably dropped during the ramparts construction. One from the shoulder of a native coarse ware jar of Cam Form 263, showing a band of fingertip impressions and datable to period one at Sheepen. The other sherd was from a native coarse ware jar Form 264. The position of the Roman material was consistent with initial silting up of the entrance during the Roman period (the coin was dated to postumus AD 259-377)

In the silt a few centimetres above the destroyed northern ramparts base were five pieces of pre-Roman coarse ware, one early Roman sherd, one rim of Gallo-Roman terra-nigra platter of Cam Form 4a, which is usually found in Britain pre-conquest. This does not help give the destruction a very close date but points towards a date in the late 1st century.