A watching brief took place in 2005 at numbers 1-3 Queen Street (Colchester Visitor centre) and was focused on the ground floor where nine trenches of various depths and dimensions were excavated by the building contractor. In places, the works provided very limited exposures of what appeared to be the remains of a substantial Roman house in the form of a robber trench for a foundation and Roman demolition debris. A possible robbed-out foundation and dump or demolition deposits was defined in two trenches (T4 and T8). Too little was exposed to determine the nature of the building concerned, although the width of the probably robber trench 0.75m) is more in keeping with the foundation of a substantial private house rather than a major public building. <1>