Investigations by the Colchester Excavation Committee exploring fiedl 613. The main area of investigation was Temple 2 (beneath St Helena's School) but exploratory trenches located another building even more thoroughly destroyed than the Temple 2, lying on a slight mound to the NW of the latter. This also proved to have been a Celtic temple but of more normal size, much lighter construction and of much later daet. No precinct walls ot other boundary could be traced as belonging to it. This temple lies 100 yards NW of Temple 2, traversed by the S fence of the new by-pass road. The walls are smaller than those of Temple 2 but no less thoroughly robbed. The building apparently consisted of a rectangular cella 23ft E-W, 18.5ft N-S with foundation trench of varying width, and portico c.7ft wide on all sides. The floors were of native yellow gravel. The mound was made up partly of gravel floor and partly mixed and dirty make up full of broken septaria, tile, oyster shells, small fragments of Antonine and earlier pottery and food bones. <1> Circumstances permitted only a limited excavation and knowledge of the building is therefore restricted and imprecise. The temple was trenched obliquely and an area opened along its SE side where a gravelled path was found apparently leading from an entrance. The building was rectangular with walls of the cella and ambulatroy of similar width. No floor levels survived, all the layers remaining appeared to predate the construction of the temple. Hull thought the temple had been built on a mound dateable to the C3. The foundations do not everywhere penetrate the mound reinforcing the suggestion that the 2 are not contemporary. <2>
Aerial photo <3> <4>