| Summary : The site of a Roman settlement with evidence for bronze working and pottery kilns. Building remains recorded from the site include wall footings, roofing tiles, coloured wall plaster, window glass and a column capital. Wells were also discovered and a seventeen foot wide roadway observed at the south-east of the site. Finds including Early Medieval shield bosses and a scramasax, a Neolithic axe, and a Bronze Age rapier were also present. |
More information : (SK 92663345) Roman Wall (R) (Remains of)
(SK 92733331) Roman Wall (R) (Site of)
(SK 92733338) Roman Coins, Pottery etc found. (1)
(SK 927334) Saltersford, Roman settlement suggested by Whitwell and Margary, on the basis of the mileage given in the Antonine Itinerary, to be Causennae, rather than Ancaster (Rivet says "Ancaster cannot be Causennae" but suggests Sapperton, TF 03 SW 3 as an alternative). The importance of the site is in its situation just to the west of Ermine Street, at the point where an important salt road (RR 58b) crosses the river Witham.
Responsibility for recording the discoveries here belongs to
H Preston of the Grantham Waterworks, whose careful records over a number of years established that Saltersford was a settlement of stone buildings on either side of the river, spreading 1/2 mile further west almost to the line of the present A1.
Building remains recorded from the site include wall footings,
roofing tiles, coloured wall plaster, window glass and a column
capital. Wells were also discovered and a seventeen foot wide roadway observed at the south-east of the site. A large amount of pottery was uncovered, together with querns, coins, brooches and other metal-work.
Evidence of smelting on the eastern side of the river may belong to an earlier period of occupation.
Coins range from Vespasian to Honorius, and samian potters' stamps commence in the Neronian period, so a settlement was probably established here in the 1st century, continuing to the end of the Roman period as a late or sub-Roman bronze buckle, together with late coins and pottey, testify.
Find of other periods include a Saxon scramaseax, a Saxon shield boss and the butt end of a rapier which may be Middle Bronze Age. (2-7)
A large amount of material from the site is in Grantham Museum. There are no surface signs of Roman occupation.
Name `Cavsennis' accepted for 4th edition RB Map. (8)
'Cavsennis' refers to either the Roman settlement at Saltersford or the one at Saperton (see TF 03 SW 3). (9)
[SK 92653330] Neolithic polished stone axe found in 1902 is now in Lincoln City and County Museum (LM 56.72). (10)
Additional Romano-British metalwork finds reported in 1980. Evidence for Romano-British bronze-working from fieldwalking finds of incompletely finished buckle and brooch. (11-12)
Excavation of two corn-driers and series of channels leading to stone-lined tank by SLAU in 1980 during re-development. (13-14)
Possible pottery kiln site suggested from wasters in H Preston collection. (15)
The Roman settlement, referred to by the previous authorities, was
not visible on the available air photographs. (16) |