More information : [Area SU 6400 6240] STREET (Site of) [G.S.]. (1)
The Street Plan.
In 1938 excavations by Mrs. Cotton showed that the street plan
antedated all the inner defences and the early Roman town must
have spread over the entire area enclosed by the outer earthwork.
Excavation in the Rye House Meadow confirmed the existence of
the plan there and sections cut along the northeast sector of the town
wall enable a date to be suggested for this plan.
Inside the town it appears to be contemporary with levels dated A.D. 120-170. It did not exist when the baths were built under
the reign of Nero, A.D.54-68. A hut was found to have been
destroyed by a street and contained a coin of Domitian, which
dates the street plan to c.A.D.90-120 at the earliest. (2)
Haverfield thought that the great square bounded by Insulae
X, XXI, XXXV and XIX marked the limits of the original grid, and
the irregularity of certain streets to the east of the area seemed
to support this idea. It is now known, however, that these
streets were wrongly planned; aerial survey has shown that they
are quite regular.
The Forum-Basilica [4.7], which lies at an angle to the streets,
was not in being much, if at all, before the end of the first century,
while, had it been built after the street plan, it would have
been constructed in strict conformity with it. Some gap of years
seems indicated between the two, and it is tempting to assign
the streets to Hadrians's time-some time after 121. About forty
other buildings are truncated or otherwise affected by the
streets and are therefore of an earlier date. (3)
Mrs. Cotton points out that the date of circa.A.D.120 for the street
plan does not apply to the possibly original grid - the
'Haverfield square'. The arguments apply to the excavated, and
possibly later, extension. (4)
The street plan is mainly as shown on O.S.25",1911, supplemented
by air photographs and the final plan of the excavations by the
Soc. of Ants. Some anomalies result - particularly in the northeast corner
of the walled area, where the cropmarks on the aerial photographs do not
coincide with the supposed line as excavated. Mr. Boon, however,
in conversation, 12-Dec-1956, was inclined to the view that the plan
was, in this respect, in error.
A further anomaly is the prolongation of the east.-west. street
through the west gate (a cropmark on an Aerial Photograph) beyond the junction
with the road. (5)
An Iron Age rectilinear street pattern of around 20BC has been shown to
underlie the differently aligned Roman street plan laid out in the
mid first century AD. (6)
Additional bibliography. (7,8)
Recent excavations have located traces of a street plan dating to the begining of the first century AD. The street plan comprised rectangular building plots and buildings, with the roads at right angles to each other. This was protected by a new defensive rampart - the inner earthwork which enclosed an area of 32 hectares. This layout remained unchanged until the 50s and 60s AD when a new street grid on a different orientation was laid out. Excavations have found that the dimension of each of the insulae were consistent, suggesting that the entire grid was laid out in one phase and extended over the course of the Inner Earthwork. Its limits appear to be on the course of the later Roman defences. (9-11) |