CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Day six marked the end of the first nearly full week of excavation in Grosvenor park! Fridays are always hard - especially for archaeologists thinking of the weekend to come after a long week of cleaning hard clay off of only slightly harder stone. However, despite this, progress was made in trench IV. The Roman road running through the centre of the trench was cleaned using brushes (sorry Julie!) allowing the stones to be defined in the soil. A metal ring was found in this Roman context which was possibly used to fasten an item of clothing. It is incredibly tiny so nearly ended up in the spoil heap, but fortunately keen eyes caught it just in time. A possible whetstone was also found next to the Roman road in a layer of infill that looked like it had possibly imported. Bronwen

Today was day five of the excavations here at Grosvenor park. In Trench IV there has been some interesting developments, with most of the soil from last years excavations being cleaned up, we were able to start uncovering some of the new archaeology yet to be investigated. In the front left corner of the trench, large, thought to be Roman stones have been removed, this is to see whether earlier contexts are beneath them, on removal all sides of the stones were cleaned and examined in case of an inscription.    Elsewhere in trench IV more work has been undertaken just to the side of the Roman road and exciting amounts of Samian pottery have been found including a lovely lid of a pot. These finds along with obvious collections of stones suggests an area of civilian occupation near the road, we cannot wait to keep exploring this area tomorrow! In trench VIII, more cleaning up, trowelling and mattocking went underway to better understand the post medieval and civil war...

In trench IV, we continued to uncover the Roman road as well as removing spoil still within the trench. on the finds front, Roman Samian ware pottery was found including an interesting piece of patterned Roman Samian ware. Many people were very interested in looking at the Roman finds. Some abraded and some residual finds in Trench IV More pieces of ceramics were discovered amongst the deepest section of the trench which was filled with water and had to be sponged continuously throughout the day. Part of a pit from last year - full of water and Roman pottery! As a whole site there was a lot of public interest which was met by friendly archaeologists who answered eager questions from the public. We are excited to continue digging tomorrow where we are planning to record and lower a section of trench 4, as well as continuing the quest for the Roman road. Becca and Sophie

Today was day three of the Grosvenor park dig, and almost all the back fill has been cleared. Sadly, the bank holiday sunshine didn’t stick around for us as we continued prepping the trenches for the excavation, with the ducks seeming to enjoy the rain much more than we did. Despite this, when we weren’t taking shelter in the pavilion, we were discovering more of Chester’s historic past. Over in Trench IV, further evidence of the Roman occupation was uncovered by Kelly, in the form of a small piece of samian ware, bearing a maker’s mark. Meanwhile, over in Trench VIII, the day was orientated towards identifying the features of the context, of which the rain helpfully cleaned. Amongst these was an in-situ brick feature, the purpose of which is still to be discovered… Emma V

Finally, the smaller of the trenches has been completely uncovered, and the tarp removed. While a sudden bout of rain hampered efforts to do much more than this, it was still cause for celebration, and we stopped to marvel at the sight. Most impressively, a stone structure – its angle likely caused by it sinking into a ditch – was now visible, although we’d stepped on it many times before! Unfortunately, it did start to rain, and our next task, scraping the top layer of dirt off, turned into a muddy slog. When break time rolled around, there was a brief moment of trying to all huddle together in the tool shed for shelter, before someone had a better idea and herded us back off to the pavilion. While it did stop raining eventually, it was almost time to pack up at that point! Hopefully we will have more progress tomorrow. Delenn