York Historic Environment Record

Trench 3. One of a series of watching briefs carried out in March and April 1997 on the refurbishment of a sewer in Low Petergate. See EYO137 for summary. Of particular importance for the late Roman period were the sequences in Trenches 3 and 6. Here a sandy silty deposit, c.0.30m thick, lay above the via principalis. In Trench 3 it contained a rim sherd of a bowl in calcite gritted ware dated c.350+. In both trenches the deposit was succeeded by a layer of large limestone blocks and occasional millstone grit blocks, including part of a large column, which had been deliberately laid to make a flat surface. There can be little doubt that this was material from demolished Roman buildings reused as the makeup of a mid-late 4th century version of the via principalis. The absence of this distinctive feature in Trenches 1 and 2 suggests that the late street was relatively narrow and lay on the south-west side of the space occupied by the original via principalis and made for the south-west portal of the Roman fortress south-east gate. The south-east end of Petergate also passes through the site of the south-west portal of the Roman gate. It may be suggested, therefore, that when Petergate was originally laid out the Roman gate may still been standing, but that its north-west portal was blocked. The line of the late Roman street located in Trenches 3 and 6 suggests that this blocking may have been a late Roman event (INTERIM 1997).