York Historic Environment Record

At a depth of 3m beneath the modern street surface, below levels extensively disturbed by the large number of service trenches which have been dug along the length of the street, a thick layer of orange and black ash was uncovered. This bore a close resemblance to descriptions of material found overlying the sewer in 1973. Below this at the north west end of the trench was an extremely thick layer of Roman concrete containing large quantities of limestone rubble, broken opus sianinum and tile. The predicted alignment of Roman sewer duly appeared beneath and to the south-east of this layer of concrete. Although obviously disturbed during the construction of the Victorian sewer the earlier sewer had survived in a remarkably intact state. The north-eastern, side wall had been broken through to accommodate the Victorians' brick shaft, but their sewer had been tunneled beneath the south-western side wall and only a few of the lower coursed magnesian limestone blocks of which its inner face was constructed were missing. The sewer channel itself was filled to within a centimetre or two of the underside of the massive gritstone capping blocks with a wet black foulsmelling silt, heavily contaminated with modern effluent. The fill was removed manually and the walls and sections cleaned and photographed and the features planned before the entire trench was backfilled with concrete. (INTERIM 9/3) Parent record for deposit model data. NMR sources: Britannia : a journal of Romano-British and kindred studies inc. consolidated index for volumes 1-25 (1970-1994) Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies XV/1984/282 Interim : bulletin of the York Archaeological Trust 9.3/1983/24-25 York Archaeological Trust annual report /1983-1984/APPENDIX 1 Yorkshire Philosophical Society : annual reports /1983/35