York Historic Environment Record

The 1935 Ordnance Survey map marks the location of a ‘Roman Memorial Stone found AD
1922’ in the area immediately between the eastern site boundary and Albemarle Road,
approximately 34m to the south-east of the junction. The date and the widening and partial rerouting
of Albemarle Road suggest that the OS labelling referred to the discovery of the
tombstone of Julia Velva.
This is supported by Angelo Raine, Curator of Roman Antiquities at the Yorkshire Museum, who
stated in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal that the tombstone had been found ‘on July 11th
this year [1922] whilst cutting a new road in York from The Mount to South Bank’ (Raine 1922,
389). In the annual report of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, Raine stated that the discovery
had been made ‘at a distance of fifteen yards from the present highway’ (Raine 1923, 61).
Assuming that the ‘present highway’ was The Mount, this description accords with the position
that was marked on the 1935 Ordnance Survey map. Julia Velva’s tombstone may therefore
have been discovered adjacent to the north-east site boundary, rather than at the junction of
The Mount and Albemarle Road. Raine also reported that ‘another Roman memorial stone’ was
‘found almost on the same spot…some two foot (0.60m) deeper into the ground’ on 2nd
October 1922 (Raine 1922, 390).