Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Grade I listed building. Main construction periods 43 to 410. Roman courtyard house (remains). Mosaic pavements of circa 300 AD.

Monument Types

• COURTYARD HOUSE (Roman to Early Medieval or Anglo-Saxon - 43 AD to 410 AD)

Full description

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The following text is from the original listed building designation:
1. 944 ST GEORGE'S STREET
Remains of Roman town house TR 1557 NW 5/663
I
2. Part of a Roman town house. There are remains of tessellated pavements circa 300 AD and a hypocaust system. Brick walls about 3 ft in height and 13 pillars. Scheduled as an AM.
Listing NGR: TR1500357776

Description from record TR 15 NE 50:
(TR 15005778) Roman Courtyard House. Site of a large courtyard house c100AD. A pavement is preserved in a basement and open to the public.Scheduled. (1-2) Remains of Roman town house, St George's Street. Grade 1. Part of a Roman town house. There are remains of tessellated pavements c300AD and a hypocaust system. Brick walls about 3ft in height and 13 pillars. Scheduled as an AM. (3) The Butchery Lane Roman building was first excavated in 1945-6 by Audrey Williams and Sheppard Frere. In 1958-61 the cellars in which the building was found was enlarged and converted into the 'Roman Pavement' Museum. Several more walls and other features were discovered by Dr F Jenkins during this work (see illustration card). A hoard of 50 third century cordiate coins was found in the area west of the hypocaust stokehole in the Roman building in Butchery Lane. (4-6) TR 150577. Roman site, Butchery Lane. Scheduled No 89. (7)

From the Register of Scheduled Monuments:

Excavation in 1945 and 1946 uncovered a series of three moasic panels, which decorate the remains of a corridor of a Roman house. Area has been redeveloped as a shopping precinct; remains carefully preserved in basement of bakery where basement with air conditioning set up as a museum of local Roman finds. It contains a corridor area with mosaic. Ground colour, predominantly cream, decorated with cartouches, having borders of twisted rope pattern. Geometric central reserve with a formal flower design. Part of floor has been cut through to form a domestic privy. Some distance from this floor is area containing stacks of tiles for hypercaust. In both areas remains of low flint walling.(8)


From the National Heritage List for England:

List entry Description
Summary of Monument
Roman town house, 18m south-east of no. 6 Butchery Lane.

Reasons for Designation
Canterbury was the tribal capital of the Cantiaci in the Late Iron Age, however following the Roman invasion it developed into a walled town known as Durovernum Cantiacorum. Archaeological evidence indicates that in the first century AD priority was given to public building in the town. However from about the late first century the quality of private housing increased with the construction of well-appointed dwellings. Roman town houses were private dwellings within Roman towns, the design of which varied according to the needs, taste and prosperity of the occupier. They were built between the first and the fourth century AD. Town houses were often partly or wholly stone-built, many with a timber-framed superstructure on masonry footings. Roofs were generally tiled and those of high status could feature tiled or mosaic floors, underfloor heating, wall plaster, glazed windows and cellars. Documentary and archaeological evidence has provided information on the type of rooms within townhouses.

They might include an entrance hall or reception room, a kitchen (culina), one or more dining rooms (triclinia), one or more bedrooms (cubicula), a study (tablinum), a garden room (exedra) and a colonnaded garden (peristylium). In some examples a shop front is attached (taberna). Private lavatories, where provided, were often sited at a discrete distance from the house. Most Roman townhouses did not include private bath suites since towns had public bath houses. However in the later Roman period some houses were built or altered to include a modest bathing suite, usually comprising three rooms for cold, warm and hot bathing.

The Roman town house 18m south-east of No.6 Butchery Lane is a good example of its type, which survives well. It provides a valuable insight to the size and type of dwellings built in Roman Canterbury, and will contain archaeological and environmental information relating to its construction, use and history.

History
See Details.

Details
This record was the subject of a minor enhancement on 18 December 2014. The record has been generated from an "old county number" (OCN) scheduling record. These are monuments that were not reviewed under the Monuments Protection Programme and are some of our oldest designation records.

The monument includes a Roman town house surviving as upstanding and below-ground remains. It is situated below modern buildings on the east side of Butchery Lane in Canterbury.

The remains indicate that the house was based around a courtyard and included a number of rooms and corridors. The remains of the flint, brick and tile walls survive up to about 0.9m high. Three tessellated pavements survive in-situ. The best preserved has a cream base colour and is decorated with cartouches and a guilloche border. In the centre is a formal flower design with a geometric pattern above and below. The remains of a hypocaust survive in one of the rooms of the house and include several pilae, originally supporting a floor above.

The Roman town house was discovered during the Second World War and partially excavated in 1945-6, 1958-61 and 1990. The house is thought to have been built in about the late first century AD. In the early second century a wing was added and in about AD 300 the tessellated and mosaic floors were laid. A hoard of 50 Roman coins, dating to the third century AD, was found nearby a hypocaust stokehole.

The upstanding remains are Grade I listed. (9)

Additional bibliography (10-13)

<1> Ro Canterbury 1957 9 (S Frere) (OS Card Reference). SKE49267.

<2> Aldsworth FG 27-JAN-65 RCHME Field Investigation (OS Card Reference). SKE32989.

<3> DOE (HHR) City of Canterbury Kent 1973 226 (OS Card Reference). SKE39972.

<4> The Arch of Cant 7 1983 320-322 Fig 138 (S Frere and S Stow) (OS Card Reference). SKE49969.

<5> Arch Cant 73 1959 xlv (F Jenkins) (OS Card Reference). SKE35545.

<6> Arch Cant 61 1948 1-45 (A Williams and S Frere) (OS Card Reference). SKE35322.

<7> Eng Heritage SAMS Kent 1987 5 (OS Card Reference). SKE41589.

<8> English Heritage, Register of Scheduled Monuments (Scheduling record). SKE16191.

<9> Historic England, National Heritage List for England (Index). SKE29372.

<10> TESSELLATED PAVEMENT FROM ROMAN TOWN HOUSE Types: PAVEMENT (Photograph). SKE512.

<11> English Heritage, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest (Map). SKE16160.

<12> PART OF THE ROMAN PAVEMENT Types: PAVEMENT (Photograph). SKE514.

<13> TESSELLATED PAVEMENT FROM ROMAN TOWN HOUSE Types: PAVEMENT (Photograph). SKE513.

Sources and further reading