SNN103874 - Excavation of a Roman Settlement at Sponne School, Towcester, 1997

Excavation prior to the erection of a telecommunications mast in the grounds of Sponne School, Towcester revealed a stratified sequence of Roman settlement beginning in the later first century AD. The site lay immediatley inside the town defences, and to east of an area investigated in 1954. The early activity comprised two phases of gullies and pits each sealed by an extensive soil horizon, suggesting that intermittant use had been followed by periods of abandonment. In the middle of the second century two parallel trenches probably represent the robbed main wall and veranda of a substantial town house. Ceramic, bone and glass finds indicate that it had been a prosperous establishment. This building was demolished in the later second century, probably in the 160s/170s when the town defences were constructed. An overlying soil horizon must have accumulated or been deposited immediately inside the tail of the defensive bank through the third and fourth centuries. There was a single early medieval pit, and the upper soil levels were of post-medieval to recent date.