The stone, brick and tile remains of the bath-house were uncovered about 5m below present ground level. Measuring at least 19m north-south by 16m east-west, only the northern edge of the building was fully established, as rooms elsewhere continued beyond the limits of excavation.
At least two main phases of construction could be distinguished. The earlier scheme comprised a grid of at least eight rooms, including an apse on the northern side. There were both unheated and hypocaust-heated rooms.
In a second phase, walls were partly demolished, new rooms built and the hypocaust extended over a greater area. There were now at least nine rooms. The building was in use between the 2nd and the 4th centuries, but was systematically demolished shortly after AD 400. All the remains have been preserved in situ beneath the new development.
To the north lay an area of packed gravel and stone surfaces, probably a yard. Immediately to the west, and on the same alignment as the bath-house was a sequence of clay and timber buildings, of which eight phases were recorded. Buried within the successive floors was an excellent sequence of artefacts including pottery, coins, jewellery and hair pins.
This article by Peter Moore, Pre-Construct Archaeology, was first published in Archaeology Matters No 19, March 2003
