Archaeological Evaluation at Wroxeter Farm, 2024. Post-Excavation Assessment Report and Updated Project Design

Geophysical surveys and archaeological excavations carried out at Wroxeter in 2024 revealed highly significant new evidence for the layout and history of the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum. The project focused on the site of Wroxeter Farm, close to the crossroads of the citys main streets, the cardo (Watling Street) and the decumanus, and opposite the forum-basilica (marketplace and town hall) and the main public baths. Almost nothing was known about the buildings located in this part of the city centre, which is occupied by the buildings and paddocks of the disused Victorian farm built around 1850 and declared redundant in 1999. The evaluation excavation was a research, education and conservation project designed to recover information that will improve the current state-of-knowledge of the condition and nature of the archaeological resource in and around Wroxeter Farm (particularly the small paddock and the W of the farm), and to record the reuse of Roman building stone in Wroxeter Farms buildings. Six trenches were excavated in 2024 and all of the projects aims and objectives were successfully achieved. The excavation identified: 1) a monumental roadside-building (porticus) on the decumanus opposite the forum-basilica; 2) an extensive enclosed space that seems to have been empty except for a single small masonry building, perhaps a shrine or a funerary monument; 3) a bath-suite associated with a large townhouse (one room of which had a beautiful figurative mosaic floor decorated with dolphins and fish); 4) hints of possible votive activity. The 6 evaluation trenches showed that the archaeological remains at Wroxeter Farm consist of various Roman-period buildings walls, floors and overlying deposits related to their abandonment and/or destruction. These remains survive remarkably well, often only a few centimetres below the ground. There is very little evidence for post-Roman activity in this part of the city and in all trenches the Roman-period walls and floors are mostly intact and largely undisturbed by later occupation or activity. Evidence for post-Roman activity in the west paddock is limited to a trackway and a modern water-pipe, possible evidence for medieval / post-medieval ploughing. However, the construction and expansion of Wroxeter Farm in the 19th century had truncated the Roman remains within the farms buildings. The walls of two of Wroxeter Farms shippens, probably built in the 1880s, were photographed and drawn. These identified the extensive reuse of Roman stone, large ashlar blocks and columns drums, that most likely came from one or more public buildings, probably in the vicinity. For the Roman period, the evaluation excavation identified: 1) a monumental roadside-building (porticus) on the decumanus opposite the forum-basilica; 2) an extensive enclosed space that seems to have been empty except for a single small masonry building, perhaps a shrine or a funerary monument; 3) a bath-suite associated with a large townhouse (one room of which had a beautiful figurative mosaic floor decorated with dolphins and fish); 4) hints of possible votive activity. The earliest activity was found in the rectangular enclosure, including the possible shrine, which appears to pre-date the construction of the monumental roadside-building and could possibly belong to the military phase of the sites history, when it was the location of a legionary fortress (c. 50-80). The roadside building, probably a porticus, seems to have been built no later than the early second century, while the bath-suite that was part of a large townhouse in the northern part of paddock is perhaps of a similar date. Part of the bath-suite was later demolished and remodelled, possibly as early as the later 3rd century, while the roadside building was reused as the location for metalworking no earlier than 330.