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No.51 - April 2002 | Contex HOME

RECENT WORK ON THE PORT OF ROMAN LONDON
Rose Baillie

Londinium came into being soon after the Roman conquest because it is was where the Thames could be first crossed. It became a key point in the road network and was equally important as a port, both for sea going vessels and for river traffic. Actually remains of the port facilities of Roman London were discovered in the 1920’s during office building near London Bridge, Bruce Watson told us in his lecture last January, but these discoveries were either misinterpreted or unpublished.

Some significant finds were made when Regis House was built in 1929-31. Gerald Dunning, the Guildhall Museum’s only archaeologist at the time, kept careful and detailed notes of finds made during digging for deep stanchions. These included substantial timbers, masses of burnt Samian pottery and a stone column base, finds that the Guildhall Museum eventually passed on to the Museum of London. Finding out how these related to the history of the site had to wait until 1995-6 when Regis House was itself redeveloped and Bruce and his colleague Trevor Brigham directed an excavation for MoLAS. (See interim reports in the London Archaeologist 1996, Vol 8, No 2 & 3)

The site was important because it was in a prime location, immediately upstream of Roman London Bridge. It is however over 100m north of the modern embankment due to centuries of progressive encroachment into the river. The excavation was a substantial undertaking with the trench reaching 8 m below street level and involving the removal of over 1900 cu m of archaeological deposits. The development of the slopping muddy river bank into a functional port facility was found to follow the same pattern as other waterfront sites excavated in the 70’s and 80’s. The first man-made feature was a brushwood revetment, followed by a paling of pointed stakes with horizontal planks, dendro-dated to 52AD. Around this time the adjacent land was terraced and some clay and timber buildings constructed within property boundaries made with shallow ditches. There is evidence that these buildings were burnt in the Boudican revolt of 60AD and the major quay development that followed was part of an official programme to aid Londinium’s recovery.

The new quay consisted of a 2m high wall of horizontal squared oak baulks built in front of the existing revetment. The riverside wall was secured with timber ‘tiebacks’ to a back wall and the resulting box infilled. The oak timbers used were massive, up to 6 m long and in a very good state of preservation due to water-logging. By dendrochronology their felling date could be fixed precisely to the winter/spring of 62/63AD. That the Roman army was involved in the quay’s construction is suggested by its design and construction being more lavish of materials than economically necessary, the finding of a strip of scale armour, buckles and leather fragments of a military tent in the infill, and a stamp on one timber reading TRAECAVG, interpreted as the mark of a Cohort of Thracian auxiliaries with the title ‘Augustan’. Significantly, what may be the Roman army’s London camp in the immediate aftermath of the Boudican revolt has recently been discovered at Plantation House on Fenchurch Street.

Behind the quay the principal building was a warehouse/workshop block of six bays. It was constructed of mud brick on ragstone and tile foundations. Each bay was 4.5m wide by 10m long and closed at the front by shutters or folding doors. Interestingly, different activities appear to have go on in different bays, with the workers’ families living upstairs. One bay was a glass worker’s workshop, where furnaces and glass working waste was found, but also the skeleton of a newborn baby under the floor. There was probably nothing sinister about this discovery; in Roman times babies were not thought to have souls and the law did not require them to be buried outside the town, as it did adults. Later this bay was taken over by a mosaicist. Another bay was used by a worker in turned stone but the previous occupant also had a secret under his floor, the excavation’s star finds, three 175lb lead ingots, bearing stamps IMP VESPASIAN(I) AUG and BRIT EX ARG VEB (Belonging to the Emperor Vespasian Augustus, From the British silver workings at Veb… (in the Mendips) The lead industry was of crucial economic importance to the Romans as it was also the source of silver needed to pay the army and civil service. Therefore silver production was vital to maintaining imperial power, as any Emperor who failed to pay the army regularly would be deposed. Whether these ingots were a plumber’s legitimate stock-in-trade or nefariously diverted from an official shipment, one can only speculate. One of the ingots is on display in the Museum of London’s Roman Gallery.

Around 102AD the earlier quay was replaced by another, 5m further forward, the intervening space being infilled and the warehouse building was extended to take advantage of the new space. In c.120-30AD however it was destroyed by the ‘Hadrianic fire’, its heat vitrifying the mud bricks, that led to their good preservation. Afterwards the rubble was levelled off to make a new, higher terrace and various new buildings were constructed. The small quayside buildings were replaced by al large open fronted building with a portico or open fronted building, that could have been a market hall.

If the quays at Regis House follow the pattern elsewhere on the waterfront, they are likely to have been progressive advanced into the river during the 2^nd Century and been included in a programme of rebuilding c. 200-225 AD to make a unified river frontage, but this phase of development lay outside the excavation area. However Londinium’s success as a port was coming to an end, perhaps because falling river levels in the Thames and tidal regression hindered access by larger vessels. It was also a time of serious economic problems leading to a decreasing in international trade. The latest quays began to be dismantled around 250-70AD and their usefulness was finally ended by the construction of a riverside defensive wall between the city and the river. It was to be the Saxon period before port facilities were again constructed along Thames Street and the Port of London was to be revived.