Houses in Roman Cirencester

This third volume in the Cirencester Excavations series has been devoted to excavations that have produced evidence for Roman town houses in Corinium. The major part of the volume is devoted to a report of excavations conducted in Beeches Road between 1970 and 1973, which have produced interesting details of town buildings constructed in the fourth century A.D.

At the same time as post-excavation work was proceeding on The Beeches Road sites, a request was received from the Department of the Environment (now English Heritage – Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) to take over the publication of an excavation conducted by Miss Mary Rennie in Cirencester in 1958. This was readily agreed to as the site seemed an obvious one to be published alongside the Beeches. In considering how best to publish both of these sites the opportunity was taken to review other excavations previously carried out by the Cirencester Excavation Committee, which had produced evidence of similar buildings. Three other such sites were identified and these have been grouped together to form Part II of this volume.

As Parts I and II were a collection of excavation reports all of which were concerned with private buildings, almost certainly houses, it was decided to add a third part to the volume bringing together all the evidence for Roman houses in Cirencester. This Gazetteer includes details of buildings, some of which were found many years ago as well as brief outlines of buildings uncovered during recent excavations by the Committee. Inclusion of a site in this Gazetteer does not mean that fuller publication is not intended, but the advantages of having such details all together in one volume are clearly obvious.

Future volumes in this series are planned and CE IV is well advanced and is devoted to the Abbey and Saxon Churches of Cirencester dug between 1964 and 1966. The fifth volume is likely to be devoted to a number of major sites from the Roman town centre including the basilica and forum and buildings from adjacent insulae. The Roman defences are also expected to appear in this volume.