All of our lectures are live streamed and are open to anyone to join us online, Fellows and Non-Fellows.
To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
The Site is located on a promontory of land that dominants the Vale of Pickering and would have been visible for many miles.
Provisional results indicate that the site was originally subdivided into enclosures presumably in the Iron Age and then extensively re-modelled in the Roman period with at least three phases of building being superimposed on the earlier features. The complex of buildings extends over 1.2 ha and are contained within a perimeter limestone wall. Within the perimeter wall, a series of terraces were created into the slope to carry the main buildings.
There are at least twenty-three buildings within the complex and numerous water features including ditches, culverts and one rock cut well and another well or some form of water hole located between the western range and the west boundary wall.
On the eastern side a metalled trackway, probably of Late Iron Age/Early Roman date, runs parallel to the line of the later eastern boundary wall before turning west into the area of the complex. Against the eastern boundary wall an extremely long aisled building aligned north-south butted the eastern boundary wall. A further building to the north was also built against the inner side of the eastern boundary wall.
The visual ‘core’ and the latest phase of the building complex is formed by a near-circular structure c 7-8m in internal diameter which would have been entered from the east. It has three square rooms attached to its northern, western and southern sides, which are each clearly of two phases. Two rooms have surviving opus signinum floors. The western room has a complex history which suggests construction of a room with a hypocaust and a flue in the north wall that was definitely fired. Followed by a replacement room incorporating the earlier hypocaust with modifications but no evidence of associated firing or use.
The heated range to the south appears to have been intended as a bath suite, with a praefurnium at the western end, a furnace with provision for the location of a hot water tank, perhaps with a hot plunge bath adjacent to it and what would have been the area of the main hot room (caldarium) to the east. The heated range may incorporate a possible ‘plunge bath’ on its southern side. The only substantial deposit of building material from the site was a large amount of tufa that was recovered from one of the rooms and presumably intended for use or used in a domed roof.
However, the bath suite remained incomplete with no evidence of pilae, nor any use of the furnace. Equally the possible cold plunge bath with a drain through its southern side has no evidence of any means to carry the outflow away.
The function of the site is enigmatic as much of the evidence for function has been removed with the systematic spoliation of the site in the late fourth century.
This event will be both in person at Burlington House and online. Please select the appropriate ticket below.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]