Colchester Archaeological Trust

CAT Report 742: summary

An archaeological watching brief during the construction of the Williams & Griffin temporary trading store in the Colchester Borough Council car park, St Runwald Street, Colchester, Essex - July-August 2013
by Adam Wightman (with contributions from -)

Date report completed: November 2013
Location: Colchester Borough Council car park, St Runwald Street, Colchester, Essex
Map reference(s): TL 99535 25250
File size: 1,093 kb
Project type: Archaeological watching brief
Significance of the results: *
Keywords: 19th-century, buildings, lead-lined pit

Summary. The Colchester Archaeological Trust undertook a watching brief during the construction of a temporary trading store for Williams & Griffin in the Colchester Borough Council (CBC) car park, St Runwald Street, Colchester. The groundworks included the excavation of foundation-pits for the temporary building, a 130m long cable trench for a new electricity supply and the foundation for a new electrical substation. In the CBC car park, surviving floor surfaces and wall foundations from the outbuildings of the former Cups Hotel were uncovered in one of the foundation-pits and in the cable trench. Deposits of dark soil, building materials and sandy-clay appear to have been imported to raise the ground-level in the northern portion of the car park prior to the construction of the outbuildings. In the plot of a former workshop to the west of West Stockwell Street, the foundations of a 19th-century building and a lead-lined pit were identified in the cable trench. The excavations monitored during this watching brief were not deep enough to impact upon any remains or deposits dating to before the late 18th or 19th centuries.