Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2009 | Page 39

ISLAND HISTORY

life

were obvious footings elsewhere which did fit in with the

the same time as both the bath suite and the confirmed aisled

plans of 1882, but not in that corner. So the question arose –

hall in the North Range, re-excavated when the five-year phased

had the rectangular room been a figment of Victorian fancy?

Big Dig was launched in 2008. If this, too, was an aisled hall, it

Archaeology is a constantly shifting process. One day 'the room

could well be a unique feature in Roman Britain.

at the top' theory was looking doubtful; the next day, the

A limited re-examination inside the preserved West Range was

Victorian view was firmly back in favour. "It was looking a bit

another feature of the 2009 dig – and Sir Barry's team have left

odd, but we've now got that problem corner sorted out," said

us with a fascinating new interpretation. It's clear from what

Sir Barry, "and what we have is more or less as the old plans

they gleaned in August that this was not a building developed

suggested."

piecemeal as had been thought, with rooms added at different

It seems the confusion may have been caused by the Roman
builders' choice of a different material for the footings in

times.
The West Range, he says, was conceived and built as a single

the south-eastern corner. "We're toying with the idea that,

entity, although subsequent alterations were made to the

while they used rubble and chalk in the foundation trench

layout of rooms and corridors. Finally, it's also clear from the

elsewhere, it may be that, in this particular corner, they used

examination of flint samples that, as Sir Barry put it: "Brading

a kind of gritty sand instead. So the footing had changed. It

has been a favoured location – a spot that people have greatly

would explain why we didn't find the chalk and rubble we were

liked – for a very long time indeed, and much longer than we

expecting … we hadn't correctly identified the nature of the

had previously thought."

footing."
But what was the purpose of this building, probably the last
Roman structure on the dig site?
Key evidence was found in August to help answer the
question. The Victorian excavators had shown the location of
two ovens on their plan of the 'top' building. "One of these is

In fact, the evidence now points to a history of human
occupation stretching back to the Mesolithic period – around
5,000 to 4,000 BC – and extending, via the Roman occupation,
right up to the local settlement shifts that occurred in the Saxon
age.
That's a 'des res' by anybody's standards!

preserved," Sir Barry was able to report after his team found it.
"The other oven has been eroded and is now gone, but this one
has survived, cut into the clay slope. It's probably a little bread
oven – very interesting." It's not certain how old the 'bakery'
remains might be, but if, as Sir Barry has suggested, it was
constructed a century or more after the abandonment of the
bath suite, the bread ovens might have been operational at the
same time as the preserved West Wing, which is usually linked
to the later (4th Century) Roman period.
A few paces to the west of the dig site's main area of activity,
another piece of the archaeological jigsaw at Brading might be
about to slot into place. The results of trench-cutting suggest
there might have been another residential building standing at

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