PCA conducted a series of archaeological excavations at the intersection of Swan Street and Harper Road in advance of redevelopment. These excavations took place in different stages from July 2016 to July 2017 and were seamlessly integrated with the demolition and initial construction activities. Our work here was a game-changer for the archaeology of this part of Roman London, revealing not only a late Roman stone sarcophagus but also a previously unrecorded section of the elusive London to Chichester road known as Stane Street.
The site is located in an area known as the ‘Southern Cemetery’ which comprises various discrete burial grounds on the outskirts of Roman occupation. Around 500 Roman burials have been discovered in London’s Southern Cemetery area. Typically, Roman Londoners were either cremated or interred in shrouds or wooden coffins. However, occasionally individuals were laid to rest in stone sarcophagi, which may have reflected their own affluence, or the wealth and status of those responsible for their burial. The sarcophagus at Harper Road is the first to be discovered in the Southern Cemetery. Not only was the burial here contained in a stone sarcophagus, but it also lay on the chalk foundation for a mausoleum. In Roman Southwark, mausoleums and walled cemeteries have been identified along the line of Watling Street. The findings at Harper Road suggest that this southern approach along Stane Street may similarly have been lined with impressive monuments to the dead.
The Roman sarcophagus (left) as it was found, with the lid cracked and misaligned. This disturbance probably occurred during the robbing of chalk from a mausoleum adjacent to the sarcophagus in the 18th century.
Map of Roman Southwark, showing the roads realigned as a result of recent archaeological evidence.
Stane Street
The archaeological evidence for Roman road infrastructure to the north of Southwark’s Borough Channel have been recorded since the 1970s and discussed in detail during the course of the last 14 years. To the south of the channel, evidence for Watling Street has been found along its approach into London and in particular Southwark, where a substantial segment of it was excavated at Great Dover Street. However, before the Harper Road excavation, there was no direct, conclusive evidence for Stane Street in Southwark. A low-lying marshy area known as the Rockingham Street Anomaly had raised the possibility that Stane Street may have followed a course similar to that represented by Borough High Street to avoid this marshy terrain.
The discoveries made during the recent excavation challenge the existing interpretation of Stane Street’s path across Southwark’s mainland. The archaeological evidence from Harper Road strongly indicates that it lies on a perfect alignment to the Southwark to Ewell bearing, following an alignment previously proposed based on the presence of linear features at the Old Sorting Office site on Swan Street.
This revised course of Stane Street in Southwark gains further support from archaeological evidence at Brandon House, where Stane Street crossed the Borough Channel via a small gravel island. Seven early Roman buildings align with the newly projected bearing of Stane Street from Ewell to Southwark, in line with the findings at the present site. Consequently, the assumed junction of Stane Street and Watling Street, previously extrapolated from the former projected line of Stane Street, is now being questioned. A new model for Roman road infrastructure in Southwark has been proposed, which can be tested against archaeological evidence from the development of the Great Suffolk Street Roman cemetery.
This new model has also affected the postulated location of the junction between Stane Street and Watling Street on the mainland. According to this revised model, the junction would be situated in the south bank of Borough Channel, to the northwest of its previous assumed location.
The road was clearly in use for quite some time, as the roadside ditches showed evidence of having been recut many times.
The Roman sarcophagus
The stone sarcophagus was a very unusual find and caused great excitement; only three others have been excavated in London in the last 30 years. It was decided to remove it from the site to be carefully excavated under controlled conditions at the Museum of London Archive at Mortimer Wheeler House.
The sarcophagus was found to contain the nearly intact skeleton of a woman and a few infant bones. The missing parts of the skeleton were attributed to the disturbance of the sarcophagus during the post-medieval period. Iron nails discovered within the sarcophagus indicate that it may have originally held a wooden coffin.
The presence of hobnails, primarily in the lower body area, indicates that the person who was laid to rest had footwear on, and it’s reasonable to assume they were also dressed in clothing. The remains would thus have been articulated and placed directly inside the sarcophagus. Crushed chalk between the base of the sarcophagus and the articulated human remains hints at the possibility of a wooden coffin that contained the remains, with a layer of crushed chalk covering them. This raises the intriguing possibility that the remains were reinterred in a sarcophagus that had been previously used for another burial, an interpretation seemingly confirmed by the C14 date of the remains which suggest a discrepancy for the burial of the sarcophagus and its content, and the date of the human remains.
Two intriguing pieces of jewellery were also found within the sarcophagus:
The exciting discovery of the sarcophagus made the national and international news; read more about the story at the time by clicking these links:
BBC | Southwark Council | The Times | Evening Standard | Archaeology | Current Archaeology
