2nd December 2009

Fascinating discovery on the site of the new Celtic Manor Coach Park

As preparations for the Ryder Cup next year move into their final phases the Trust, the archaeologists to Celtic Manor, have made a fascinating discovery on the site of the new coach park. Over the summer we carried out trial excavations, which revealed part of what we thought was the Roman road that runs up the east bank of the River Usk, between the fortress of the Second Augustan Legion at Caerleon, and Usk, the site of an earlier fortress that was replaced by a smaller fort. We had seen this road before, where it passed through the settlement at Bulmore, and were rather surprised that this new section was only lightly metalled. Alongside it was a mass of rubble. As a result of the evaluation, construction went ahead with an archaeological watching brief, during the course of which the rubble turned out to belong to a small building. Construction work on this part of the site halted while we excavated this building and its surroundings.

The building, which had been robbed to its foundations almost everywhere, was nearly square with no traces of internal walls or floors surviving. Just enough of the walls remained to show that it must have measured about 3m x 3m internally. It was built from the local sandstone, and the blocks used in the foundations looked as though they had come from some other building. There was also most of a quernstone that had been abandoned during manufacture, and part of a larger millstone. In the rubble that overlay the building were two pieces of an inscription, with a few letters on each. Fortunately we found that these fit together, and we are now waiting to see whether experts can make sense of what they say.

Immediately outside the entrance was the remains of a lightly-metalled track. It was this that had first been discovered during the watching brief, but we could now see that the real road was 20m further down the hill and much more substantially constructed than the track. In places the road had been terraced into the hillside to keep it level, but the builders had not felt it necessary to provide drainage ditches. The two ran roughly parallel with each other, and we assume that the track must have branched off the road somewhere outside the coach-park area. It was traced over a distance of150m, but we do not know where it was bound.

If we can find out what the inscription says, this will give us a better idea of what the building was for. The two main suggestions at the moment are either that it was something military, an outpost on the main road concerned with sending messages or controlling access to the legion’s pastures, or that it was a monument, perhaps serving as a mausoleum. Its position, about 1km north of Bulmore and clearly visible from Caerleon and other points in the river valley, would have been suitable for either. The other finds may also provide clues when they have been studied. The most interesting are a small mattock of the kind used by the army and a tiny piece of an early Roman ribbed bowl in brown and yellow marbled glass.

Click on an images below to enlarge