The apsidal building at the junction of Butt Road and Southway lies just outside the south-west wall of the Roman colonia at Camulodunum (Colchester). Excavated in the 1970s and 80s by the Colchester Archaeological Trust, it is interpreted as a late Roman Christian church of the early-to-mid 4th century, built on an east-west alignment with a western apse, replacing an earlier pagan cemetery structure of c. AD 320–330.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It is one of the most plausible candidates for an in situ Romano-British church building yet identified, comparable to Silchester's putative basilica-church, and stands at the heart of one of the largest known late Roman cemeteries in Britain, with over 700 graves excavated. Its association with a predominantly west-east, unaccompanied inhumation cemetery strongly supports a Christian liturgical function.
Excavation revealed a small rectangular structure roughly 24 m long with an apse, set within an extensive ordered cemetery whose latest burials extend into the late 4th or early 5th century; finds included coin evidence dating the church phase and a contrasting earlier cemetery of north-south burials with grave goods. The full excavation report was published by Crummy, Crummy and Crossan (1993) as part of the Colchester Archaeological Report series.
The apsidal building at the junction of Butt Road and Southway lies just outside the south-west wall of the Roman colonia at Camulodunum (Colchester). It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Remains of an apsidal Roman building at Butt Road and Southway is classified as a Roman site — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Colchester Roman Circus including sections of the Benedictine Abbey of St John (0.4 km), Ad Ansam (0.6 km), Col. Camulodunum (0.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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