A watching brief was carried out in October, 1996 on behalf of and funded by Babtie and Southern Water Services during exploratory roadworks in the Longport area of Canterbury. The site code was LSWB96. Two slot trenches (numbered 3 & 4) were excavated manually by the subcontractors across Church Street, St Paul's Each slot was approximately 1.00m wide and 1.50m deep.

In Church Street, evidence of a Roman road bounded to the south by a building or by a portico fronting a building, was revealed in trench 4. The position of the road's edge was considered to be consistent with the road having run directly from Burgate to north of Cemetery Gate. However, the earliest deposit in trench 3, at its southern end, was a flint metalling, showing a distinct camber to the south. As this lay south of such a supposed alignment, it was suggested that this was probably a courtyard or another (earlier?) road alignment.

A series of 'dark earth' deposits had developed over these early road metallings and building in the post-Roman period. In trench 4, perhaps in the middle Saxon period, further street metallings were laid down, probably bounded to the south by a small ditch, later replaced by a post-built fence. Another metalled surface dipped gently south from the fence-line to a flat-bottomed, vertical-sided cut, interpreted as perhaps part of a sunken-floored Anglo-Saxon building or part of a large timber-lined drain. A number of Medieval and post-Medieval road surfaces and drains completed the archaeological sequence.

Pratt, S., 1999, Church Street St Paul's and Longport (Article in serial). SKE30549.