(summarised from publication)

During a series of extensive rescue excavations, ahead of development in Dover’s town centre undertaken by Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit, two lengths of rammed chalk foundations which appear to relate to the same structure, were located at the Painted house/Bingo Hall sites.

The northern foundation cuts two earlier ditches which were identified as being the earliest features at the site, but is in turn cut by the foundations of a flint walled enclosure. The foundations consisted of large irregular lamps of chalk which had been packed tightly and then rammed into foundations trenches which were 1.1m -1.2m wide and 1.2m deep on the western side and between 0.9 and 2.45m wide and 0.8m deep. The western side was traced for a total distance of 19.1m and passed beneath room six of the Roman ‘Painted House’ while the northern foundation was traced for a distance of 21.67m; its western end had again been destroyed by later Roman activity. It is likely that these foundations supported substantial masonry walls which have been entirely robbed (and possibly reused elsewhere). Traces of the southern wall were also located at a different site but within the same excavation programme supporting the suggestion that these foundations represent the walls of an enclosure. It is possible that they relate to the early and unfinished phase of the Classis Britannica Fort.

<1> Philp, B, 1989, The Roman House with Bacchic Murals at Dover (Monograph). SKE24004.