During a series of extensive rescue excavations, ahead of development in Dover’s town centre undertaken by Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit, three rooms and a corridor of a Roman clay walled structure were uncovered. It was constructed over the demolition of the buttressed building which is located directly beneath it and it abuts the north wall of the painted house complex and the east wall of the tufa block building.

The walls of this structure were traced for a distance of 12.5m (E-W) and 6.85m (N-S) but it is likely that further rooms exist outside the northern limits of excavation. All of the walls were of orange clay which had been plastered and painted and which was probably held within a wooden frame. Most of these walls were situated upon the underlying remains of the buttressed building; the ruined walls have here been used as foundations. In the east room the walls are 28-30cm thick, a section of the north wall survives to a height of 84cm but only stubs of the south and west walls survive to an average height of 20cm and the eastern wall has been totally removed. The minimum internal dimensions of this room are 4.52m (N-S) and 5.75m (E-W). The western wall of the west room had been totally removed during the construction of the later Roman Saxon Shore Fort, but parts of the other three walls were present. They were 20-30cm thick and again constructed of clay and survived to a height of 20-30cm. small traces of painted wall plaster were present of the walls in these two rooms, some remaining in situ on both the east and south walls of the west room and in the north west corner of the east room. They seem to conform to the theme displayed in the painted house with a mottled green dado and a decorated upper half. Both of these rooms revealed evidence of two distinct floors, suggesting two phases of development.

Alongside the east and west rooms, traces of a north room were also located but the majority of this room lay outside the limits of excavation, and only its southern wall (which divides it from the west room) was present. Again traces of painted wall plaster were located which confirms that this wall was internal rather than external and belongs to a room. A south corridor was also located and traced for a distance of 12.15m along the south side of the east and west rooms. The southern wall of this corridor comprised the pre-existing north wall of the north passage of the painted house. Both the north and south faces of these wall retained long sections of in situ wall plaster, again respecting the theme established in the ‘Painted House’. Three floors were apparent in this corridor again suggestion multiple phases of development. (1)

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