Great Chesterford
A Roman walled town on the E bank of the Cam, 63 km N of Londinium (London) and 52 km NW of Camulodunum (Colchester). A fort, dating from the early years of occupation, appears to be the first Roman installation on the site, but only a short sector of the defenses has been revealed. The fort probably lay N of the later town. Of the civilian settlement that followed the military phase, the best recorded remains are those of the town wall, 3.6 m thick, which defined a roughly oval area of 14.4 ha. This wall, without a rampart behind it, appears never to have had external or internal towers and was not erected until ca. A.D. 300 at the earliest. The only gate thus far examined, the N gate, had a single portal flanked by rectangular towers. This entrance was later blocked, and then restored by cutting back the curtain wall to the W and leaving the blocking in situ.
Within the walls a large area has been investigated at the N end, but relatively few buildings have been discovered. The largest is a house, resembling a farmhouse in plan, with a main range of rooms served by a portico. This area, however, was examined in 1845-60, and structures in timber may have eluded the excavator. The most significant find is a great hoard of ironwork, probably a smith's stock-in-trade, uncovered in 1854. This includes more than 90 items: scythes, plough coulters, hammers, chains, shackles, an anvil, and a pair of shears for cropping wool. Finds from the area are in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Chelmsford Museum, and the Saffron Walden Museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHYR. C. Neville, Antiqua Explorata (1847); id., ArchJ 13 (1856) 1; VCH Essex 3 (1963) 72ff; W. Redwell, Britannia 3 (1972) 290.
M. TODD