"2005 was a special year for Wigan. Almost over night we saw it go from the lower division to the dizzy heights of the Premiership, and this was not just in the world of the football."
These were the words used by Oxford Archaeology North's Ian Miller to describe Wigan's sudden rise to fame in the world of Roman archaeology. Bathhouses are not that common in Britain, but to find one of such good quality and from such an early date in this part of the North West, is quite remarkable, putting Wigan amongst some of the more important sites in the early days of the conquest of the North.
It has always been assumed that there was a Roman station at Wigan. Even as early as the beginning of the 19th century the Rev Edmund Sibson suggested it was Coccium, the Roman fort which appears in early Roman literature, and was able to trace three Roman roads leading into Wigan from Warrington, Manchester and Preston. Added to this, many Roman finds have turned up over the years including funerary vessels from the area of the Gas Works, a Roman altar stone in the Parish Church and many coins and potsherds from around the town centre. However, it was only in the early 1980's, with excavations in the Wiend, that the true nature of Wigan's Roman heritage began to emerge. Two seasons of excavations, by a team from Manchester University, revealed for the first time that Wigan was indeed settled by the Romans and was being used for some kind of industrial activity. Evidence of metal-working and military-style wooden buildings from the late 1st to the early 2nd century fitted well with other well known sites in the region such as Wildespool and Walton-le-Dale, but significantly, no indications of a fort.
Since the advent of planning guidance legislation in the mid 1990's, developers have been obliged to contribute towards archaeological investigations prior to any new development in historically sensitive areas. When planning permission was granted to Modus to develop a large area in the centre of Wigan, it was obvious to our society that a great opportunity would present itself for further discoveries in an area which may well have survived the ravages of Victorian development. Much of the area in question had been covered in the late 19th century by a huge earthen embankment built for the Central Railway Station which was the terminus for the Great Central Railway (Wigan Junction Branch). Even the River Douglas had to be diverted to accommodate the bank and the viaduct which took the railway over the Douglas Valley eastwards towards Manchester. The area is also very close to the earlier discoveries in the Wiend. A desk-top survey arranged by Greater Manchester Archaeology Unit, was followed by field evaluation work carried out by Oxford Archaeology North (who are based in Lancaster). Our suspicions were soon confirmed when the team began digging in Ship Yard behind the Ship Hotel (latterly called Yates Wine Lodge but more recently, Sam's Bar) in the town centre end of Millgate.
Both Roman and Medieval activity were detected in the evaluation trenches, prompting full excavation work, which began late in November 2004 and carried on through the winter months, sometimes in atrocious conditions. Despite the bad weather, evidence soon began to emerge of extensive Roman occupation dating to the early 2nd century AD. This included high-quality Samian-ware* and even wood from two 'V'-shaped ditches which look typically military in design. These were intermingled with evidence of Medieval activity in the form of pits and ditches outlining the burgess plots** which would have backed onto the houses and shops along the Millgate of Medieval Wigan. Significantly the Roman ditches ran in a perpendicular direction to the main road suggesting Millgate may have originated in the Roman period.
These findings gave great hope for further discoveries in the rest of the development area. However, when trenches were opened on the north side of the Civic Centre, opposite the area in the Wiend where previous discoveries had been made, the archaeologists drew a blank. Early photographs of the construction of the Civic Centre, however, gave a good clue as to the reason for this with larger areas being excavated out for its foundations. Trenches were also opened in the area around the bottom of Watkin Street. This was to establish if any archaeology survived relating to the mill which once stood on the banks of the Douglas in that area. This also drew a blank but it demonstrated that the spoil deposited in the late 19th century was much deeper than first thought and the conclusion was that the development would not disturb any archaeology at that depth. Our only hope lay in the area on the other side of Pennington's furniture shop further down Millgate opposite the present Town Hall.
Evaluation trenching in this area soon turned up a Roman hearth. Plans were therefore put forward for a larger scale excavation to be carried out over the next few weeks. When Tom Glover (our chairman) and I visited the site a week or so later, cellared buildings and an early 19th century bread oven had been uncovered on the west side of the site adjacent to the road on Millgate. I was particularly intrigued by a cobbled road complete with pavements, curbing and drains, which had not seen the light of day for over 100 years. However, what Mark Bagwell, the site director, was getting particularly excited about came as a complete surprise to us; square brick tiles piled on top of each other in a fashion which could only mean one thing, a Roman hypocaust***. At this point in time only a few tiles protruded through the mud but there was enough to convince the experts that they had possibly hit on the remains of a Roman bathhouse. There were also indications of a large stone wall in another area of the site which had been robbed out to leave a large foundation trench. These findings changed the whole complexity of the site and fresh negotiations were held with the archaeologists, Wigan Council and Modus, who generously gave an extra six weeks to excavate the whole of the area between the multi-storey car park and Penningtons furniture shop.
* Samian-ware was high quality table-ware imported from the continent and usually decorated with animal hunting scenes.
** Burgess or burgage plots were parcels of land belonging to the freeman or more wealthy residence of the Medieval borough. Typically they were long and narrow with the short end facing onto the street.
*** A hypocaust was the Roman equivalent of under-floor central heating. It consisted of a concrete floor suspended on brick or stone pillars. Hot air from an adjacent furnace room (or stokehole) was forced under the floor between the pillars and up through box flues built into the walls.
The next time we saw the site was an evening tour, specially arranged for our society by the excavation project manager, Ian Miller. We started with the obligatory safety procedures and preliminary talk on the site's overall development. This included a mention of the old Ritz Cinema (reputedly once the largest in Europe) which, being considered of no particular architectural merit, was in the throes of being demolished. Ian then led us onto the site to show us just what they had uncovered. Our collective jaws dropped in amazement when he presented us with, not just one hypocaust room but three, together with other rooms including a possible plunge pool. Two of the hypocaust rooms had well defined stoke-holes and the third had smaller rooms off to the west and east. The large stone wall, as indicated by the robbed-out trench, seemed to be aligned with the west wall of one of the hypocaust rooms and proceeded north for another 12 metres before turning east for another 11 metres. It eventually disappeared under Victorian development which had truncated the site on the east side. This represented a huge enclosure but had little or no indication of any internal structure. There was however a room cornered between the enclosure wall and one of the hypocaust rooms. This showed evidence for beam slots which indicated an internal wooden structure or a series of partition walls. Only a small amount of stone survived in the enclosure wall trench but, the little that did, indicated a high quality of construction and, with a general width of 90cm (3 feet), demonstrated a very substantial structure.
Lying outside the enclosure wall and running parallel to it was another foundation trench, not quite as big but, once again, robbed of its stonework. At the point where it turned the corner, Ian pointed out a huge rectangular block of stone which he initially thought was Victorian because of its fine surface finish. But after further investigations this turned out to be firmly associated with the Roman levels. Its isolated position suggested it was probably a base plinth for a large stone column. Further evidence of similar blocks (one to the south and another to the east) added weight to this interpretation and would probably have represented a portico or maybe colonnaded entrance. The base of a column, found in the one of the hypocaust rooms, may have originated from this feature.
Of the three hypocaust rooms found, the best preserved was the one located to the north and offset to the west of the other two. It had a well defined stoke-hole on its west side which was full of construction debris and burnt material. In the hypocaust room, columns of tiles (or pilae) reached almost one metre high and covered more than 50% of the floor space. The rest of the floor area had been completely cleared by later post-Medieval industrial activity (possibly a bell casting pit). The south wall of this room had been breached by some other industrial activity which had occurred at a later date in the Roman period, probably after the building had gone out of use as a hypocaust. Ian described this as possibly squatter activity, taking advantage of the structural remains.
A deep trench running away from the main site on the west side but parallel to it produced a large piece of amphora*. Amphora represented a large proportion of the pottery assemblage from the site in general but there was of little in the way of domestic material. This suggests the site was a public building rather than a domestic residence or town house, which sometimes had heated rooms. The slight fall in the deep trench suggests that it was probably the water supply to the main building. Adding to this, on the north side of the site and dating slightly early, Ian pointed out an area of post holes and hearths, where some industrial activity had been carried out. Scrap pieces of lead indicate that this was probably the workshops where the Romans were producing the lead used for lining pools or tanks for holding the water. Assessing all this evidence, Ian and his team are convinced that this site was indeed a bathhouse. In Britain as a whole, bathhouses are very often associated with forts but, without positive evidence for one in the Wigan area (although this has not been ruled out), the suggestion is that it was probably attached to a mansio**.
Ian explained that the whole site was evidently of a high status and seemed to be built generally in one phase. The width and depth of the hypocaust foundation trenches alone were testament to the importance of the structure. Trenches had been cut into the bedrock of the sloping hillside of Millgate to provide a level surface to build on, indicating a large investment in time and manpower. Most of the stonework had been removed from the foundation trenches but, where it had survived, the quality of construction was of a high standard. Quite unusually though, the excavations revealed that this walling had been almost totally robbed out in antiquity (in fact in the Roman period) suggesting that it had been deliberately dismantled and may have been taken elsewhere. Ian also commented on how even more remarkable was the age of its construction. Pottery evidence puts the date of occupation between the late 1st century and early 2nd; a date which has since been confirmed with evidence from archaeo-magnetic analysis for the last firing of the stokehole. This came in at 137 AD, a date which coincides with a general push by the Romans into Scotland - a period of advance which eventually resulted in the formation of the Antonine Wall stretching from the Clyde to the Forth.
Although the main structure was built in one phase there was some later activity on the site in the Roman period, but this amounted to very little. As well as the previously mentioned hearth inserted in the hypocaust room, a deep trench was cut in the area around the plunge pool. This was offset from the pool by about a metre or so to the north and west side, but the function of this trench remains unclear. The archaeologists found no evidence of further occupation until the Medieval period when a number of pits were dug on the periphery of the site. Two of these pits were quite large and yielded a fair assemblage of pottery dating mainly from the 12th to 14th centuries. This has increased the total number of Medieval potsherds from the excavations to over 300. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of this material in our understanding of Medieval Wigan. To put it into context, the total amount of sherds discovered previously in the whole of Wigan is only about one tenth of the pottery discovered here at this one site.
*Amphora were large pottery vessels usually associated with the transportation of wine, oil or fish paste.
**A mansio was the Roman equivalent of a hotel or travelodge where important dignitaries could stay on their travels. Many had attached facilities such as bathhouses or gymnasiums (similar to a leisure centre).
Ian Miller and his team are now feverishly working on post-excavation work to conserve and evaluate all the finds. This will eventually culminate in a special publication, funded by the developers, Modus, which will tell the full story based on the project's discoveries. Further information has already emerged, such as the previously mentioned last firing of the stoke holes and lately, the identification of flue tiles amongst the quantities of building materials. These hollow tiles, designed to channel the hot gases from the under-floor heating up through the walls, would have been embedded in the inside walls of the hypocaust rooms making sure the whole structure was kept warm. More significantly, fragments of 'voussior' have been also identified. These were special box flues which were shaped into arch sections such that, when put together, would form the barrel-vaulted roofs so typical of Roman bathhouses. They were light and hollow enabling the hot gasses to continue from the walls, through the vaulted roof and out at the top through small chimneys. Finally, arrangements are currently being planned for a reconstruction of the hypocaust to be displayed in the Grand Arcade development using as much of the original material as possible - a fine tribute to Wigan's Roman heritage.
Bill Aldridge
Wigan Archaeological Society
Gallery >>
Gallery
The photographs from the excavation, in the order the Society first published them.
