Friday 4 October
The Museum's roundhouse will be typical of homes that existed in the London area in the late Iron Age and early Roman period. Examples of this type of building have been excavated close to the Museum at Gresham Street and Newgate Street. Other examples have been found in Southwark, Heathrow and on sites throughout London. The surprising lesson learned from the Gresham Street excavation was that roundhouses continued to be built in Roman London.
At 4.2m in diameter this building is similar in size to the roundhouses found at Gresham Street. The East Sussex Archaeology and Museums Project (ESAMP) will build the walls by driving wooden stakes into the ground. The gaps are then filled in with woven sticks (wattle) and a clay mixture (daub).
Well-preserved examples of this type of construction have been found at the Glastonbury Lake Village, Somerset, allowing us to reconstruct the wall accurately using hazel wattle. Evidence from other excavations has been used to recreate an oak doorframe and a reed-covered roof.
There is less evidence available to help us reconstruct the interior but we do know that almost all houses had hearths and that some also had wooden plank floors.