Croes Atti Roman Site

Cadw's description

Summary description and reason for designation

The monument comprises the buried remains of a Roman road, roadside settlement and associated cremation cemetery known from geophysical survey and archaeological evaluation (Wardell Armstrong 2014, 2015). This lies on the continuation of the same Roman road and an associated roadside lead working and domestic complex excavated approximately 80m to the NNW in 2013.

The remains occupy almost level ground at 10m OD, sloping gently uphill to the south from the present coastal road with views across the Dee estuary to the north. Magnetometer survey in 2014 produced clear evidence of the Roman road running SSE-NNW across the scheduled area towards the section excavated in 2013. A series of magnetic anomalies ranged along the line of the road indicates an area of intense human activity, likely to represent parallel ditches for building plots containing possible structures, pits and hearths or furnaces, comparable in layout to the known industrial structures excavated to the north-west, outside of the scheduled area in 2013. Evaluation trenches to the south of this area revealed a well preserved cremation cemetery of both cists and urns, and a range of post holes, pits and gullies containing Roman pottery dating from the late 1st to early 3rd centuries AD, contemporary with that recovered by the previous Croes Atti excavations in 2013, in the vicinity of Pentre Farm and Pentre Bridge Roman Site (FL131) in the early 20th century.

The monument is of national importance as a rare example of a Roman roadside industrial settlement and cemetery with few parallels in Wales. It is likely to retain extensive and well-preserved buried archaeological deposits with high potential to enhance our knowledge of Roman industry, civilian settlement, transport and funerary practices, and of broader patterns of Roman activity along the Dee Estuary. It shares group value with extensive and contemporary Roman industrial activity excavated or observed to either side of the Roman road to the northwest. This includes the furnaces, associated sheds and possible domestic structures in the vicinity of Pentre Farm excavated by the Flintshire Historical Society in the early twentieth century (partly scheduled as FL131) and the well preserved roadside lead working features alongside a largely intact section of the same road excavated by Earthworks Archaeology in 2013.

The scheduled area comprises the remains described and areas around them within which related evidence may be expected to survive. It is 1.18ha in area and L shaped in plan and measures 109m SE-NW by 120m SSW-NNE.