In January and February 1997 AOC Archaeology
Group undertook a programme of excavations at
12—18 Moorgate, EC2 (NGR TQ 3268 8139). The
site lay on the western side of the Upper Walbrook
Valley. In Roman times this area was generally fairly
flat, at an average height of 9.50m OD. The earliest
evidence of occupation took the form of small scale
quarrying of the natural sand and gravel in the early
2nd century ad, and some sub-division of the site by a
fenced boundary. By c.ad 120 this area of the City had
been developed, with large scale dumping followed by
the laying out of a road and at least one adjacent
building, which may have been a taverna or had a
relationship with the known pottery production site
to the north-west. During the post-Roman and earlier
Saxon periods there was no evidence of activity on the
site; the earliest clear indication of re-occupation was
a Saxo-Norman sunken featured building. During the
medieval period the dominance of dumps, ditches and
pits is indicative of backyard activities. Finds within
these deposits were principally derived from domestic
refuse, together with smaller quantities of building
materials and industrial debris. The majority of the
medieval deposits were dated from the mid-11th to
early 13th centuries, with later 13th- to 15th-century
material occurring in smaller quantities, mostly from
a limited range of cut features
