Monument MPM1107 - Cellars, 90-102 High Street

Construction trenches and walls from cellars belonging to demolished houses at 90-102 High Street, revealed during a watching brief in 2009 to investigate subsidence along the pavement. Test trenches were dug mainly through the pavement, although 1m of each extended into the grounds of the Cathedral. The cellar walls ran northeast-southwest across the trenches. The wall in the eastern most trench was constructed from bricks in a stretcher bond coursing, with shaped limestone blocks on the base in a lime mortar matrix with an irregular coursing. A further four walls in two of the trenches (three of these in the western most trench) were made of bricks in a lime mortar matrix. The western most trench also contained a wall along its eastern edge which mainly consisted of roughly squared limestone blocks, although three bricks and two flint cobbles were also observed. This was bonded to two of the brick walls.

The cellars had been back filled with soil at the northern end (within the Cathedral grounds), and brick rubble at the southern end underneath the pavement. Finds included fragments of post-medieval brick, 19th/20th pottery, china, sawn pig bone, chicken bone, and a large wooden beam. Fragments of human fibula, femur and tibia suggest graves were disturbed when the cellars were back filled.

Accession number 2009/181

Southampton City Council Archaeology Unit, 2009, Archaeological Watching Brief at 90-102 High Street, Portsmouth (Unpublished document). SPM121.