Love Lane Building Mansfield College Oxford

An archaeological excavation was undertaken by Oxford Archaeology on behalf of Mansfield College Developments at the site of a proposed new residential block at the Love Lane site, Mansfield College, Oxford. The excavation uncovered evidence for Roman settlement and part of the city’s Civil War defences.
The Roman remains comprised a ditched boundary dating from the second half of the 1st century and a large pit and boundary ditches of late 3rd-4th century date. It forms part of an extensive settlement that had previously been uncovered to the north and north-east at the Institute for American Studies, the Chemistry Research Laboratory and Halifax House.
The location of the site corresponded with a re-entrant angle in the inner line of Oxford’s Civil War defences, constructed in August 1642. On the south side of the site, the rampart survives as a bank that stands to a height of 2.4m and defines the southern boundary of the College. The excavation revealed the ditch that fronted the rampart and showed that after it had been backfilled, most likely when the defences were slighted by Parliamentary forces during September 1642, it was recut, presumably as part of the refortification during the second Royalist occupation between October 1642 and the siege of Oxford in 1646.