Dorset Council and its partners are pleased to be welcoming visitors back this Easter to the Roman Town House in Dorchester. The project has been made possible by money raised by National Lottery players and has received £248,000 grant funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The project focuses on delivering a range of improvements to the Roman Town House site with the first phase of the project delivery of capital works and the second phase, due to start in June/July to provide a range of events and activities.
The work at the site has meant that there is a new access route to the site from Dorchester’s Walks on the west side of County Hall, which makes for a shorter journey for most people. From the new ramped entrance cross over the car park via our mosaic path crossing and enter the site where the newly installed interpretation along this route will tell the story of the site to visitors as they go along. New nature-friendly landscaping scheme surrounds the site with plants that attract bees and hedgehog houses and hibernaculum’s hidden away for our local wildlife.
At the site there is new amphitheatre style seating area where visitors will be able to enjoy the surroundings and later in the year come and watch ticketed events being organised by the Dorset Arts Development Company. The cover building has a new paint scheme and the Roman mosaics and other internal features such as the heated room are being repaired and cleaned.
Guided tours and school visits will start soon to allow access inside the cover building to look and hear about the different features and mosaics. These can be booked soon through Dorset Museum.
The project has not only received National Lottery funding, but partnership funding has been provided by the Dorchester Heritage Committee, Fine Family Foundation, Dorset Council, Dorset County Museum, the Arts Development Company.
Dorset Council’s Portfolio Holder for Highways, Travel and Environment, Cllr Ray Bryan commented, “We are pleased to be welcoming the public back and have worked hard with our partners and key stakeholders to transform the Roman Town House. We are looking forward to seeing our site used to provide new activities and productions that welcome new visitors to the site over the coming months.”
