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At Gloucester services on the M5, travellers are resting and refuelling, taking a break from the demands of the road.
Just a few miles east, scores of archaeologists are completing a two-year project that has unearthed a forerunner of the site, a 2,000-year-old Roman take on the service station.
The Roman version, a mutatio – or horse-changing station – would have provided respite for travellers on the Ermin Street road, which linked Gloucester and Cirencester in Gloucestershire and Silchester in Hampshire.
Finds in and around the mutatio – which somewhat ironically has been excavated to make way for a major new link road – include hundreds of Roman coins, brooches, animal bones and the remains of ovens.
Alex Thomson, the project manager for Oxford Cotswold Archaeology, said: “We knew that we would find good archaeology, but what was revealed exceeded all expectations.
“Being able to look at a Roman roadside settlement in such extensive detail is a rare opportunity. It’s clear that the structures we’ve recorded helped serve the passing trade on a busy Roman highway – it really could be a 2,000-year-old service station.”
Up to 70 archaeologists have been working on the 40-hectare site, which is part of a £250m-£500m project to connect two dual carriageway sections of the A417 at Brockworth and Cowley in Gloucestershire.
Almost eight hectares have turned out to hold a Roman settlement straddling Ermin Street, one of the key routes in south-west Roman Britain.
The team found quarry pits used in the construction of Ermin Street as well as hundreds of items giving an insight into life there, including 460 Roman coins, 15 brooches, 420kg of pottery and animal bone. In a stone well was a hobnail shoe, hair pins made of bone and copper alloy and a ring.
Perhaps the most spectacular find was a 60mm (2in) tall representation of Cupid cast in copper-alloy with a chubby face, hair in ringlets and a topknot. His right hand is raised and instead of the usual bow and arrow, he is holding a club.
The main “service station” area is believed to have consisted of two buildings, where horse bones, bridles, and hipposandals – a Roman predecessor to the horseshoe – have been found.
Thomson said: “I think it was quite a simple building, consisting of a couple of rooms. One was likely a workshop room and the other more an accommodation, maybe for the people that were running the building.
“There may have been other buildings associated with it elsewhere where people could stay. It’s quite a nice stopping point between Gloucester and Cirencester, about halfway after a tricky climb up the Cotswold escarpment out of the Severn Valley.”
The settlement is thought to have first appeared in about AD160-180 and appears to have been occupied into the fourth-century AD.
Thomson said: “The road itself would have been very busy. Cirencester was the second-largest Roman settlement outside of London in Britain. And Gloucester was a very important centre for the military. They may have been servicing passing legions as they marched along the road.”
Thomson said he imagined the cupid would have been a prized possession and was almost certainly lost by a traveller. Other items may have been deliberately left behind as an offering to the gods for a safe journey.
Most of the archaeological work is over but the team has a small presence on site as the road work, due to end in 2027, in case other sites of interest emerge. The finds will go on display at local museums.
The project has been featured in an episode of BBC Two’s Digging for Britain, which was broadcast on Wednesday 15 January and is available to watch on iPlayer.
