NHER 39604 (Monument record) - Medieval and post medieval remains, 9 to 11 London Street

August-September 2003. Excavation and Watching Brief.
Excavation of single deep trench prior to construction of extension to Jarrold department store. Evidence exposed during site clearance operations was also recorded and a limited watching brief maintained during mechanical bulk removal of soil during construction of the new basement. From context 1.
Excavations revealed an Anglo-Norman timber building of unusual construction. The building lay on a shallow bank of soft sands adjacent to the presumed course of the Great Cockey. This building appears to have been in use for 200-300 years. The building was overlaid by a series of dumps of sandy material which contained fragmentary evidence for the building having been refloored at least twice, once with clay and once with mortar. The lack of refuse in the redeposited floors suggests that this was a domestic building that had its floors swept regularly.
There was little evidence for the immediate reuse of the site following the destruction of the Anglo-Norman timber building.
A phase of activity involving the digging of small boundary gullies on this site in the 15th to late 16th centuries may be associated with the construction of the earliest extant element of 9-11 London Street, the 15th century vaulted cellar side chambers.
The vast bulk of the deposits encountered during the excavation of this site belonged to the late 16th to early 17th centuries. This period saw ground levels in this area raised by approximately 2m. The pottery dating for this make-up was exceptionally well-defined. One unusual characteristic of the finds assemblage for this phase is the lack of clay pipe fragments, which helps confirm the date of the phase as tobacco smoking was apparently not common in Norfolk in the 1630s and 1640s. Towards the end of this phase of construction a brick and flint culvert running north to south was constructed under the western edge of Little London Street. This culvert almost certainly carried the course of the Great Cockey during the 17th and much of the 18th centuries.
Animal remains recovered from late 16th century contexts include a piece of the skull of a bottle-nosed dolphin, and a woodcock, a wild bird which was difficult to obtain, and if bought would have been expensive. These remains indicate high status eating nearby. Artefacts recovered from the site all appear to be of a domestic nature and include furniture fittings and household equipment, dress fittings, a book mount and a possible candleholder. With the exception of an unidentified drilled bone object and the possible candleholder, all objects are typically found on urban sites and have parallels in Norwich and elsewhere.
See publication report (S1) and assessment report (S2) for further details. The results of this work are also summarised in (S3).
The associated archive has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2010.274).
A. Cattermole (NLA) 14 August 2006. Amended by P. Watkins (HES), 11 May 2019.