NHER 40498 (Monument record) - Area of former marshland adjacent to Cow Tower

June 2004. Watching Brief.
Undertaken during construction of pond scrape close to Cow Tower. From context 1.
A series of deposits were recorded in this location. The earliest was a brown, waterlogged peat (undated), overlain by a silt-rich soil containing a single fragment of burnt flint. Sealing this soil was a mixed ash and clay layer, overlaid by a similar clay layer. Artefacts recovered from this uppermost clay layer indicate that it was laid down no earlier than the Victorian period.
The deposit sequence suggests that a reed swamp or marsh had evolved over time to a dry land surface, consolidated in the Victorian period or later by the addition of clay and ash. It is suggested that one mechanism for this change could have been alterations to the nearby River Wensum, alterations which (based on previous work along the Wensum) took place in the Late Saxon period at the earliest.
See report (S1) for further details.
A. Cattermole (NLA), 6 March 2007.