NHER 51058 (Monument record) - Prehistoric and undated remains

January-February 2008. Test Pitting and Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development site. 50 test pits and 15 trial trenches excavated across site. Contexts 1 -250.
Undated ditches, linear features and natural features were identified, along with a prehistoric pit and a tree hollow which contained flints likely to be Neolithic/Bronze Age in date.
137 prehistoric flints were collected from the site, along with prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval pottery.
See report (S1) for further details. The results of this work are also summarised in (S2).
See also (S3) and (S4).
The associated archive has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2011.105).
E. Bales (NLA), 23 May 2008. Amended by P. Watkins (HES), 14 September 2015 and 12 May 2019.

The Mesolithic flint core and Bronze Age blades previously recorded under this number are now recorded under NHER 16635.
H. Hamilton (HES), 12 December 2014.

March-April 2022. Trial Trenching.
Further evaluation of proposed development site. This second phase of work saw the excavation of 12 additional trenches in areas to the north, south and east of the block of land examined in 2008.
A small number of ditches and possible pits were recorded, all of which were poorly dated. Finds were largely limited to prehistoric worked flints, most, if not all of which were probably residual within later contexts. This small, multi-period assemblage comprises a Mesolithic/Early Neolithic end scraper and blade; Mesolithic to Early Bronze Age flake and blade fragments, a potentially Early Bronze Age end scraper, a Bronze Age/Iron Age flake and several pieces of undiagnostic debitage. The only other finds of note were two tiny scraps of handmade pottery of Iron Age or Early Saxon date recovered from an otherwise undated north-north-west to south-south-east aligned ditch in the south-east corner of the site.
The more notable features included a pit or ditch terminus in the northernmost part of the site, a sample from which was found to contain probable burnt processing waste in the form of spelt wheat glume bases and an indeterminate cereal grain. The presence of spelt is of interest as this is generally more common in contexts of later prehistoric and Roman date. A sample from another of the undated pits produced a single possible barley grain.
The only feature that could be regarded as convincingly dated was a north-east to south-west aligned ditch in the south-east corner of the site that clearly corresponded with a former field boundary shown on the Drayton tithe map (S5). It was felt that a similarly-aligned ditch terminus in the northernmost part of the site was also of relatively recent date.
See report (S6) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2022.8).
P. Watkins (HES), 20 July 2026.