NHER 54865 (Find Spot record) - Late medieval/early post-medieval pit and multi-period finds

July 2010. Test Pit.
Excavation of single test pit by local school children as part of the Higher Education Field Academy (HEFA) programme run by Access Cambridge Archaeology.
This test pit (ACL/10/06) was located at [1] and exposed what appeared to be a substantial pit at a depth of 0.70m. This feature was then excavated to a depth of 1.5m without natural geological deposits being reached. The pit was of probable 15th- to 16th-century date, being found to contain a reasonably large assemblage of late medieval/early post-medieval pottery (28 sherds, predominantly late medieval and transitional ware), along with a residual Late Saxon sherd, fragments of unidentified ceramic building material, several pieces of possible iron slag and oyster shells. Unstratfiied finds recovered from the overlying soils included:
2 medieval pottery sherds,
15 late medieval/early post-medieval pottery sherds.
Post-medieval clay tobacco pipe stem fragment.
17 late post-medieval/modern pottery sherds.
This test pit also produced a range of other finds that were not subject to specialist examination, the majority of which are either of probable late post-medieval to modern date or inherently undatable. These additional objects include a possible prehistoric worked flint flake, a burnt stone, 6 curved tile fragments, 6 flat tile fragments, 7 unidentified ceramic building material fragments, pieces of bottle and container glass, 4 iron nails, 2 corroded iron scraps and an oyster shell.
For further details, including a wider discussion of the results of the HEFA test pitting surveys undertaken in Acle between 2009 and 2014 see report (S1), which incorporates information from pottery report (S2).
P. Watkins (HES), 11 May 2026.