NHER 64870 (Monument record) - Post-medieval remains and multi-period finds

November-December 2015. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of groundworks associated with construction of new outbuilding adjacent to All Hallows Farmhouse (NHER 30687).
This work revealed remains of exclusively post-medieval date, including a single large pit, the brick footings of a building and a boundary ditch.
Evidence for earlier activity was limited to a number of unstratified finds, including a small assemblage of worked flints, burnt flints, abraded medieval pottery sherds and a potentially medieval lead weight or spindle whorl. The flints were mostly consistent with a later Bronze Age date and included a cluster found at the interface of the subsoil and the natural clay below.
The earliest of the features exposed was probably the large pit, the single fill of which contained pottery of probable 17th to 18th-century date, post-medieval roof tiles, fragments of animal bone and oyster shell. This substantial feature had steep sides and a flat base that had possibly originally been dug in order to extract clay.
The brick footings were exposed at the southern edge of the site and represented the north-east corner of an outbuilding that can be seen to the west of the farmhouse on an enclosure map of 1812 (S1). This building had been demolished at some time prior to the production of the Ordnance Survey First Edition Six-inch map in the 1880s (S2). On this map its site is occupied by an enclosed rectangular parcel of land, the northern side of which corresponds with the east-to-west aligned ditch exposed by these works. This produced pottery of late 19th-/early 20th-century date.
Information from report uploaded to OASIS. HER copy awaited.
P. Watkins (HES), 24 April 2021.