NHER 65282 (Monument record) - Early Iron Age feature

November 2013. Desk-based Assessment.
Heritage Statement produced for proposed underground electrical cable connecting solar park at West Raynham Airfield to a grid connection west of Hempton.
See report (S1) for further details.
P. Watkins (HES), 3 February 2022.

July-August 2014. Watching Brief and Strip Map and Sample Excavation.
Archaeological mitigation work undertaken during installation of underground electrical cable for West Raynham Solar Park.
No archaeologically-significant features or deposits were observed during the stripping of this section of the cable route easement.
The subsequent opening of a narrower trench for the cable itself revealed an elongated feature at the southern end of the field which terminated with the excavated area. Although recorded as the terminus of a north-west to south-east aligned ditch its apparently steep, near vertical sides and flat base suggest it may well have been some form of discrete pit. The darker uppermost fill of this feature produced more than 130 sherds of quartz-tempered prehistoric pottery of probable Early Iron Age date. The bulk of this pottery came from a sample that also produced a small assemblage of worked flints (mostly small chips) and a quantity of burnt flint. The presence of a Mesolithic/Early Neolithic flint blade suggests at least some of the worked flints were residual. Plant macrofossils were limited to a moderate amount of oak charcoal.
Prehistoric pottery in a similar quartz-tempered fabric was recovered from a feature approximately 250m to the south (see NHER 65281).
The cable was tunnelled beneath the track that is believed to fossilise part of the line of a Roman road running between Holkham and Toftrees (NHER 1791). No associated remains were observed to either side of the track.
No unstratified finds were recovered.
See report (S2) for further details.
The archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2016.203).
P. Watkins (HES), 3 February 2022.