NHER 65680 (Monument record) - ?Medieval, post-medieval and undated ditches

It has been noted that an aerial photograph taken in 1946 (S1) shows what appear to be surviving linear earthworks both within the bounds of this site and in the fields to the north. When proposals were first submitted for the redevelopment of this particular field a Rapid Identification Survey was therefore requested to clarify the nature of any surviving earthworks. It was however subsequently determined that any archaeologically-significant earthworks once present at this location were unlikely to survive. Ridges and mounds now present relate to activity on the site from the later 20th century onwards [1].

August 2019. Trial Trenching.
Evaluation of proposed development site.
The four trenches excavated revealed a number of linear features, the majority of which were probably ditches. Most produced no dating evidence and the finds that were recovered were mostly post-medieval or modern. The one exception was a sherd of medieval pottery recovered from a north-to-south aligned ditch. A sample from this feature was found to contain a mix of charred cereal grains along with a variety of plant remains that had probably been preserved by waterlogging.
Features that could be tentatively assigned a later date included another north-to-south aligned ditch, which contained single fragments of post-medieval pottery, brick and pantile. An adjacent, shallower, much more irregular linear feature contained modern finds and therefore probably represented disturbance associated with relatively recent activity on the site.
Although the majority of the features recorded were aligned either roughly north-to-south or east-to-west there was enough variation to their orientations to suggest more than one phase of activity was represented.
Although it is possible that two of the features corresponded with the linear earthworks visible on aerial photographs there was nothing to suggest that these were other than former field boundary and/or drainage ditches.
See report (S2) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2019.309).
P. Watkins (HES), 14 June 2022.