NHER 67104 (Monument record) - Remains associated with medieval city defences

January-February 2013 and March 2015. Watching Brief and Rectified Photographic Survey.
Monitoring of demolition of former Magpie Printers buildings and various subsequent groundworks. The last elements of the former workshops were demolished by hand in January 2013, with subsequent works undertaken that year designed to consolidate and expose to public view a section of the medieval city wall and the remains of a previously hidden 'D'-shaped tower. A subsequent phase of work in 2015 monitored the installation of new drains, a silt bucket and a soakaway.
It is known from several sources that the 'D'-shaped tower had previously been incorporated into dwellings built against the defences during the post-medieval period. These include a sketch by John Kirkpatrick of about 1720 that shows a tall house inside the tower. A survey of 1910 (S1) notes that the bottom floor of the tower was used as the scullery of 2 Magpie Road, while the top floor was used as a bedroom for 20 Catherine Wheel Opening.
The walls removed and/or exposed during the demolition of the workshops were mostly associated with relatively recent activity within and around the tower, being built from soft red bricks of probable 19th-centuy or later date. One notable exception was an east-to-west aligned wall of flint and brick rubble at the rear of the tower. This was unlikely to be medieval but may have been related to the building shown within the tower on Kirkpatrick’s sketch. Two similarly-aligned 19th-century red-brick walls within the tower formed the walls of a probable coal store, which had been covered by a brick vault constructed from similar soft red bricks. A test pit excavated within this part of the tower demonstrated that these brick walls were built on a large masonry foundation composed of flint rubble and sparse brick fragments set in a pale cream sandy mortar. This had probably been the foundation of the original rear wall of the medieval tower. Natural sands were encountered at a depth of 0.95m below ground level (7.85m OD). Unstratified finds collected within the tower included a post-medieval buckle, an iron fork of probable late post-medieval medieval or modern date an a silver-plated spoon of likely 20th-century date.
A rectangular pit excavated for the new silt bucket at TG 2283 0963 exposed the southern edge of what appeared to be a substantial east-to-west aligned feature cut through the natural geological sand. This is thought to have been part of the city ditch, although no finds were recovered from the two fills exposed. A larger, rectangular soakaway pit excavated to the west (at TG 2282 0964) is also thought to have coincided with the line of the city ditch. A deep sequence of deposits was recorded, the earliest of which was a dark brown clayey sand containing occasional ceramic building material and flecks of mortar and charcoal (seen at a depth of more than 2m below ground level). The overlying deposits included a layer of loose demolition rubble consisting of bricks and tiles of medieval and post-medieval date (of which four pieces were retained - two medieval brick fragments and two pieces of probable post-medieval floor tile or floor brick). The uppermost deposits recorded were a reasonably thick imported topsoil and an overlying layer of modern demolition rubble. A small assemblage of finds was recovered from the soil layer, comprising medieval and post-medieval pottery sherds and several pieces of post-medieval clay tobacco pipe. The associated drain runs were relatively shallow and exposed only post-medieval and modern deposits.
A rectified photographic survey of the newly exposed portion of the medieval wall was undertaken in February 2013. It was possible to photograph most sections of the wall but the inside of the tower was not photographed as the walls were covered in plaster and the presence of scaffolding limited access.
See report (S2) for further details, including a description of the exposed section of city wall and a selection of the rectified photographs.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.175).
P. Watkins (HES), 24 May 2023.

February 2016. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of further groundworks in the area north of the medieval city wall.
These works did not penetrate beneath rubble likely to represent debris generated during the demolition works that took place in 2013.
See report (S3) for further details.
P. Watkins (HES), 24 May 2023.