NHER 68308 (Monument record) - Late post-medieval to modern pits

March 2021-October 2022. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of groundworks associated with construction of residential dwelling.
Although the footings for the new building exposed a number of pits, these all appeared to be of relatively recent date. These pits included two or more conjoining features that contained pottery suggestive of a late Victorian or early 20th-century date. Three other large pits with loose, ashy fills contained a range of modern debris, including ferrous waste, glass bottles, enamelled bowls, part of a cast iron fireplace and various other household items. A number of the bottles dated to the 1940s, suggesting this material likely resulted from a house clearance during or just after World War Two.
The subsoil appeared to be fairly sterile and there was little evidence for earlier activity, unstratified finds being limited to single sherds of medieval and late medieval/early post-medieval pottery, fragments of post-medieval clay tobacco pipe and a small number of medieval to post-medieval metal objects. These metal finds include a medieval/post-medieval copper alloy vessel fragment and a post-medieval shoe buckle and livery button.
See report (S1) for further details.
P. Watkins (HES), 30 April 2024.