Abstract

Excavations in advance of the construction of a store in 1998 discovered enclosure ditches, pits and roundhouses of a Middle to Late Iron-Age settlement together with a handful of ditches and pits representing the peripheries of a Romano-British settlement and a number of features dated to the Saxon period in the north-west of the site. Excavations carried out prior to extensions to the store and car park in 2004 provided evidence in the southern part of the site of a local landscape dominated by at least two river channels which had mainly silted up by the end of the Saxon period. Saxon pottery found in the channels has potential local and regional significance and provides evidence for an undiscovered Saxon settlement in the vicinity of the site. The presence of remnant topsoil suggests that the final tertiary silting of the channels may have extended into the medieval period. No archaeological features of medieval date were discovered but the foundations of a post medieval building together with a probable associated ditch and pit were recorded.