Ely: The Hidden History (original) (raw)
Related papers
Multi-period archaeology on land at Church Street, St. Neots, Cambridgeshire
Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 2011
In 2007, Archaeological Solutions Ltd conducted an excavation at this site, which lies immediately adjacent to the areas in which CF Tebbutt, and later PV Addyman, recorded Anglo-Saxon settlement. The excavation identified features and finds ranging in date from the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age to the early modern period. The results help to further characterise the late Anglo-Saxon settlement at St Neots and identified further portions of the seventeenth to eighteenth century mansion, Hall Place, previously excavated by P V Addyman in 1961. In addition, small scale Romano-British activity and evidence demonstrating the shift in focus from this area to the core of St Neots to the west during the medieval period was recorded.
Change in a South Cambridgeshire parish: understanding the Bronze Age to late medieval settlement
Extensive investigation within Haslingfield parish was intermittently undertaken between 1979 and 2012 by the Cambridge Archaeology Field Group (CAFG). It comprised field-walking about a quarter of available land within the parish, an earthwork survey, the excavation of 27 test pits and eight “casual observations” during other excavations largely within the present village. Several likely settlement sites have been identified: a probable Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age site, a Middle/Late Iron Age to Roman settlement, a probable villa, an Anglo-Saxon settlement which may have been the nucleus of the present Haslingfield village, and a medieval-to-late medieval hamlet lying 500m to the north of the present village. This work gives new insights into how the present village probably represents a consequence of expansion in both the Saxo-Norman and medieval periods around, as well as within, an earlier large green.
This paper examines the character and significance of a cellared structure discovered during recent excava tions on the site of a later Anglo-Saxon settlement at Bishopstone, East Sussex. The structure in question formed a focal element within an estate centre complex administered by the Bishops of Selsey from c. AD 800, otherwise surviving in the celebrated pre-Conquest fabric of St Andrew's parish church. The excavated footprint of this cellared structure is examined in detail and conjectural reconstructions are advanced on the basis of comparative evidence garnered from historical and archaeological sources. The collective weight of evidence points towards a tower, pos sibly free-standing, with integrated storage/cellarage accommodated within a substantial, 2 mdeep subterranean chamber. This could represent a timber counterpart to excavated and extant masonry towers with thegnly/episcopal associations. The afterlife of this structure is also considered in detail on the grounds that it provides one of the most compelling cases yet identified of an act of ritual closure on a Late Anglo-Saxon settlement. Alongside being dismantled and infil led in a single, short-lived episode, the abandonment of the tower was marked by the careful and deliberate placement of a closure deposit in the form of a smith's hoard containing iron tools, agri cultural equipment and lock furniture. One of the few such caches to be excavated under controlled scientific conditions, it is argued that the contents were deliberately selected to make a symbolic statement, perhaps evoking the functions of a well-run estate centre.
Archaeological excavations in Clare, Suffolk
This report presents the results of a programme of archaeological excavation of 33 1m square ‘test pits’ in the small Suffolk town of Clare carried out in spring 2011. The programme was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund through the Managing a Masterpiece project intended to engage the communities of the Stour valley in their heritage. Over four days, more than 300 people form the local area took part in the excavations. The results provided new evidence for the development of the area now occupied by the town from the prehistoric period onwards. This appears to have lightly used by humans in the prehistoric and Roman period until the mid 8th century AD when a small settlement appears to have developed near the site of the present church. By the 9th or 10th century, a larger settlement had grown in its place, extending south towards the river Stour, possibly with a church in this southern zone. By the mid 11th century the settlement had developed into a small town, which was extensively re-organised shortly after the Norman Conquest, when it acquired a planned layout including a formal market place which had a motte and bailey castle on its out side and a church on its north, with some of the late Anglo-Saxon settlement possibly cleared at this time. The Norman town flourished for a couple of centuries, leading to the creation of a new market place to the north of the church. This period of growth ceased in the 14th century, when parts of the town were abandoned and others became more sparsely occupied. Revival did not take hold until perhaps the 17th or 18th centuries, although the Norman street plan endured throughout and survives to this day.