Baldwin Avenue, Bottesford, Scunthorpe
SE 8850 0695; (Robin Taylor-Wilson and Alan Telford); excavation; January 24th-February 18th 2001; BWA01
The fieldwork involved the excavation and recording of 7 trenches, located in areas to be occupied by house plots in the proposed development. Trenches 3, 4 and 5 were located along the projected line of a late Saxon ditch encountered in an earlier archaeological evaluation.
The natural sub-stratum was encountered in all 7 trenches. It consisted of sandy clays with pockets of medium sand. In Trench 6 and the southern end of Trench 5, in the site's south-western corner, the 'drift' deposits were c.0.40m thick and overlay an outcrop of greyish green mudstone, representing the top of the area's 'solid' geology.
The investigations demonstrated that activity at the site might have begun as early as the Romano-British period. A shallow gully crossing the centre of the site produced some dating evidence of Roman date, but the feature's period of origin was by no means certain. By the Saxon period, however, a boundary of some significance - surviving as a massive ditch in Trenches 3, 4 and 5 - existed at the site. Ceramics recovered from the feature suggest that the earliest Saxon occupation of the area pre-dates the mid 8th century AD, and that the site may have been abandoned in the 10th century. When the earliest version of the ditch had silted, it was re-cut along its southern side in the central and eastern parts of the site. The re-cuts of the ditch had been deliberately backfilled in the mid-late Saxon period with deposits rich in artefactual and palaeoenvironmental materials.
The remains of three large lead tanks were recovered from the Saxon ditch in Trench 3 and these are of considerable importance. Ceramic evidence recovered from the ditch suggests that there may have been a pottery production site in close proximity to the site. Although the evidence is insufficient to conclusively prove this suggestion, if it had been, then the Bottesford material could represent a highly significant discovery as there is currently no known middle Saxon pottery production site outside of Ipswich in this country.
Medieval activity was also encountered during the investigations. An insubstantial wall footing was exposed in Trench 4, in the eastern part of the site, as were a number of probable rubbish pits, the most notable example being an exceptionally large feature in the centre of the trench. This produced important assemblages of artefactual and palaeoenvironmental material. Boundary ditches of probable medieval date were encountered in Trenches 5 and 6 in the south-western part of the site. Such features may have been associated with medieval activity in the area of the 'Templar's Bath' well to the west, where medieval occupation has been long suspected due to earthworks which survived in the area until recently.
The investigations at Baldwin Avenue yielded a significant body of archaeological evidence related to Saxon settlement in the Bottesford area, although no structures of the period were recorded. The metalwork, pottery, bone and plant macrofossil assemblages all contain material of particularly high archaeological significance.
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