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Billesley

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 06:13:41 GMT

Heritage and Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment

Our clients own a late 20 ^th century house located within a Scheduled Monument: Medieval settlement at Billesley Trussell (National Heritage List for England NHLE:1016440), with several Listed buildings to the west. The client wished to update the house, including the like-for-like replacement of paths, walls and steps, the conversion of an integral garage to living area, the addition of cladding and render to the building, the replacement of a single-storey extension with a two-storey extension and the addition of a garden room to the rear of the property.

In accordance with Historic England’s request, we produced a Heritage and Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment (HDBA) to assess the proposed development’s potential impact on buried archaeological remains, and on the significance and setting of the surrounding designated heritage assets, in accordance with NPPF and Stratford-on-Avon District Core Strategy 2011-2031 policy CS.8: Historic Environment.

We were able to show that the replacement of paths, walls and steps would have no impact on the Scheduled Monument or underlying buried archaeology, and that based upon previous work we had done on the site, the garage conversion and new extension would be in areas already disturbed and thus unlikely to impact underlying archaeology.

We advised the client that certain easy-win alterations to the exterior of the house would benefit the Scheduled Monument’s setting by reducing the modern house’s visual impact on the experience of the historic earthworks, and thus help to off-set any negative impact of the proposed development.

We also advised on the design of the proposed garden room’s foundation, which had been a contentious point for Historic England, and provided the client with several options.

After taking our advice, the client gained Scheduled Monument Consent to make the proposed changes.

The Asps,Warwick

Thu, 30 May 2024 08:52:48 GMT

The Asps, Warwick, Warwickshire

OVERVIEW

An excavation carried out between April 2021 and September 2022 was undertaken to record the remains of a deserted medieval village (DMV) known from documentary sources as The Asps (or Nasps) on a hillside in Bishops Tachbrook on the shoulder of the Avon Valley, prior to the development of a large housing estate by Taylor Wimpey (Midlands).

Astonishingly and despite being previously evaluated with a suite of techniques including geophysical survey and trail trenching (not carried out by Archaeology Warwickshire we hasten to add), the Asps were found to overlie important later prehistoric and Roman sites.

The prehistoric activity was extensive and suggestive of a long period of occupation across the hillside in the centuries before the Roman invasion. Several foci of farming settlement were identified from the remains of round houses set within ditched and banked enclosures and several other curvilinear ditched enclosures suggest a complicated settlement morphology. The round houses were represented by penannular ring gullies that would have encircled the cob or turf walls which supported thatched roofs. The ring gullies and ditches contained charred plant remains derived from ovens and hearths and handmade courseware pottery from which it will be possible to extract more nuanced data regarding the agricultural regime. A long linear ditch on the eastern side of the site near the Tachbrook seems likely to represent the boundary separating the site from a neighbouring contemporary estate. Three cremation burials were excavated.

The settlement in use in the early Roman period seems likely, but wasn't assuredly, to have been occupied by the descendants of the Iron Age settlement. The introduction of hard-fired ceramics to the site in the Roman period paints a picture of continued development and the adoption of European agricultural improvements, the eventual adoption of Roman forms of construction and tablewares. Ditched enclosures become more elaborate and extensive and there is some evidence for the change to rectangular buildings.

Unusually for sites in Warwickshire there was also evidence the site was occupied in the later Saxon period, although no sign that there was continuous occupation from the end of the Roman period, particularly as the Roman pottery supply seems to have stopped before the 4th century AD.

The founding of the medieval village is certainly characterised by a rectilinear system of enclosures and boundaries representing settled the core of the DMV. Surfaces, ovens as well as potential robbed out buildings were recorded within the medieval settlement.

Matt Jones, Archaeology Warwickshire

Coventry Gateway South

Thu, 30 May 2024 08:52:48 GMT

OVERVIEW

An extensive programme of archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations was conducted across 9 ha of land at Coventry Gateway South, Baginton, Warwickshire, between September 2019 and June 2022, which demonstrated that the area contains evidence for a long sequence of human activity of regional and perhaps national importance. Historic building recording was also carried out on a farm complex and a former factory site. During archaeological recording key upstanding features were subject to detailed recording through photogrammetry and 3D modelling.

PREHISTORIC

The work revealed what must have been discrete islands in the formerly braided River Avon that were used by bands of hunter-gatherers around 7000 years ago. Flint tools typical of the Mesolithic period (c. 4–8000 BC) were found on the islands, along with a stake-built structure. An oblique flint arrowhead of a type used in the Neolithic period shows the island was still used in 2500–4000 BC. On the adjacent floodplain, a barbed and tanged flint arrowhead from around 2500 BC was found near a spread of heat-affected pebbles thought to represent a burnt mount, perhaps from a sauna, and these finds could be contemporary with a ceremonial site on the hillside to the west. From this circular ditched feature, an exceptionally well-executed flint dagger was recovered. Pits containing Bronze Age pottery suggest possibly seasonal settlement on the river’s edge. Amazingly, a stone axe flaked by a Neanderthal, possibly hundreds of thousands of years earlier in the Palaeolithic, was found nearby.

ROMAN

The Bronze Age ceremonial site remained a feature in the landscape until the Roman period. At this time, field boundaries were aligned on it, and a sandstone corn drier implies the former presence of cereal-based agriculture focused near the site, perhaps associated with the Lunt Roman fort and cemetery at Whitely South.

ANGLO-SAXON

In the 6th or 7th centuries AD, the Roman site was succeeded by a modest Anglo-Saxon settlement of at least three sunken-featured buildings, in addition to pits and other structures.
This settlement was probably contemporaneous with the early medieval cemetery at Whitley South and was notable for its highly variable forms and the large quantities of unfired loom-weights in two of the buildings.

MEDIEVAL

In the medieval period the Coventry Gateway South landscape formed part of the open fields surrounding Baginton. Ridge and furrow is evident across the floodplain and along the hillside.

HISTORIC BUILDING RECORDING

A series of 18th-19th century agricultural buildings at Rock Farm were analytically recorded prior to their demolition.
A late 18th or early 19th century farmhouse was extended in the late 20th century to the south-east. Whilst the frontage retained much of its Georgian character, the original windows had been replaced.

Salt Lane, Coventry

Thu, 30 May 2024 08:52:47 GMT

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS AT SALT LANE CAR PARK COVENTRY

overview

Archaeological excavations were undertaken in 2019 on behalf of Coventry City Council prior to and alongside the construction of a new multi-storey car park. The work followed a trial trench evaluation which demonstrated that, despite modern truncation, well preserved medieval and post-medieval archaeological deposits were present across the site. The archaeological excavation concentrated on an area of c.875 square meters over parts of two medieval burgage plots (properties) divided by a ditched boundary.

On ceramic grounds, the earliest remains excavated on Salt Lane date from the 12th-13th centuries. Coventry during this period was a town which is still unfamiliar even to many historians and archaeologists. It was at that time smaller than nearby Warwick and had strong midland links, through the Earl of Chester and the Benedictine Priory, but if it enjoyed any international renown, it has not come down to us. Thirteenth-century Coventry was a place of growing aspiration, with over another century to go before it achieved the status of a city. By 1279 it had begun to attract many people from the villages and countryside as is evidenced by the Warwickshire village-surnames to be found in the Hundred Rolls for the city.
Prominent buildings comprised its vast, newly-completed Benedictine Cathedral Priory of St Mary (probably begun in the early 12th century and consecrated in c1224), and the still-diminutive St Michael’s and Holy Trinity, both simple two-cell parish churches, each probably without either tower or spire.

Thus the isolated post-hole building which characterises the earliest phase of occupation on the site, but which lacks contemporary floor surfaces, may fit into the purview of any number of small-scale industries, or even may simply be an urban paddock, for the corralling of livestock, horses perhaps. Set well back from any frontage, it is unlikely to have been a domestic dwelling, although it may have stood in support of a frontage building subsequently replaced.

In the second half of the 13th century there does appear to have been some pit-digging on the Salt Lane site, although in no great density. Whether the pits dug were for the extraction of clay and sandstone or for the disposal of waste, the backfilling of those pits with waste remains their principal characteristic, as is the case with most such excavations in the medieval city.

By the early 15th century, there is sufficient documentary background in existence to be certain that the individual plots were separated one from another, by hedge, ditch or fence, or any combination of these, although it remains true that no contemporary boundary features survive to show for this. It is in fact the superimposition of the later (post-medieval), mapped boundaries onto the site which indicates that in this late medieval period, the plethora of mainly pits do seem for the most part to carefully respect north-south lines on the map which would not be depicted by cartographers until the idle of the 18th century. It is therefore in this phase that one can first of all truly assign with confidence finds to a western plot (B) and an eastern plot (C), and even one or two possible boundary features which may or may not demark the westernmost plot A. It is of course during this period that for the first time there are good documents which name the plots and indicate who owned them, who tenanted them and to a large extent suggest what trades were plied therein.

The pottery from the pits associated with the former frontage shows that during the period of the inns, material was being deposited in roughly the period 1400-1470, before the debris supply dried up, either because it was deposited elsewhere, carted away to a town muckhill (such as Graffery Muckhill, on Greyfriars Green), or occasionally because a plot became run-down or was abandoned (which we know did not happen here). It is most likely that with a growing need to use more of the rear plot, and make it safe for horses, the inn tamped down the ground over the former pitting, or even metalled it, and their refuse went mostly elsewhere. There is also the possibility that 19th and 20th-century redevelopment reduced any post-medieval build-up in ground levels sufficiently to scrape away any later pits. Because of this, later pit-digging evidence on this site is and will remain equivocal.

Certainly the pits produce none of the ceramic type fossils of the late 15th and 16th centuries, usually found all over Coventry, such as domestic Cistercian Wares and the rustic-looking continental imports for drinking ale like firstly Raeren tankards and then Siegburg and Frechen types. The dateable refuse supply simply ends in the later 15th century, perhaps not much later than c1470.

A garden of an inn which dates back to at least the 14th century, was uncovered, known as Green’s Inn from the family who ran it. By 1572 the inn, probably rebuilt, had become known as The White Bear, although at the end it had been re-named The Craven Arms. It stood well into the 20th century and was for a time the premier coaching-inn of the city, with stabling for 40 horses. It is perhaps no surprise that between the horses, with saddlers living next door, finds include considerable horse-tackle, such as a fine articulated bit.

The inn would have put up visitors to the city of every class, from tradesmen to gentry. It may be one of them who lost a well-worn but finely-decorated sword scabbard, with evidence in its wear that the owner also used it to hide an additional dagger, both accessories which betoken that theirs could be a very violent society indeed.

From the 13th century documents show that an adjacent Little Park Street plot supported a scabbard-making cottage industry, so the wearer might have come to be measured-up for a new one, just as he discarded his worn-out example.

In the rear yard of the White Bear of the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century stood a small building set on stone foundations with a brick floor. Nothing about its remains gives a clue as to its superstructure, which may well have been timber-framed, or its purpose, since there were no finds related to it. It may have been little more than a shed. It is more than likely however, that the water which ran off its roof in a rainstorm was needed to replenish the large stone-lined pit which lay next door to it. With a wicker-lined channel and planked base leading into it and an overflow channel opposite off it, the pit was distinctive in that it supported upright driven stakes, some probably themselves wickered to form racks in a pit which was designed to hold water to some extent, be replenished by water from the nearby roof and then drained off as necessary Again, no finds indicate that this pit enjoyed any use previously encountered in the city’s archaeology. However it seems likely (if perhaps ultimately unprovable) that this formed a wheel-wash for cart traffic which stayed at the White Bear.

While no wheel-parts have survived at the White Bear Inn to confirm this suggestion, it is surely reasonable to suggest that while horses were undoubtedly cared for, wheeled traffic needed at least as much attention as a result of wear. A wagon with a split felloe (wheel-rim) or loose strake (iron tyre) was no more use than a lame or ill-treated horse. In a back yard where dozens of horses and carts and carriages passed through each week, at least some of each would be worse for wear on any one day. The inn which wished to garner a regular clientele would be the one which provided the most extensive service. With generations of sadlers next door (to both sides) and blacksmiths always only a short walk away, the added ability to ‘service’ carts on the premises would have made the White Bear a reassuring prospect for the late medieval traveller.

Written by Iain Soden

With acknowledgment to -
Paul Blinkhorn, Sheila HamiltonDyer, Tora Hylton, David Dungworth, Michael J. Allen, Alan Clapham, Quita Mould & Michael Bamforth

Post excavation report can be found with reference -
Rann, C., ed 2020 Archaeological Excavations at Salt Lane Car Park, Coventry: Post Excavation Assessment, Archaeology Warwickshire Report 2061