Untitled - Council for British Archaeology

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building at its E. end was a stone lined kiln,
similar.to that in Building 11. Adjacent to_
this, built into the N.E. corner was a semicircular
oven base. A stone-lined drain, .
aligned N.-S., crossed the clay floor inside
the building. Building 13 appears to have
been Cl3th serving as a skitchen/Brewhouse for
Building 8.
Building 14
Aligned N.-S., 2.5m west of Building 13,
this building was revealed during machine
stripping. It was 6.5m wide and at least 8m
long, the S. wall having completely disappeared
No internal features were noted and the
building appeared to have been built into the
side of the slope. Finds from the interior
were few, but pointed to a late Cl2th - early
Cl3th date.
All the buildings detailed above appear to
have been of timber construction with dwarf
walls. Buildings 11-, 13 and 14 have no apparent
underlying platform, whilst 4, 5 and 9 are
constructed on platforms of grey-brown clay
laid on the natural clay subsoil. The yemaining
buildings are all situated on platforms
cut out of the subsoil. .All buildings are
associated with yards, roughly surfaced with
limestone cobbles, with occasional patches
(repairs?) laid with Bunter pebbles.* The
majority of internal floors are packed clay;
Buildings 5 and 10 each have one end bay surfaced
with pitched stones/cobbles, and Buildings
4, 5, 6, 9 and 12 have crushed fossiliferous
limestone floors. This material is
also used as surfacing in the entrance (?) of
Building 8.
Village Green
Machine stripping of the site uncovered a
stone wall, about 80cm wide, running SW-NE
across the N. side of the excavated area.
This marked the former S. boundary of the
Green and appears from local conversation to
have remained standing until about 1920, when
the S. part of the Green was taken into Hernts
Close. On the S. side of the wall was a broad
ditch, which appeared to have taken surface
water from the ditch system around the house
sites out of the field, into a pond, still
extant, by Grange Farm, N.E. of the site.
This system appears to have functioned until
the construction of the present pond, sometime
in the Cl9th,.into which the field drainage.was
diverted. The finds include large
amounts of medieval and postmedieval pottery
and ironwork.
BRADWELL BURY, BRADWELL
The excavation of the N. two-thirds of this
moated site was carried out in two stages.
Before development an area of 55m x 46m was
excavated. Later, when develoPment took Place,
the whole site of 110m x 80m was watched by
P.S. Smith. The oPeration was. financed by the
Development Corporation.
A scatter of handmade gritty Saxon sherds
suggest occupation earlier than Phase I. Definite
occupation is represented by three main
phases:
I. C11-13th; timber buildings within areas
defined by gullies and larger ditches.
C13-15th; stone buildings within a moated
enclosure; III. C16-19th; the moat is
reduced in size and the northern part becomes
a close which contains a barn and dovecote.
PHASE I - C11-13 (Fig 12)
This is represented by four timber buildings
on crofts defined by drainage/boundary
ditches c.li wide and lm deep. The crofts
may have been enclosed by Ditch 1 which only
survived on the N. side of the site.
Building 1
In the S.E. corner of the site was a rect-
-angular timber building aligned E.-W., 6m x
9m. The average distance between post holes
was 2m, the only evidence of a cul beam being
on the E. side where a very clear timber slot
,survived. The buildingmay have been internally
divided, the W. and largest part with a
hard clay floor On which was a central hearth.
Building 2
W. of Building 1 and within the same croft,
a small rectangUlar building, 3m x 2m aligned
N.-S. and containing a central hearth.
Building 3
A row of post holes running N.-S. represent
the E. wall of a timber building at least 12m
long, largely destroyed by the construction of
the moat (Phase II).