Untitled - Council for British Archaeology

college of St Mary. The plan of a third bay of this structure, was
recovered, with sOme stratified pottery which may further the Under--
standing of.precisely when it was erected. There Was also evidence of
one or more stone-based predecessors on very similar plans', one of
them apparently, enclosing a larger circular oven.
A contractors trench at the rear of the site gave a standing
section through the floors Of an.elevenih H twelfth century building
fronting onto Shoe Lane. No timber or stope walls were seen, and it
.is likely that twO successive features of compacted loam were in fact
1
cob' walls, set at a level slightly loWet than the contemporary
gravel surfaces of the lane.
The most interesting find on the site came unexpectedly as
the contractors were putting in one of their last footings on the
New Inn Hall Street frontage. They had stopped at an arbitrary
level for the night, and a quick clean-up showed that they had been
going through early surfaces of a slightly wider road. Just below
where they had stopped were a layer of limestone cobbles set in the
original red topsoil, and on one of these cobbles was a heavily
corroded coin. This type of cobbling occurs as the earliest surface
of each of the roads of the Saxon town so far identified, and it
seemed likely that the coin would give a new insight as to where the
street plan was laid out. It turned out to be a penny of Edward the
Elder (899-924) who the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records as succeeding
to Oxford and its lands in 911. It therefore appears that the
western end of the town was laid out by Edward. However the exact
nature of the settlement which went with the ninth century causewsy
to the south and St. Frideswide's church is still to be clarified.
11.. OXFORD,. 35-40 and 65. St Aldate's - Brian Durham
This has .been a revealing year in more.ways than one concerning
Oxford's medieval' south-suburb (F1g42). Excavations in .the early
1970's gave tantalising signs of a Saxon -Thames tauseway, and after.
seven years negotiation for the 65 St Aldate's site it looked as if
there might at last be a chance to confirm these findings. - Bo it
was a rude shock when the trial trench came- down on a medieval river
channel 50 m north of'any kflOWn from documents or'topography. A
-17th-18th'century building, possibly an innWas.shown tabe founded.
on a solid stone river well in the position of a 'landstave Wall'
upstream of a bridge. it. 'culvert debouching through this wall,
possibly'from a roadside ditch, provided a group of.three witooden
bowls With an oak tub in the river nearby. The channel seemed to
have been filling up since the fourteenth century but monad have
been open to about 15 M width in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. A second smell.trial trench, dug thiough a backfilled
basement and two feet of concrete, loCated the 'north bank-of the
stream with twelfth centuty.wattle lacing presumably put, in to stop
eroSion.
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