ENN110198 - Farndish Road, 2021 (Excavation)

{1} Excavation was carried out on two areas ahead of the construction of a residential development. The earliest archaeological remains, of Middle iron Age date, were found in the southern part of the devleopment area (Area 1) and consisted of an extensive boundary ditch within which three individual crouched burials were found interred on the base of the feature. One of these was accompanied by the partial articulated remains of a second individual (including the skull) and a quantity of disarticulated human bone. Later activity in Area 1 was represented by a north to south aligned Romano-British trackway which cut across the earlier ditch. Defined by a pair of parallel ditches, in places the original metalled surface of the trackway had survived. In Area 2, another set of probable, parallel trackway ditches were exposed against the northern edge of the development area. Their southern extent had been truncated by post-medieval quarrying. While they were offset, and on a slightly different alignment, they may represent the continuation of the of the routeway uncovered to the south in Area 1. Significantly, an Anglo-Saxon inhumation burial, radiocarbon dated to 590-600 cal AD had been interred in a grave cut through one of the infuilled trackway ditches. The northern part of the development area had been subject to extensive limestone quarrying over the course of the medieval, post-medieval and early modern periods, whilst the remains of furrows associated with the open field systems of medieval and post-medieval Irchester were exposed across the southern part of the site.