ENN110640 - Elms Farm, Church Street, 2022 (Strip, map & sample)

The designated area for strip, map and sample was within the footprint of a recently demolished modern steel barn and partial demolition of a second, 20th century masonry barn. The development proposal was for construction of a new dwelling incorporating the partially demolished barn and associated detached garage. Excavation was carried out by the client’s contractor, using plant provided and operated by the contractor. The area was stripped using a tracked excavator fitted with a flat-bladed ditching bucket. The work involved the removal of overburden under the supervision of an experienced professional archaeologist in order to determine the presence/absence of any archaeological remains. Project Results: The strip, map and sample excavation at 6 Church Street, Elms Farm, Crick, whilst small in scale, served to provide evidence for local domestic activity within the medieval village core at Crick. Excavations conducted by ULAS in 2017 on the same site provided evidence of low-level Saxo-Norman to 13th-century activity associated with a hollow way providing a major routeway leading north-west from the village via the site on towards the village fields. The probable 12th-century setting out and occupation of properties fronting Church Street resulted in the cutting of a common rear ditch which also served to mark the boundary with the closes documented as occupying the site during the medieval period. During the later 12th and 13th centuries the latter area was used for low-level crop processing associated with bread production, whilst privies and/or small barns colonised the silted up property boundary ditch prior to the abandonment of the site due to village shrinkage in the late 13th or early 14th century. Machine stripping of the footprint of recently-demolished barns revealed a single ditch running on the same south-west to north-east alignment as the aforementioned close ditches encountered in 2017; the recovery of pottery dating to 1200-1400 places the feature within the same timeframe. Consequently it is likely that the ditch represents a further close/property boundary ditch extending north-east from the medieval Church Street frontage. The feature was not identified in 2017, probably because its projected course runs beneath the concrete access road east of the barns. An undated post hole and pit flanking the ditch likely represent contemporary rear property domestic occupation. [Inf from OASIS online form]