Monument record 5226/2 - Early medieval settlement

A series of possible quarry pits were dug in the 11th-12th centuries, succeeded by boundary ditches in the 12th century. The activity may be associated with the castle site to the north

{1} Archaeological evaluation in 2013 revealed three ditches in the north of the site, two of which contained small assemblages of late Saxon/early medieval pottery.
{2} A small excavation revealed two phases of activity dating to the 11th and 12th centuries. Initially, a series of pits were excavated, probably for the extraction of sand for building. A large rectangular pit produced a good assemblage of charred cereal grains and it was suggested that this pit may have had a different function. It had some characteristics of a sunken-featured building, which though usually much earlier, may have persisted in use as an agricultural building.
At some point in the early 12th century a new, possibly planned, settlement may have been imposed on the landscape and as part of this an east-west boundary was excavated. The boundary was a long lived feature and may have been related to another, north-south aligned, ditch. The settlement was abandoned by the end of the 12th century.
It is considered possible that this area of activity was part of a wider area of settlement associated with the manorial site at Castle Hill, representing a second settlement focus for Moulton.

<1> Atkins, R., 2013, Archaeological evaluation at Moulton College Holcot site, Moulton, Northamptonshire (Report). SNN110443.

<2> Atkins, R., 2014, Late Iron Age and a Saxo-Norman to early medieval settlement at Moulton College Holcot Site, Moulton, Northamptonshire, p. 13-15 (Report). SNN110009.

<3> Horne B. (Editor), 2014, South Midlands Archaeology (44), p. 50 (Journal). SNN109842.

Record last edited

May 2 2019 1:28PM