SNN106436 - Archaeological Excavation at the Corner of Kingswell Street and Woolmonger Street, Northampton

Kingswell Street and Woolmonger Street are integral to our understanding of the layout and development of the medieval town of Northampton. The site is close to the heart of early Northampton and excavation has revealed a sequence of development that relates to the broader pattern of town growth. In the mid-10th to early 11th centuries there was a large late Saxon cellared structure, similar to others found within the early town, although this area was marginal to the main focus of late Saxon occupation in Northampton. The cellar was succeeded by a Saxo-Norman timber building on the same alignment, although the larger part of the site was open ground, and the roads appear to have been less formally defined. Intensive occupation of the site did not occur until the 13th-14th centuries when property boundaries were defined by areas of quarrying. Four medieval buildings were constructed within these plots, including a malthouse and a bakehouse. The arrangement of the buildings emphasised the formalisation of both adjacent streets for the first time, although a continuous frontage was not in evidence. Pottery of the 15th century was sparse, seemingly due to documented civil improvements on Kingswell Street in 1641, but the frontage was developed during this century. Occupation of a medieval building on the Kingswell Street frontage continued in the 16th-17th centuries, with cess pits to the rear. There was no evidence for the Great Fire of Northampton in 1675. The 17th to18th-century frontage contained at least one surviving medieval building, but this was lost with the erection of new buildings in the 19th century. Clay tobacco-pipemaking debris helped to identify the tenement of Master tobacco-pipemaker, George Henshaw (1767-1774) at 15 Kingswell Street. His tenure formed part of a substantial documented history of the site for the later post-medieval