SNN110932 - Land off Church Lane, Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire, NN6 6EE: An Archaeological Trial Trench Evaluation

This report describes the results of an archaeological trial trench evaluation carried out by Pre-Construct Archaeology on land off Church Lane, Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire, NN6 6EE (NGR SP 65461 76335) between the 28th and the 30th September 2015. The archaeological work was commissioned by Melvyn King of rg+p Ltd on behalf of Barry Howard Homes Ltd in response to a planning condition attached to the construction of five residential dwellings and a new private access road. The aim of the work was to characterise the archaeological potential of the proposed development area. The earliest activity on the site was a residual Mesolithic or early Neolithic blade-flake which was identified within a later medieval pit in Trench 3. This shows that there is prehistoric activity located within the vicinity of the site as suggested in the Desk Based Assessment within the fields to the south. A single Saxo-Norman ditch was encountered within Trench 3 that contained domestic waste and a deposit of cereal processing detritus and hearth waste. Trench 2 contained a ditch that produced mid-12th to 14th century pottery alongside some cereal grains and grass/weed seeds. The principal result of the evaluation was a series of parallel Post-medieval linear ditches, with associated perpendicular ditches, identified within Trenches 1, 3 and 4. The alignments of these ditches may be medieval in date that were re-dug or re-aligned in the later post-medieval/Modern periods. Modern truncations such as foundations for a demolished pig-sty and out-house heavily disturbed large parts of the site, along with the overgrown nature of the site prior to the evaluation work taking place. As a result of this the evidence for earlier remains may well have been lost.