SNN111364 - Land off Guilsborough Road, West Haddon, Northamptonshire: Archaeological Field Evaluation

A planning application is being prepared for a residential development at land off Guilsborough Road, West Haddon, Northamptonshire. Because the site had the potential to contain archaeological remains of significance, the County Archaeological Advisor recommended the implementation of a programme of archaeological works so that the impact of any proposed development could be assessed and an appropriate mitigation strategy devised. Albion Archaeology was commissioned to carry out the first stage of this programme which comprised field evaluation by geophysical survey followed by the excavation of 15 trial trenches. The geophysical survey identified the presence of probable archaeological features across the survey area. The subsequent trial trenching confirmed the presence of a number of archaeological features with moderate levels of sub-surface preservation despite the fact that the site has been under agricultural use and suffered plough damage in some places. The majority of anomalies identified during the geophysical survey could be correlated with archaeological features. The layout and form of these features together with recovered artefacts suggest that the site contains remains associated with land/territory management, dating to at least the Iron Age and possibly earlier. Remains such as these have the potential to be of local and regional significance. The poor quality and limited numbers of artefacts recovered from the features suggest that the identified archaeological features are located some distance away from contemporary settlement. However, Iron Age settlement remains have been identified c.150m west of the site.