SNN111450 - Barby Pools Marina, Onley, Northamptonshire and Willoughby, Warwickshire: Archaeological evaluation

An archaeological evaluation, comprising the excavation of twenty-seven trial trenches, was undertaken by Cotswold Archaeology (CA) on a block of land that formerly formed part of Onley Fields Prison Farm, near Dunchurch, Warwickshire. The northern part of the site lies within the parish of Barby, Northamptonshire, the southern part in that of Willoughby, Warwickshire. The work, which was commissioned by J Marine Ltd, was carried out in two stages, in November 2011 and January 2012, prior to the submission of planning proposals for the construction of a marina and associated infrastructure to service the adjacent Oxford Canal. In the southern part of the site, adjacent to the canal, the remains of a Romano-British farming settlement were investigated; the core of the settlement, previously identified by geophysical survey, lies beyond the canal to the east and only the western periphery was subject to evaluation. The remains comprised several small ditches and gullies, a row of six small, shallow pits, and a penannular gully, probably the remains of a roundhouse, with a diameter of c. 10m and an opening on its south-east side. Several sherds of pottery recovered from three of the ditches dates to the Roman period, from the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD. Well-preserved ridge and furrow earthworks were evident across the entire site; furrow bases were recorded in many of the trenches and several abraded sherds of medieval pottery were recovered from one of the furrows and a probable medieval horseshoe from the subsoil. Aside from the furrow bases, no other archaeological features were encountered, other than a small number of undated features, the majority of which were shallow and ephemeral. Several land drains and two service trenches, one for a septic tank overflow and one for a water supply to a cattle trough, were also encountered.