SNN112183 - A medieval tenement at College Street, Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire

Following extensive trial trenching, a small excavation was undertaken ahead of residential develpoment on land west of College Street, Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire. A number of shallow ditches and pits indicate that the area was occupied through the 12th century, and tenement plots had probably been established at this time. By the later 13th century several stone buildings had been constructed. The presence of a circular oven base and stone-lined drains suggests that these were ancillary buildings prehaps pertaining to a domestic residence fronting onto College Street, although no evidence for this was located. To the west a ditched and later walled boundary, found in the trial trenching, appears to divide the frontage from back plots, which contained only quarry pits and scattered pits and ditches. The buildings appear to have fallen out of use by the end of the 15th century when the town is known to have been in decline. The historic map evidence indicates that the southern part of the area was still undeveloped by the end of the 16th century, and remained an orchard until well into the 19th century, despite extensive development to the immediate north from the 18th century onward.