SNN112200 - A late Iron Age settlement at Manor Farm, Newton Bromswold, Northamptonshire

An archaeological evaluation comprising geophysical survey, fieldwalking, watching brief and excavation was carried out by Northamptonshire Archaeology during preliminary groundworks ahead of the Raunds to Newton Bromswold Anglian Water pipeline. This report covers the southern end of the pipeline from Chelveston to Newton Bromswold, where an excavation was carried out at Manor Farm on part of an Iron Age enclosure system previously identified through aerial photography and geophysical survey. The enclosures may be characterised as a farmstead that originated in the late Iron Age, the 1st century BC, and fell out of use in the early Roman period, the middle decades of the 1st century AD. The enclosure ditches and other features produced a small assemblage of late Iron Age and early Roman pottery and a single copper alloy brooch is dated to the first half of the 1st century AD. This enclosure provides an example of the early settlement of the boulder clay covered uplands. During the medieval period the site was under cultivation and truncated furrows of a field system overlay the earlier archaeology.