SNN112629 - Land to the south of James Road, Irchester, Northamptonshire: Archaeological Evaluation

An archaeological evaluation was undertaken by Cotswold Archaeology in March 2019 on land to the south of James Road, Irchester, Northamptonshire, on behalf of Atkins Global acting for the Trustees of the F G Saxby No 4 Settlement Trust. Seventeen trenches were excavated across the approximately 3.9ha evaluation area, which comprises a single agricultural field situated on the southern fringe of Irchester. The trenches had been located to target anomalies identified by a preceding geophysical survey. In the southwest corner of the site, parts of an Iron Age enclosure appear to extend into the evaluation area; the ditch lines produced very little, heavily abraded artefactual material. The fieldwork also revealed evidence for Romano-British field systems in the form of a number of boundary ditches and a possible associated trackway, which produced small assemblages of heavily abraded pottery and animal bone. A total of four large, relatively shallow quarry pits were also encountered. The overall poor levels of preservation of the finds assemblages, as well as the mostly inconclusive results of environmental soil sampling suggest that the site formed part of a predominantly agricultural landscape. The remains of two medieval or post-medieval ridge and furrow agricultural systems were also recorded within the site. In the northern half of the evaluation area, a roughly east / west aligned system was relatively poorly preserved, but a number of remnant furrows of the north / south aligned system in the southern half of the site were observed within the trenches.