SNN113099 - An archaeological assessment and updated project design for the A43 Corby Link Road, Northamptonshire, June 2012-October 2013

Northamptonshire Archaeology (now MOLA) undertook archaeological mitigation works for the A43 Corby Link Road, Northamptonshire, in June 2012-October 2013. Prehistoric activity was found beneath the flood plain at Harper’s Brook, Little Oakley, comprising scattered pits of Neolithic, Bronze Age and middle Iron Age date, together with a small enclosure and the ploughed out remains of a round barrow. A middle Iron Age pit alignment was identified along the watershed between the River Ise and Harper’s Brook near Newton, a little to the south of a middle-late Iron Age farmstead and early Roman enclosures. Further late Iron Age-early Roman field systems were investigated at Harper’s Brook, Little Oakley, where they adjoined the Bronze Age round barrow with a couple of satellite cremation burials. A small contemporary settlement overlooked this valley from the north, where roundhouses and a cremation cemetery were excavated. Along the valley sides to the north of Newton there was dispersed Anglo- Saxon settlement comprising both timber-frame buildings and sunken-featured buildings associated with household industry such as small-scale ironworking and weaving, and inhumation burials. Late medieval and post-medieval land improvements were recorded at Stanion, where drainage was installed and a former watercourse culverted.