SNN113429 - Archaeological investigation on land Adjacent to 34 Church Road, Piddington, Northamptonshire

In October 2021 an archaeological investigation was carried out by Souterrain at a development plot for a new house at Church Road, Piddington village, Northamptonshire, where trial trenching in 2012 confirmed the existence of Romano-British and medieval ditches. The investigation comprised survey and sample excavation of Romano-British and medieval features following a soil strip of the development footprint (c. 366 sq. m). Romano-British Period The earliest features revealed in 2021 were dated approximately to the 2nd century AD. They included possible cultivation plot divisions. Not all features contained diagnostic pottery, but several could reasonably be assigned to the Roman period based on comparable soil-fill attributes and spatial relationships with dated features. Even though the remains of a substantial Roman villa has long been known beyond the village periphery, c. 630 m to the south, the discoveries at Church Road represent the first appreciation of the Romano-British rural landscape beneath the village itself. High Medieval Period The next tangible evidence of land use at the site occurred in the 12th / 13th century. It includes a substantial boundary ditch, a calf burial, a large rectangular pit that may have been part of a structure, and the truncated remains of several rubbish-filled pits. Further pit-digging took place in the second half of the 13th century or in the subsequent century. Most notably there was a substantial elongated pit of indeterminate function that had been in-filled with a rich variety of domestic and culinary waste. The combined biofactual and artefactual data provides an evocative insight to day-to-day medieval village life, economy and trade links