SNN113584 - Dallington Grange, Northampton: Archaeological Evaluation

In June and July 2021 Cotswold Archaeology (CA) carried out an archaeological evaluation on land at Dallington Grange, Northampton. The evaluation was commissioned by Pegasus Group, on behalf of Persimmon Homes and David Wilson Homes and was undertaken in connection with Outline Planning Permission for a Sustainable Urban Extension granted by Northampton Borough Council (now West Northamptonshire Council). The trial-trenching was preceded by a geophysical survey of large parts of the evaluation area that identified a range of anomalies suggestive of significant archaeological features. These included three main settlement foci identified in the north and east of the Site and suggested on morphological grounds to be Iron Age to Roman in date. A total of 202 trenches were excavated and archaeological remains identified in 43 of these. Archaeological remains were represented primarily as infilled ditches and gullies, small and large pits and a very few post-holes. These remains mainly represented evidence for agricultural activities and of low-level settlement. The earliest clear evidence of agricultural and settlement activity was identified in thenorth-east of the Site and dated to the Late Iron Age and Roman periods. A small finds assemblage was recovered, which included a total of 69 sherds of Late Iron Age and Roman date. The majority of these finds were recovered from Trenches 182 – 184, where the results of the geophysical survey were at their densest and at the peripheries of this area, in Trenches 171 and 176, and Trenches 188 and 189. The evidence of these remains and associated finds represent the remains of a relatively modest agricultural settlement of agricultural enclosures, stockades, associated trackways and field systems. This was probably associated with a relatively modest domestic settlement within or at the periphery of the Site. Some of the undated evidence, particularly in the north-east and toward the north-west of the Site could, on morphological grounds, tentatively be associated with the Late Iron Age and Roman period agricultural settlement and its associated enclosure systems. Notably, despite trenches in the south-western part of the Site being located close to a Neolithic causewayed enclosure identified during a previous phase of evaluation, no clear evidence for earlier prehistoric activity was encountered, and none of the poorly preserved undated features in this area could be related clearly to the causewayed enclosure. Elsewhere, the very limited evidence of medieval activity and of later post-medieval and modern activity is likely to represent historic agricultural management of the wider landscape in which the Site lies. It is this agricultural activity that probably caused the extensive truncation of earlier remains and the plough scarring evident in many of the trenches. The apparent mismatch between the results of the preceding geophysical survey and those of the current evaluation replicates a similar disparity seen during the earlier evaluation of other, adjacent, parts of the application site and is likely to be the result of both geological patterning / variation having produced anomalies suggestive of sub-surface archaeological remains and the evident impact of historic agricultural activity and especially associated deeper ploughing.