SNN115126 - Archaeological Works: Road Drainage Provision, Wakerley Quarry, Northamptonshire

Phoenix Consulting Archaeology Ltd carried out a programme of archaeological investigation and recording (AIR) across an area where a ‘road drainage provision’ was being installed at Wakerley Quarry, Northamptonshire (NGR SP 946 980). The works were carried out during March 2020, on behalf of the quarry operator, Mick George Ltd. The investigations formed an archaeological programme of mitigation that was required by the Council before development took place. The development was to facilitate land drainage by the creation of a series of settlement lagoons and a linking pipeline. The quarry is situated within a wider archaeological landscape of some importance. The Rockingham Forest is known to have been a centre of industrial mining, quarrying and iron manufacture during Iron Age, Roman and Saxon times. Extensive evidence of metal-working, settlement and agriculture relating to these periods has previously been found in the surrounding landscape. The present works involved the monitoring of topsoil and overburden stripping across the footprint of the seven lagoons and the pipeline easements that connected them. These works revealed two sides of what was probably a rectangular enclosure, four dispersed post-holes and a large pit. No features contained any dateable artefacts. Indeed, the only finds comprised of some degraded animal bone and some fragments of abraded fired clay. The evidence is likely to relate to a past episode of agricultural activity on the elevated valley slopes of the River Welland.