SNN117103 - Land Adjacent to The Old Rectory Harlestone Road, Church Brampton Northamptonshire: Archaeological Observations & Survey

This report is a record of a final phase of archaeological fieldwork at a building plot for a new house in the village of Church Brampton, Northamptonshire. The work, which took place in March 2026, comprised observation and survey during ground reduction. It followed on from two trial trenches in November 2025, in which substantial remains of an early 18th century building were exposed in one of the trenches. This report forms an addendum to the evaluation report and should be read in conjunction with it. The plot was formerly a part of the glebe. It faces a 14th century parish church and adjoins the grounds of an early 19th century rectory. A map and a manuscript of 1580 confirm that it was once part of a parsonage homestead. The remains found in 2025 undoubtedly belonged to the homestead. They consisted of two stone-built sill-beam wall foundations (c. 0.6m deep by 0.5-0.69m wide) for a timber framed superstructure, and a rubble floor. Additionally, an investigative cross-section through the wall and floor revealed part of a finely-constructed flagstone and cobble floor of an earlier building. Although the latter was undated, the map of 1580 shows three adjoining buildings with dual-pitched roofs and chimneys (depicted in ‘birds-eye view’) at this location. Notably, the right of patronage at Church Brampton was first recorded in 1230. The objective of the 2026 fieldwork was to attempt to obtain a plan of the historic building foundations prior to their destruction. In the event, ground reduction was largely limited to the removal of topsoil, which meant that only a portion of the building was exposed. It comprised a further extent of one of the previously located wall foundations, over 11m in length, which also revealed that the building had at least two bays. Observation and recording during the subsequent excavation of foundation trenches for the new house was outside the remit of the mitigation, which inevitably meant that the archaeology would be cut through by external and internal wall footings. However, the investigation revealed that a large proportion of the historic building probably survives just beyond the NW elevation of the new house.