SNN117200 - Glenvale Park, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Archaeological Evaluation Report

Between June 2021 and August 2022, Oxford Archaeology East carried out a programme of archaeological trial trenching at Glenvale Park, Wellingborough in Northamptonshire in advance of a development proposal. A total of 189 trenches were excavated, of which 60 contained archaeological features and 129 were blank. Evidence for Middle Iron Age settlement activity was recorded in the south and far west of the site, with a moderate sized assemblage of pottery recovered from a series of rectilinear enclosures. The recorded evidence indicates the presence of a well established community occupying the lower levels of the site, close to the floodplain of the Harrowden Brook, across the second half of the 1st millennium BC. The evaluation also confirmed the suspected Romano-British date of a large settlement previously identified by geophysical survey in the north of the development area, with numerous trenches targeting what appears to have primarily been the peripheral, agricultural zone of the settlement. The pottery recovered from the ditches and pits in this part of the site indicates a Middle to Late Roman date, with a peak in activity between c. AD 150-400. Several features of Early to Middle Anglo-Saxon date were also identified during the evaluation. Activity dating from this period has not previously been recorded in the immediate environs, and as a result, such remains have significant potential to shed light upon the decline of the identified Romano-British settlement and also inform upon the establishment of settlement at nearby Great Harrowden.