SNN39652 - Excavation of The Town Defences at Green Street, Northampton 1995-6

Excavation at Green Street, Northampton has located the best preserved and most complete sequence of Northampton’s town defences so far discovered. A clay bank with a timber revetment, and a substantial ditch were probably constructed in the earlier C10th, either late in the Danish occupation or shortly after the Saxon reconquest. The revetment was later rebuilt in stone, and a contemporary gateway with metalled road surfaces was aligned on the present Green Street, a minor lane that can now be seen as the fossilised remnant of a major early access road. The gateway was blocked in the 12th century at the construction of the medieval town wall. A final use of the defences in the Civil War is represented by two shallow ditches cut into the largely filled medieval ditch.