NHER 65228 (Monument record) - Medieval deposits make-up deposits and medieval to post-medieval structural remains

January-February 2012. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of groundworks associated with construction of new medical centre and tower (The Greyfriars Lighthouse).
An initial phase of work saw the installation of 42 piles. The arisings from the pile auger were observed to consist of yellow beach sand and wet brown sand. It wasn’t possible to conduct any form of systematic examination of this material.
The subsequent excavation of ring-beam trenches and a lift shaft afforded a better opportunity to understand the stratigraphy of the site, although it is noted that conditions were far from ideal. The lowest deposits recorded were a sequence of interleaved layers of clay, sand, ash and rubbish, all of which were thought to represent individual dumps of material brought in to consolidate the site and raise its ground level. The uppermost of these deposits lay at 2.99m OD and the entire sequence was in excess of 1.54m deep (the base of this material not being reached). The earliest of the exposed deposits was a brown clayey sand containing fragments of mortar, ceramic building material and oyster shell. This was overlain by a much cleaner yellow sand that contained a large quantity of medieval pottery, of which the bulk (at least of the recovered sherds) was Yarmouth-type glazed wares of 13th- to 15th-century date. Pottery was also recovered from several other deposits in this sequence, including several sherds of late medieval date (although these came from an area where it hadn't been possible to record individual deposits, so their position within the sequence is unclear). Other finds from these layers included a broken medieval stone mortar, a horn core and a single flint flake. It is noted that these deposits did not appear to respect the position of Row 84, suggesting they predated the establishment of the Rows in this part of the town.
The probable medieval make-up layers were truncated by various walls and other structures, although the exact nature of these was difficult to determine as they were only sporadically exposed in section. These remains included a pair of presumably related flint walls recorded as being aligned north-to-south and east-to-west aligned [1]. The absence of brick in the fabrics of these walls and the fact they were built directly on top of the medieval deposits are both indicate of a relatively early date.
Several other structures were found to incorporate medieval ‘early’ bricks of probable 13th- to 15th-century date. These included north-to-south and east-to-west aligned flint and brick walls that were both associated with relatively large bricks of a type seen as suggestive of early brick use on the site. Similar bricks were also recovered from a rubble deposit associated with one of these walls, along with fragments of medieval roof tile.
Several other walls contained what were clearly re-used medieval bricks, making them much more difficult to date. These included several that were probably the walls of cellars (the fill of one of which contained fragments of post-medieval clay tobacco pipe). Medieval bricks had also been reused in the walls of an infilled well.
At least two other walls contained bricks that were of probable 16th-century date.
A number of walls could be identified as probably post-medieval based on their stratigraphic position, the presence of ‘late’ bricks in their fabrics and, in some cases, their apparently relationship to Row 84.
The various structural remains were also sealed by several rubble deposits and a compacted layer of mixed hardcore, rubble and sand – all of which were probably associated with a significance clearance event that took place during the mid 20th-century. It is likely that many of the recorded walls had been demolished at this time.
Unstratified finds included medieval and post-medieval pottery sherds and a 17th-century tin-glazed wall tile with hand-painted blue decoration.
See report (S1) for further details. The results of this work are also summarised in (S2).
The archive associated with this work has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2012.74).
P. Watkins (HES), 2 August 2021.