NHER 66630 (Monument record) - Post-medieval remains

June 2021. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of groundworks associated with construction of rear extension to Willow Cottage (NHER 46912).
The earliest deposit exposed by the excavated footing trenches was a silty clay containing patches of chalk waste and large flints. This was likely to represent material lain down to consolidate the site prior to the construction of Willow Cottage in the mid 18th century (it being known to lie on an infilled portion of the medieval town ditch). This was consistent with the small assemblage of finds recovered from this deposit, which included a coin of 1723, an 18th-century copper alloy finger ring, a fragment of 17th- to 18th-century pantile and bottle glass of a similar age. Residual finds included single sherds of medieval and medieval/post-medieval pottery and a small fragment from a medieval roof tile. An overlying make-up deposit of well-mixed soil contained fragments of 18th- to 19th-century brick and a 1937 penny - suggesting it related to a much more recent episode of landscape.
The only remains of note were all directly associated with Willow Cottage itself. These included the remnants of a similarly-aligned wall running parallel to the cottage that had probably been part of an outbuilding or boundary wall. A structure formed of very hard and gritty lime-rich mortar partially exposed in the westernmost footings was probably part of a brick vaulted cellar running perpendicular to Willow Cottage. The present owner reported that a separate brick vaulted storage cellar had been discovered during the renovation of the adjacent cottage to the south (known as Cockleshells).
See report (S1) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2021.124).
P. Watkins (HES), 20 December 2022.