NHER 69143 (Monument record) - Roman and potentially medieval ditches and undated ditches and pits

October-December 2013. Strip Map and Sample Excavation and Watching Brief.
Monitoring of groundworks associated with installation of new sewer pipeline (Fields H and J).
This site is bisected by an arc of track that represents the original route of Tuttles Lane. Within the area to the east (Field H) the working easement was stripped of topsoil to a depth of 0.40-0.60m. Two machine-dug test holes suggested that this had left little in the way of surviving overburden and as a result a c.2m wide strip down the centre of the easement was fully stripped to the natural geological deposits. This revealed a relatively dense concentration of features between TG 1168 0284 and TG 1176 0284, the majority of which appeared to be ditches. These included two roughly north-to-south aligned features that both contained notable quantities of Roman pottery, along with fragments of animal bone. A group of three adjacent, similarly-aligned ditches to the east potentially represented a later boundary - one producing a small number of medieval pottery sherds. The other ditches were all undated, finds being limited to a potentially prehistoric flint chip and a handmade pottery sherd of possible Iron Age or Early Saxon date. It is though notable that two north-east to south-west aligned features had a markedly different orientation to the dated features. A single undated pit was also recorded during this initial phase of excavation and an additional possible pit was noted during the subsequent excavation of the pipe trench itself.
With the small area enclosure by the track (Field I) the working easement was stripped of topsoil to a depth of 0.40-0.60m. No test holes were dug at this location so the depth of surviving overburden is unknown. Three possible pits were observed during the excavation of this portion of the pipe trench, none of which produced any dating evidence.
Unstratified finds were limited to a small assemblage of prehistoric worked flints, the most notable of which are a Mesolithic/Early Neolithic blade core, Early Neolithic side scrapers and a Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age end scraper. These were all recovered during the excavation of the strip through the eastern portion of the site.
See report (S1) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2017.225).
P. Watkins (HES), 12 May 2025.