NHER 69210 (Monument) - Remains of 14th-century chapel and medieval to post-medieval burials within churchyard of St Mary's Church

August-September 2024. Watching Brief.
Monitoring of drainage works to north of St Mary’s Church (NHER 1119).
The catch pits and deeper drainage trenches encountered skeletal remains associated with 23 burials, along with six disarticulated skulls that had been redeposited within the fills of later graves. One skeleton was that of a child and another an adolescent, with the remainder all adults. Although little dating evidence was recovered it is likely that most, if not all, of these burials were of medieval or later date. Although one grave contained a small amount of Late Saxon pottery these sherds were almost certainly residual as the grave also contained iron probable coffin fittings and was seen to be cut from a high level – both suggestive of a late medieval or post-medieval date. Burials were reasonably dense between the church and the eastern boundary of the churchyard but none were encountered within the field to the east (see NHER 31822) – suggesting the churchyard is unlikely to have ever extended beyond its present eastern boundary.
One of the drainage trenches encountered a substantial flint and mortar wall immediately to the north of the church's north chapel. Further stripping exposed elements of the west, north and east walls of a structure interpreted an earlier, larger precursor of the extant north chapel. The exact age of this earlier chapel is uncertain, although it had diagonal buttresses, which were not used prior to the 14th century and wall plaster of probable 14th- or 15th-century date was recovered from associated demolition debris. This suggests it was probably built as part of a substantial remodelling of the church known to have taken place during the 14th century, which saw the construction of the west tower, alterations to the arcades and the re-modelling of the aisle walls. Two rectangular buttresses were later added to support the north wall of this earlier chapel, suggesting that structural problems were potentially the reason for its demolition and replacement with a much smaller structure during the 15th century.
Other finds recovered during this work included additional Late Saxon to medieval pottery sherds, a fragment of fired clay (potentially part of a medieval oven dome), pieces of post-medieval clay tobacco pipe and late post-medieval/modern window glass.
See report (S1) for further details.
An archive associated with this work has been deposited with Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2025.17).
P. Watkins (HES), 3 July 2025.