Scheduled Ancient Monument: MOATED SITE AT STUBBING'S ENTRY (30572)

The monument includes a moated site located at the western end of Stubbing's Green, against the parish boundary between Burgate and Botesdale to the north. It is identified as the home of the De Stebbing family who are documented in local records of the 13th century. An early 14th century document refers to `land called Stubbynge' belonging to Bury St Edmund's Abbey. The moat, which contains water, ranges in width from about 5m on the north side to 12.5m on the south and remains open to an average depth of 1.8m, surrounding all but the south western part of a sub-rectangular central area with overall internal dimensions of approximately 117m east-west by 85m. It is thought that the moat continues as a buried feature around the south western part of the enclosure, where the line of the infilled southern half of the western arm is marked by a shallow, east facing scarp. A narrow causeway across the western arm is not an original feature. The central area is divided into two enclosures by an internal extension of the moat approximately 11m wide and originally continuous, which runs northward from the southern arm for a distance of about 50m, with a shorter length of about 15m, offset to the west, running southward from the northern arm. Between the two is an infilled section, marked by a depression about 0.5m deep in the ground surface and shown as still largely open on a map made in 1840. Within the eastern and slightly smaller of the two enclosures is a sub-rectangular pond, connected by a short channel to the eastern arm of the moat and by the dry remains of a partly infilled ditch to the central dividing arm. Basil Brown excavated a small area in the western enclosure in the 1930s and found evidence of medieval occupation in the form of building materials, including roof tile, fragments of medieval pottery, and a layer of oyster shells described as a `pavement' about 0.45m below the present surface. The present house, which is dated in part to the 17th century and Listed Grade II, stands in the south eastern corner of the moated site and is excluded from the scheduling, together with the associated outbuildings, garden walls and paving, a small ornamental pool, the surfaces of modern paths and driveways, inspection chambers, service poles and all modern fence and gate posts, although the ground beneath all these features is included