Site Event/Activity record ESF14850 - Excavation, Lackford Bridge Quarry 1978-79

Excavation by SAU (Elmhirst L) 1978-1979 The rescue excavation, c. 2,160m2 in extent, was carried out in advance of sand and gravel extraction at Lackford Bridge Quarry, operated by Amey Roadstone Corporation. The quarry was not the subject of any planning conditions and the excavation took place under the auspices of the Youth Opportunity Programme. The quarry has been now closed for some years and the location of the site, part of a fishing lake created after extraction finished, lies within West Stow County Park, which is owned by St Edmundsbury Borough Council. The conditions of excavation at Lackford Bridge Quarry were far from ideal. The site was stripped by the quarry machine, a front-loading Drott, which was entirely unsuitable for archaeological work. There was a thin buried soil across the site below a deposit of blown sand, of unrecorded depth but at least c. 0.30 – 0.40m deep based the photographs of the site, which indicates a high level of feature preservation. However, this was churned and obscured by the machine tracks and it was rapidly shovelled away to expose the features cut in the natural. Limited post-excavation analysis was undertaken after the excavation in 1979. The assessment of the archive, which forms the basis of this report, was undertaken in 2006 (S1).