Site Event/Activity record ESF20809 - Monitoring - Waterwood Cottage, Abbey Road, Butley

Monitoring of groundworks for a new dwelling at Waterwood Cottage, Butley, was carried out as a condition of the planning consent in order to record any archaeological evidence revealed. Strip foundations revealed no archaeological interventions but one sherd of medieval pottery was recovered as an unstratified find whilst various examples of worked masonry were found amongst the cottage demolition rubble. The first visit followed the demolition of the existing cottage and associated buildings, whilst the site was being scraped of vegetation and topsoil. Groundworks didn’t impact below the topsoil layer. The second visit was to monitor the excavation of shallow ground beams which measured 0.5m wide and 0.6m deep. Topsoil was 0.2m dark brown loamy sandy with root disturbance. This overlay subsoil, a dark greyish brown slightly humic sand, 0.2m thick in the southern part of the site, increasing 0.4m thick in the north. A fairly homogenous layer, very infrequent small stone and no artefactual evidence recovered. A clean, yellow sand natural subsoil was seen underneath (S1).