Monument record NYW 036 - Nayland

Medieval town of Nayland, defined from historic maps and locations of listed buildings.
1227/28, market and fair (S2).
After Hodskinson's map of 1783 (S2).
Test pitting identified pottery dating from the Roman, Saxon, medieval and post-medieval periods (S3).

Nayland today is an elongated nucleated settlement arranged parallel with the River Stour, along the B1087, just E of the main A134 road connecting Colchester and Sudbury. Today, the older core lies close to the river, including a small number of houses on an island in the Stour, clustered around St James’ Church, whose fabric dates to the 14th century. Newer estates are located along the N side of the river valley and in the E extremity of the village. Nayland parish has over 100 listed buildings including many timber-framed structures dating back to the 13th-16th centuries. These are concentrated in Nayland village itself, with a scattering across the rest of the modern parish. The medieval site of Court Knoll lies in the SE of the village. This appears to have been a manorial site from the later 11th century onwards (Everett and Anderson 2001; Halliday et al. 2003). Field walking and excavation here in the 1920s revealed large quantities of Roman tile re-used as foundations for a manor building, and although virtually none of the pottery found at the site pre-dated the later medieval period, documentary evidence, pottery finds and geophysical survey of building features confirm the presence of buildings on the site from the 14th century onwards.
Thirty-four test pits were excavated (www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/nayland.html). The earliest material recovered was two sherds of Roman-British pottery from NAY/12/1 (close to the A134 bypass) and ten from the opposite end of the village over 1km to the E (NAY/12/15, NAY/12/17 and NAY/12/18). This is suggestive of two separate areas of activity at this time, with the easterly cluster in particular considered likely to derive from settlement in the vicinity.
Very little archaeological evidence for Anglo-Saxon settlement was recovered from the test pits excavated in 2012, suggesting the area of the modern village was mostly unused for settlement until around the beginning of the 12th century. While it has previously been suggested that there may have been an Anglo Saxon settlement on Court Knoll and in the vicinity of present-day Nayland (e.g. Halliday et al. 2003), the test pit excavations in the village produced no evidence to support this. The evidence from the test pit excavations suggests that the pre-Domesday population was not concentrated into a nucleated village in this area at this time. It is interesting to note that a series of test pits excavated in 2012 in neighbouring Stoke-by-Nayland (see report below) also produced Roman-era and high/late medieval sherds but no Anglo-Saxon pottery, suggesting a very similar pattern to that seen in Nayland. This suggests that the population in Stoke-by-Nayland was also probably dispersed in the Anglo-Saxon period rather than clustered in a nucleated village at the site of the present-day settlement.
A large volume of pottery of high medieval date was recovered from the test pits and is indicative of a nucleated settlement centred around Birch Street, Fen Street, Mill Street, High Street and the E end of Bear Street. Test pits NAY/12/13, NAY/12/14, NAY/12/25 and NAY/12/34 revealed evidence for recent disturbance, and the pottery distributions and finds from these pits are unlikely to be representative of the history of activity at the sites. Interestingly these test pits represent four of just six test pits from the central village area that did not produce sherds of high medieval pottery, contrasting sharply with the seventeen pits in this area that did.
By contrast, the W part of the village produced hardly any evidence of human activity prior to the 15th century. The lack of 12th-14th century pottery in pits NAY/12/06, NAY/12/08 and NAY/12/25 may also imply that the houses between Bear Street and Mill Stream were a later addition to the settlement arranged N of the road, which all have better evidence for occupation during this period. It thus appears that this W arm of the village appeared during a secondary phase of village expansion and development.
Perhaps the most striking observations to come from the test pits is the very large quantity of later medieval pottery recovered. It is clear that Nayland grew significantly in size and in intensity of occupation. This is in marked contrast to the pattern observed in most settlements within which test pit excavations have taken place as part of the University of Cambridge CORS project (Lewis in preparation), around 90% of which display contraction in the later medieval period (mid 14th – mid 16th century), mostly of some severity. Nayland clearly bucks this trend, with 76% of the excavated pits producing at least a couple of sherds of this date, considerably higher than the regional average (ibid.). Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2012 (S4).

2014: This followed on from the highly successful community test pit dig in Nayland in 2012 when 34 test pits were excavated across the village as part of the Heritage Lottery Funded Managing a Masterpiece project. The 2014 test pits were widely distributed across the village and bought the total number excavated in Nayland to 50. The results supported the earlier work in indicating little evidence for settlement on the site of the present village prior to the 12th century. Only a small number of pits have produced pottery of late Anglo Saxon date and the location of these suggests that a small settlement may have been tightly clustered around the church. In contrast a large amount of medieval pottery was recorded from a large number of the test pits, suggesting that the village was thriving in the high medieval period when it was a sizable nucleated settlement, extending between Court Knoll to the south and Stoke Road to the north. Small amounts of medieval pottery were found in pits west along Bear Street, suggesting that there was a scatter of occupation following the River Stour. The volumes of later medieval pottery recovered indicates that the settlement was not adversely affected by the Black Death, being one of less than 10% of settlements in eastern England included to date in the CORS project to expand in the period after the mid-14th century AD. Additional Roman activity was recorded in the east of the village, along Court Street and Newlands Lane. The presence of a single sherd of Iron Age pottery found from Alston Court also gives the first indication of prehistoric activity in Nayland. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2014 (S5). Full report to follow.