Monument record IPS 468 - Former Railway Depot, Ipswich.

In 1845 work commenced on the Ipswich to Bury St Edmunds railway line, and a temporary railway station was built at the Croft Street end of the site in 1846, which remained in use until 1860 and was demolished by 1884. A map of 1849 shows two additional depot buildings, with additional buildings and extensive railway sidings added by 1884. The railway depot was substantially expanded between 1884 and 1927, with further modifications between 1927 and 1968, although the two railway depots of 1849 still survived at this time. One of the 1849 depots was demolished in 2003 (S1).

1919: Excavation by Nina Layard, Faunal remains found, also a levallois core (Wymer suggests possibly neolithic) and scrapers, (S5-S7).

1975: Excavation by Wymer, animal remains and flint flakes found. Excavation by Wymer, more than one mammoth, mainly one animal with two feet stuck in silt. No signs of butchery, probably drowned. Other animals reported included red deer, horse, wolf, bird, fish and rodents. Sediments deposited by equivalent of Orwell during Ipswichian interglacial, circa 110,000 to 80,000 BP. Bone bed may be due to a meander banked against a cliff of Reading and London clay, which prevented animals escaping at times of flood, (S5).

1977: Excavation by Markham (IPSMG) on the same site as Wymer's 1975 Excavation, (S5, S8).

2004: A desk-based assessment was undertaken in advance of proposals to redevelop the former railway depot, (S1).

2005: Evaluation and Environmental Investigation, 19th century pit and animal bones, (S2, S3).

2005: Monitoring of groundworks, no finds or features, (S4).

2006: Monitoring of groundworks, no finds or features, (S4).

2005: A 4.6 ha area of former railway land to the south of Croft Street was evaluated in advance of a housing development. The primary aim to assess the survival of the Stoke Bone Bed, an important Pleistocene deposit rich in mammalian remains that was first identified when Stoke Tunnel was excavated c.1846 (Wymer 1985, 227-36).
The excavation of sixteen test-pits and three larger boxes failed to identify the bone bed. Results suggest that the layer did originally extend at least some way into the survey area but had been truncated by major excavations in the mid 19th century associated with the construction of the railway tunnel and the first Ipswich Station. A few fragments of bone were recovered from the backfill of a large pit, this feature almost certainly the result of aggregate extraction associated with the railway construction works.
Geological strata encountered in the test-excavations were recorded and sampled for future specialist study with a view to identifying the climatic conditions under which they were deposited and thereby linking them with the known geological sequence in the vicinity of the site.
Results from two of the test-holes proved that while the majority of the site had suffered truncation during the railway excavations, there was on its south-east side an area which had been built up with a buried soil horizon preserved at a depth of c.0.8 metres. As a consequence, there is in this area a potential for incised archaeological features of later prehistoric to post-medieval date to be preserved
Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2005 (S10).