Monument record IPS 616 - Land South of railway line, Westerfield Road, Ipswich.

2010: Evaluation:

Prehistoric.
Loose Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age flints may indicate some activity here in those periods. Two groups of parallel Middle Iron Age ditches (spaced 4-5m apart) formed arable field patterns in two areas. Two groups of Iron Age pottery and two curvilinear gullies (buildings?) indicate contemporary settlement.

Roman.
Roman sherds in field ditches indicate a continuity of a small part of the Iron Age field system into the early Roman period. Roman pottery and ditches may mark indicate a small settlement. Fragments of roof tile and a tessera show that there was a high-status Roman building somewhere in the vicinity (beyond this site).

Medieval.
Two areas of medieval ditches in broadly in the same locations as the Iron Age ditches show medieval arable here. Associated settlements (low-status rural?) are indicated by pits and ditches.

Post Medieval.
The principal post-medieval and modern remains were a small enclosure with a small brick building, and field ditches (some shown on the OS as late as 1904, but since removed). Other remains consisted of 500m of WWII anti-tank trap and a gun pit, a waste pit associated with the former and adjacent 19th-century brickworks (S1).
Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2010 (S2).

A desk based assessment was undertaken in 50 hectares of farmland to the north of Ipswich for a residential development. This identified archaeological remains of local to regional significance with possible settlement activity at the sites, with a potential to be the location of a medieval fair. Several further features were identified possibly dating to the prehistoric and Roman periods (S3).