Monument record BRR 054 - Roman farmstead features at Land Adjacent to The Green

April 2013: Phase one of the archaeological evaluation on the site revealed ditches located to the east of the site that contained artefacts of Romano-British date. These ditches have been interpreted as serving a dual purpose as boundary and drainage ditches. The ditches contained occurrences of daub, faunal remains, charcoal and a small quantity of ceramics. One of the ditches revealed lava quern and charred grains of oats, barley and wheat recovered by environmental sampling suggesting cereal production occurred at the site. These features may represent the remains of an agrarian settlement, possibly a small farmstead in the area. A single sherd of Middle to Late Iron Age pottery may indicate earlier activity on the site. The only other feature of archaeological interest was a ditch of Late Medieval to Post Medieval date (S1).

September 2013: Phase two of the archaeological evaluation revealed possible structural remains dated to the Middle to Late Iron Age in one of the three trenches (S2).

September 2013: An archaeological excavation was conducted on the area to the east of the site that revealed Romano-British features during the earlier evaluation trenching. The excavation revealed three ditches that were set out during the Late Iron Age to early Roman period. The excavation revealed two possible post holes or pits that may be date to the same period as the ditches. It is believed that these Romano-British features may indicate the periphery of a small farmstead that went out of use during the 2nd century AD. The debris of settlement activity in the eastern end of one of the ditches suggests that the focus of activity may lie in this direction, but likely outside of the development area. Pottery evidence suggests that human activity on the site proceeded the Roman period by several centuries (S2).

Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2013 (S4)