Monument record COV 147 - OUTLINE RECORD: Covehithe field walking touching the tide (ACA) FW

Community field-walking was undertaken on a field immediately west of the church in the village of Covehithe in Suffolk. The earliest evidence is a thin scatter of worked flint dating from the Mesolithic period through the Neolithic and into the Bronze Age. Romano-British settlement is hinted at by the volume of pottery found during field-walking, possibly associated with a linear feature which may be a road sited to the north of the survey area. The settlement appears to have been founded in the middle Anglo-Saxon period and grew vigorously in the later Anglo-Saxon period. The settlement was at its peak during the medieval period, and saw little in the way of any decline after the Black Death. In the post-medieval period the community east of the church may have migrated westwards onto the field-walked area in the face of coastal erosion, but by the 19th century settlement west of the church was in decline, thinned out to leave just a couple of cottages. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2015 (S1).