Monument record BTM 091 - Possible Roman quarry pits, Land rear of 21 Mildenhall Road

The evaluation established that the site had been extensively quarried for chalk, with large quarry pits identified in four of the trenches. The date of the quarry pits is uncertain, but a Roman hobnail was recovered from near the surface of one of the pits. Hobnails are often found in Roman burials and a Roman cremation burial had been discovered during the construction of a nearby garden pond in the 1950s. It is therefore possible that the hobnail comes from a late Roman inhumation burial that was disturbed when the quarry pits, or others nearby, were excavated sometime after the Roman period and that it was then incorporate into the backfill of the pit. Other than the hobnail, other finds from the quarry pits included five pieces of hard daub and five fragments of animal bone. Apart from the evidence for quarrying, only one other feature was identified, a small ditch that probably formed a sub-division of the existing plot (S1).