Monument record ISL 038 - Medieval features and post medieval surface Land West of Halesworth Road, Ilketshall St Lawrence, Suffolk (BRIT ARCH) EVAL

Evaluation revealed surviving medieval activity within the W portion of the site; this activity may have extended across the site, but has been truncated by later post-medieval and modern disturbance in the E portion of the site. Multiple ditches and gullies on a N–S alignment and a single pit represent the earliest phase of activity, dating from the 11th–14th centuries. The second phase found dates to the 15th–16th centuries and is represented by a metaled surface. This surface overlays a gully and ditch, which seemed to represent a reworking of the area in the late medieval/early post-medieval period (S1).

2024: Archaeological excavation which investigated the medieval remains in Trenches 2 and 3 of the evaluation. Apart from artefactual evidence for Roman activity in the vicinity, in the form of a single sherd of Roman pottery and fragments of Roman tile and brick recovered from later features, the archaeology revealed in the excavation area dated almost solely to the medieval period. This medieval activity initially consisted of a rectilinear agricultural ditch system, demarcating a trackway and associated enclosures and fields, with three small pits located in one of the enclosures. The remains are probably peripheral to a small farming settlement that was once located in fields to the south of the site. Pottery recovered from these features dates them to the late 12th to early 14th century. By the 14th century the ditches had silted up, with the trackway probably now bordered by established hedgerows. The presence of hedgerows along either side of the trackway is suggested by the linear arrangement of clay extraction pits that were dug along either side of the trackway but respected its border. The clay extraction pits were dug in the 14th century, the clay probably being used to manufacture local coarseware pottery or for building purposes. The trackway remained in use at this time as the strip of ground between the clay pits was roughly metalled with flint cobbles and gravel, which contained sherds of 14th and 15th-century pottery and fragments of quernstone. Towards the end of the medieval or early in the post-medieval period the trackway fell out of use, the hollows left by the digging of the clay pits silted up or were infilled and the land became farmland. Much of the site remained farmland until its recent allocation for residential development, although the eastern edge fronting on to Halesworth Road was developed for housing in the 1950s, with a row of cottages, now demolished, occupying the road frontage. Modern brick rubble in a large pit in the south-east corner of the site probably derives from these former buildings (S2).