Church Meadow Project, Ewell,

Excavation 2013

The second season of excavation took place in Church Meadow, Ewell in July supported by a grant from CBA Challenge Fund, together with funding from & Ewell History & Archaeology Society, and Surrey Archaeological Society. The site is owned by St. Mary’s Church and excavation is taking place over several seasons on a 10m wide strip, which has been consecrated in preparation for burials when the strip is incorporated into the adjacent graveyard. Any archaeological evidence will either be destroyed by grave digging or will be inaccessible because of burials. The site is to the north-eastern extent of the Roman settlement alongside Stane Street, the Roman road, which ran between and .

This season, last year’s 30m x 10m trench was re-opened to further investigate previously identified pits, ditches and gullies, and extended by 30m. A large pit found last year was found to overlie two Roman wells, and another pit lined on one side by the remains of an amphora revealed an earlier lining of chalk, flint and mortar. In 2012 an episode of steam ploughing was found to have removed all the above Roman ground level structures; this season a 20m section was seen to be devoid of archaeology, either above or below the Roman ground surface, although much Roman pottery was retrieved. Across the trench two hundred Roman coins were recovered together with brooches and an intaglio ring. The Roman pottery included fine imports such as samian and eggshell terra nigra. A linear flint feature was identified on the proposed alignment of Stane Street but excavation showed the flint had been turned over by the plough. This may be all that remains of the road but archaeology elsewhere in the trench appears to respect the alignment. Beneath the churned flint feature was a 4th century steep sided pit and this area will be further investigated next season. These are just a few of the archaeological highlights – if you want to know more go to the CME13 Dig Diary http://www.epsomewellhistory.org.uk/#/cme- 2013/4577853304

The grant from CBA enabled us to 1. hire equipment to ensure the safety of the site, equipment and archaeology 2. provide site facilities to improve the conditions for volunteers 3. hire equipment to enable environmental sampling. The site is in the middle of a built-up area and is at risk from vandalism. Fencing was hired to surround the tent compound and scaffold boards were also hired to enable volunteers to access the trench safely. Portaloos were hired to provide on-site facilities for the 70 volunteers who were on site over the three weeks. Part of the project’s remit is to retrieve environmental evidence and this year we concentrated on taking and processing bulk samples from the Roman ditches and pits. Whilst we had initially anticipated having to hire an environmental flotation tank, we were kindly lent one by Surrey County Archaeological Unit. However, because the site had no running water it was necessary to use a petrol pump to circulate water between holding tanks and this was enabled by part of the CF grant. During the dig an environmental course was run, training volunteers to take and process samples. The volunteers will be able to use these skills on other sites and the information from the samples will feed into the final report, and may give us information about the environment and activities within the Roman settlement.

The Church Meadow Project would like to thank CBA for its support.