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ii66 144 la COUNCIL FOR BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY REGIONAL GROUP 9 (Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire) NEWSLETTER No.13 1983. SOUTH MIDLANDS ARCHAEOLOGY Editor: David Hall, Chairman: John Steane, Dept. of Archaeology, City & County Museum, University of Cambridge. Woodstock. lion.Sec.: Martin Petchey, Hon.Treas.: Dr. R.P. Hagerty, Milton Keynes Development 65 Camborne Avenue, 'Corporation, Aylesbury, Bradwell Abbey Field Centre, Bucks. HP21 7UE Bradwell, MILTON KEYNES. CONTENTS: Page EDITORIAL .. .. 1 BEDFORDSHIRE 2 BUCKINGHAMSHIRE .. .. 10 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 15 UNITS AND INSTITUTIONS 42 Oxford University Department for External Studies , Rewley House, 3-7 Wellington Square, Oxford. ISBN 0308-2067 1 EDITORIAL After some delays it is with pleasure that the Executive Council present this volume of the Annual Newsletter. You will see that the title has been changed; we felt that although called a 'newsletter' the scope and content of our annual activities were much more like a journal than the name indicated, and altered the title accordingly. We hope that the changes will represent the beginning of a new era, rather than the end of an old one. Oxford University Department for External Studies, which has financed and produced all previous volumes of the Newsletter, will no longer be able to do so. This edition is the last that can be so financed, and Executive is grateful for all the help that.it has had over the years since the first issue in 1970, and for a generous gift of all the back numbers. We are now on our own. If members wish the Newsletter to continue and fulfil the useful task of promptly informing everyone about the latest work, then marathon efforts need to be made to sell copies. Members of the Executive will be mounting a sales and publicity campaign, but we shall need vigorous efforts from members. In order to produce a Journal next year, in the present format and size, we need to double the circulation hitherto achieved! The layout is the same as recent issues, being by county, followed by the larger sections from some of the professional bodies. David Hall June 1983. 2 BEDFORDSH I RE SEAS-AND OPPORTUNITIES 500-1500: SQUALLS AND CURRENTS - David Baker for Bedfordshire County Council. In CBA Group 9 Newsletter 12 (1982) 12-21, David Kennett reviewed eight areas of archaeological research in the post-Roman and medieval periods. This note continues discussion of local priorities in research and rescue work from the viewpoint of Bedfordshire County Council, using his headings. As the rescue archaeology unit for the county, the County Council (together with North Bedfordshire Borough Council's Museum) commands the lion's share of resources for fieldwork, so some account of stewardship is desirable. At the outset, the limitations upon 'public' archaeology should be stated. Public funds are made available, not simply to "exploit" the County's archaeology. The primary aim is to locate what is preservable or recordable, and excavate or otherwise record worthwhile sites and features in advance of unavoidable destruction. The threats which identify possible site projects take no account of local or national research priorities; these can be brought to bear only at the stage when a selection has to be made from amongst these threatened sites. In the context of an official responsibility for passing on records of destroyed evidence to the future, research upon safely stored museum collections of artefacts necessarily has a low priority. THE ANGLO-SAXONS: Fieldwalking of the kind undertaken, notably by David Hall in the north-west of Bedfordshire, can locate scatters of early Saxon pottery, though the sherds can be extremely difficult to see. Excavation of such insubstantial traces may not greatly illumine problems about the nature of the settlement pattern and how it evolved into that which can be partly reconstructed for the later Saxon and medieval periods. The approach needs to be two-pronged: a backward extrapolation from the medieval landscape must be combined with selective fieldwalking and the observation of ground disturbances; only then will there be sufficient data to develop hypotheses and test any perceived patterns by means of selective excavation. THE LATER ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD: The identification of Danish earthworks in Bedfordshire remains unsubstantiated. Excavations at Willington 'Docks' in 1973 produced medieval evidence only. The so-called 'docks' are more likely to have been produced by the effect of gravel extraction upon medieval manorial fishponds. The subject has been treated further in 'Mottes, Moats and Ringworks in Bedford- shire' in Chateau-Gaillard IX-X 1982 35-54 by this writer. URBAN ORIGINS: Questions of urban origins and development are difficult to ask, let alone answer when the town insists on thriving over the site up to the present day. Work on over 35 sites in Bedford between 1967 and 1977, following rescue opportunities, could produce only a very tentative picture which is summarised at the end of the monograph report (Beds Archae J 13 1979 294-298). Experience showed that relatively little information could be gained from single-site 3 excavations without some clearly defined question to be asked: the answer to 'what survives of whatever was there?' usually tended to consist of rather anonymous pit fills and severely battered foundations not actually adding up to a single structure or a building sequence. For the County Council the Bedfordshire research priority had, in the 1970s, to be the County town, with its problems of pre-Conquest origins and its medieval castle, whose site is at present mainly surface car parks awaiting redevelopment. Redevelopment in both Biggleswade and Leighton Buzzard predated the formation of rescue archaeology units, as did most of the redevelopment in Luton. 4. MONASTIC SITES: The medieval religious houses of Bedfordshire have received attention at the hands of excavators not so much as part of a deliberate campaign of local investigation, but more because they represent a prominent and vulnerable class of site. The exception was the writer's work at Elstow Abbey between 1965 and 1972, on an otherwise unthreatened site. Begun as a research project in pre- rescue days, it was immediately halted when his official duties began in the employ of the County Council. Post-excavation work on Elstow has had to take second place to work on nationally-funded rescue projects, but it is hoped to produce the final report within three years. The Warden Abbey project of 1974 was deliberately and self-denyingly confined to those small areas affected by the Landmark Trust's conversion of the ruined building. The discovery of a second tiled floor of European significance was a bonus on top of the necessary rescue of the deteriorating floor first found in 1962. The report which has involved a complex and pioneering methodology for the analysis of medieval floor tiles, will be completed in 1983. Grove Priory, which is still under excavation, was chosen for investigation because of planning permission for a sand-quarry given before the County Council acquired archaeological advice. Another site, Newnham Priory, just east of Bedford, may require work on account of preliminary proposals for redevelopment. There is no direct evidence that this Augustinian house is anything special nationally, but its local associations with Bedford are such that it would be difficult to walk away without at least investigating the state of preservation of the buried remains and devising appropriate excavation strategies. 5. CASTLES: Systematic investigation is hardly the right term to use for castellological excavations in Bedfordshire. Work on Bedford Castle in the 1970s was the first part of a comprehensive but opportunistic campaign in advance of development. Ironically, work the invalidated earlier reconstructions of the castle without managing to put something more definite in their place. The excavations at Thurleigh and Cainhoe Castles were both small rescue projects dealing with threats to land on the margins of the monuments. Neither was able to add much to our knowledge of the particular castle. During the later'1970s nearly all the major Bedfordshire castle earthwork sites were the subject of fieldwork investigation, with the assistance of the Royal Commission's Cambridge Office. Plans have been drawn from detailed ground surveys and it is hoped to publish them in forthcoming parts of the 'Survey of Bedfordshire' series. 4 MOATED SITES: Medieval moated sites have been assessed as part of the Bedfordshire Parish Survey Programme. Some of the more elaborate complexes have been drawn analytically in the field. In the course of this work, several of the sites shown provisionally on the map with the Willington excavations report have been disproved and some others have been added. For the purposes of guardianship, rather than excavation, the County Council have acquired one of the best sites, Gannock's Castle near Tempsford. It would indeed be desirable to excavate one of the better examples in order to throw light on local variations of the type, but this would need to be done in a rescue context, with the coincidence of unstoppable threat with worthwhile site. VILLAGES: The nature and progress of the Rapid Parish Survey Programme have been reported several times in these pages, and the kind of work undertaken will be clear from the account of Eggington in the 1982 Newsletter. The essays summarising questions of village planning and development (amongst other matters) are available for consultation in the Bedfordshire County Record Office as well as in the Planning Department in County Hall. Some will be published as either leaflets or as more extensive studies in the 'SUrvey of Bedford- shire''series. The priority is however held to be the completion of the Rapid Survey and the bringing of the Sites and Monuments Record up to a consistent standard while money and staff are available.