SAHS Transactions Vol XLIII
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Staffordshire SampleCounty Studies STAFFORDSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY Staffordshire TRANSACTIONS VOLUME XLIII SampleCounty Studies Stafford 2009 CONTENTS EXCAVATIONS AT DOVE FIRST SCHOOL, ROCESTER, STAFFORDSHIRE, IN 1985 1 StaffordshireI. M. FERRIS SAXON BURH AND ROYAL CASTLE: RE-THINKING EARLY URBAN SPACE IN STAFFORD 39 RICHARD CUTTLER, JOHN HUNT, and STEPHANIE RATKAI EXCAVATIONS ON THE SITE OF THE INFIRMARY OF BURTON ABBEY, NOW THE ABBEY INN, BURTON-UPON-TRENT, 2006 86 C. HEALEY, with C. HOWARD-DAVIS and A. BATES WREN, PEARCE, AND ST MARY'S: INGESTRE PARISH CHURCH AND ITS ROOFS 101 BOB MEESON OFFICERS 127 SampleCounty Studies V LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES, AND PLATES StaffordshireDOVE FIRST SCHOOL, ROCESTER Fig. 1 Location map of Rocester 2 Fig. 2 Local plan of Dove First School trench 3 Fig. 3 North and south facing sections 4 Fig. 4 Plans of Phase 1 and Phases 2/3 6 Fig. 5 Plans of Phase 5 and Phase 7 7 Fig. 6 Plan of Phase 9 8 Fig. 7 Samian pottery and graffiti 12 Fig. 8 Coarse pottery and mortaria 18 Fig. 9 Objects of copper alloy 24 Fig. 10 Objects of lead, glass vessels, glass, and flints 26 Fig. 11 Objects of iron 29 Table 1 Quantification of pottery assemblage by sherd count 15 Table 2 Animal bones: minimum number of animals by Phase 31 Table 3 Animal bones: anatomicaSamplel distributioCountyn by Phase 32 SAXON BURH and ROYAL CASTLE Fig. 1 Site location 40 Fig. 2 Possible routes of early and medieval defences 42 Fig. 3 Castle area from plan of c. 1600 46 Fig. 4 Speed's Plan of Stafford (1610) 46 Fig. 5 Excavation area Studies47 Fig. 6 Phases of archaeological activity 50 Fig. 7 Sections across Anglo-Saxon and medieval ditches (1 and 2) 51 Fig. 8 Phase 1 pottery: 10th to 11th centuries 58 Fig. 9 Early Phase 2 pottery: late 11th to early 13th centuries 59 Fig. 10 Later Phase 2 pottery: late 13th century 60 Fig. 11 Phase 3 pottery from pit F114 61 Fig. 12 Plant remains from ditch F126 (1000) 71 Fig. 13 Reconstruction of Saxon defences at Tamworth 75 Fig. 14 Anglo-Saxon Tamworth 77 Table 1 Fabric type series 55 Table 2 Post-medieval and modern pottery 56 Table 3 Results of slag residue analysis 65 Table 4 Animal bone 68 Table 5 Comparison of taxa 70 Table 6 Biometric data from pig and cattle astralagus 71 Table 7 Charred plant remains from ditch F126 (1000) 72 Plate 1 Site during excavation, facing north-east 41 VI Plate 2 Site during excavation, facing north 41 Plate 3 Composite of photographs from Section 1, facing north-east 52 Plate 4 Glass bead from ditch F126 64 Plate 5 Possible iron tap slag from ditch F126 65 Plate 6 Reconstructed skull from F136 66 Plate 7 Extraneous bone growth on cattle metatarsal from F1093 66 PlatStaffordshiree 8 Fragment of worked bone from ditc h F126 67 BURTON ABBEY INFIRMARY EXCAVATIONS Fig. 1 Location map 87 Fig. 2 Plan of Abbey Inn grounds 89 Fig. 3 Plan of Phase 1 features 92 Fig. 4 Sections in sondage 94 Table 1 Number of species by phase 98 Plate 1 Sandstone pier-base (193) facing west 93 Plate 2 Sandstone pier-base (101) facing south 93 SampleCounty WREN, PEARCE, AND ST MARY'S Fig. 1 Detail of nave ceiling 102 Fig. 2 Burghers' 1686 print of Ingestre hall and church 102 Fig. 3 Plan of church set against 5 feet interval grid 104 Fig. 4 Section of nave and aisles 104 Fig. 5 Drawing of 'Mr Chetwin's Tower' 106 Fig. 6 Axonometric drawing of nave roof timbers 112 Fig. 7 Plan of nave ceiling timbers 113 Fig. 8 Nave and chancel: eaves and cornice details Studies114 Fig. 9 Section of south aisle roof, as found and as built 114 Fig. 10 South aisle roof: rafters, ceiling joists 115 Fig. 11 South aisle roof details 116 Fig. 12 Arch-tie trusses over chancel 118 Fig. 13 Axonometric drawing of chancel roof 119 Fig. 14 Chancel truss 3: details of scarf joint fixings 120 Fig. 15 North end of tie-bar in chancel east wall 120 Fig. 16 South end of tie-bar in chancel east wall 120 Fig. 17 Buckler's 1841 drawing of nave 121 Fig. 18 Partial reconstruction of original seating plan 122 Table 1 Pearce's building contracts, 1668-90 109 1 EXCAVATIONS AT DOVE FIRST SCHOOL, ROCESTER, STAFFORDSHIRE, IN 1985 I. M. FERRIS with contributions by L. Barfield, B. Burrows, S. Butler, C. Cane, H. E. M. Cool, B. Dickinson, StaffordshireA. S. Esmonde Cleary, R. Ferguson, G. Grainger, D. Mackreth, J. G. McDonnell, J. Price, M. Reid, R. S. O. Tomlin, and G. Webster INTRODUCTION The village of Rocester in north-east Staffordshire (SK 111395) lies between the rivers Churnet and Dove, three miles to the north of Uttoxeter (Fig. 1). In 1985 the University of Birmingham, in collaboration with various other bodies, began a large-scale rescue and research excavation at the New Cemetery, Church Lane, which was completed in 1987 (Esmonde Cleary and Ferris 1996). During the lifetime of this project building work elsewhere in the village allowed further small-scale investigations to take place at Rocester Football Club and, most importantly, at Dove First School in Dove Lane (Figs. 1 and 2). Extensions to the school building, the provision of a new kitchen, and the digging of service trenches posed a possible threat to known archaeological deposits here and it was consequently decided that the needs of the archaeologists and the builders would best be met by limited trenching to evaluate the nature and depth of surviving deposits and subsequently by a watching brief during the building work. The excavation was carried out by a team of work• ers from the Staffordshire County Council Community Programme Agency under the direction of James Symonds and later LeSamples Watson. County The results of the work at Dove First School are here reported in summary form only, as part of a broader exercise to publish details of all excavations to have taken place in Rocester between 1985 and 2002. The full excavation and post-excavation record, along with the finds, is deposited at the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent. PREVIOUS WORK AT DOVE FIRST SCHOOL Stray finds, comprising a large quantity of broken tesserae and pottery, were reported by the anti• quary Francis Redfem as having been dug up at the school in the 1850s (Redfern 1865, 356), while archaeological investigations of a sort, in that 'a trench was made across theStudies playground', took place in 1913 under the supervision of a Mr Cartwright (Barns 1914, 4). This latter work was not pub• lished and no records are traceable, although one or two potsherds from the school site are in the collection of the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, along with a fine Roman copper alloy mount in the form of a lion's head (Ferris 1990). THE EXCAVATED SEQUENCE by I. M. Ferris THE 1985 EXCAVATION A trench, aligned roughly east-west and measuring 16.6m. by 2.5m., was laid out to the north of the old school kitchens (Fig. 2), initial deturfing in selected lm. squares having identified the presence, at the east end of the trench, of the expected late Roman clay rampart previously encoun• tered during excavations in the New Cemetery. Deposits were then excavated by hand down to the natural at a depth of approximately 1.6 metres below the present day ground surface. The sequence was recorded both in plan and in section (Fig. 3) and has been subsequently divided into thirteen phases. Individual layers or contexts were numbered in continuous sequence from 1000, features from F500; the numbering system is consistent in the site records, the archive, and in this report. Phase 1 (Fig. 4) The natural subsoil of the site was a mixture of orange, ginger and pale yellow sands, and grav• els (1113, 1252), forming part of the flood plain of the River Dove, only some 50-60m. away to the east. It is likely that an artificial terrace had been cut into the gravels, for it is otherwise difficult 2 EXCAVATIONS AT DOVE FIRST SCHOOL, ROCESTER, STAFFORDSHIRE, IN 1985 Staffordshire SampleCounty Studies Fig. 1 Location map to account for the difference in levels between the eastern end of the trench and the central and western parts. This had either led to, or been accompanied by, the removal of turf over the whole area; in the east archaeological deposits overlay the natural gravel, while in the west infilling in the hollow left by the cutting of the terrace was directly over exposed gravels. Although the natural gravel was in places penetrated by the bases of features cut from a higher level, there were no hollows or disturbances cut directly into the natural that would suggest the one- EXCAVATIONS AT DOVE FIRST SCHOOL, ROCESTER, STAFFORDSHIRE, IN 1985 35 It was possible to compare the contexts uncovered in the 1998 evaluation with the deposits which were described in the excavation which took place in 1985/6. Here were defined thirteen phases of activity: Phases 1-4 represented Roman military activity, Phases 5-7 subsequent Roman civilian activity, Phases 8-9 Saxon and medieval activity, Phases 10-11 early post-medieval activity, and Phases 12-13 19th- and 20th-century usage of the area, most recently, before the building and exten• sion of the school, as allotments. In the 1998 evaluation trench the very dark grey-brown loamy clay soil, context 1003, can be likened to the texture and composition of the allotment soil which overlay and sealed the top of the archaeological sequence along the entire length of the earlier trench.