Berkshire Archaeology News 2020

NEWSLETTER 2020 Welcome to Berkshire Archaeology’s 2020 BERKSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGY newsletter. Our cover image is of a particularly fine, near- complete Samian bowl found north-west of Arborfield Welcome to our new edititon of Berkshire Archaeology News Court, along the route of the Arborfield Cross Relief Road. This fine, highly decorated vessel was found, broken, in a shallow ditch investigated as part of archaeological excavations in advance of road construction. The Samian bowl was found amongst a deliberate dump of a large quantity of other Roman pottery. The other pottery was mostly locally-produced greyware but which was also highly fragmented. Curiously the area investigated contained mostly the remains of a Late Iron Age farm. You can read more about this Iron Age site on Page 11. Why was there such a large dump of Roman pottery in a ditch on Near complete Samian bowl found along the route of the Arborfield this site? It was thought that Cross Relief Road © Wessex Archaeology the greyware pottery may have been made locally and remains a fine and beautiful We hope you enjoy our this was therefore a dump object, even after it was latest newsletter. of poorly-fired pottery that buried nearly two thousand years ago near Arborfield. BERKSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGY was unusable and unsaleable. BERKSHIRE RECORD OFFICE Our newsletter contains news However, none of the 9 COLEY AVENUE material showed any sign of of other interesting recent READING warping, fracturing or spalling, discoveries in east Berkshire. RG1 6AF which might have caused You can always find out more about the archaeology E. [email protected] a potter to have rejected T. 0118 937 5976 it. Despite its fragmentary of your area by visiting the state, the Samian bowl Heritage Gateway website www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway 2 Prehistoric Boundaries and an Unusual Building between Slough and Datchet The Myrke is a small outlying settlement in the former parish of Upton, now part of Slough. It sits on the former road to Datchet before the arrival of the M4 saw the Datchet Road diverted to the east. Until the early 20th-century, the settlement was called ‘Mirk’. Perhaps the change in spelling was to provide the residents with a more enigmatic name to the less flattering similarity to ‘murk’ or ‘murky’. The name may actually derive from the Old English ‘mearc’, meaning boundary, as the settlement lies on the boundary between the former parish of Upton (now Slough) and Eton. The long history of settlement in the area was recently demonstrated by archaeological investigations in advance of the construction of a temporary compound for the M4 Smart Motorway improvements. In the triangle of land just east of The Myrke and Datchet Road, Oxford Archaeology, on behalf of Highways England and Balfour Beatty Vinci JV, found a series of repeatedly re-dug ditches running across the site. The earliest may date from the late second millennium BC (around 1,100 BC) and the ditches may have been maintained and Sampling a prehistoric ditch for environmental remains re-dug into the later Iron Age © Oxford Archaeology (around 200 BC). They may have marked and separated a natural The foundations for an unusual rectangular building, probably prehistoric spring and stream running across in date but possibly later © Oxford Archaeology the site from adjacent fields The remains of one building were uncertain. It could be as early as and settlement. Close to these recorded and consisted of an the Neolithic period or as late as ditches were a number of other irregular, long, narrow rectangular the Saxon or medieval period. It remains, including a well, since structure, with only the holes and is hoped that charcoal, recovered abandoned, with the remains of a trenches for timber foundations from the post holes of the building, butchered cow towards the base! surviving. It is an unusual building will provide radiocarbon dates plan and its date remains to date this enigmatic structure. 3 The White House – A Jewel in Wokingham Garrard family who were in possession of this country house from the mid-19th-century. Robert Garrard, the head of the house, was a jeweller and goldsmith and part of the company of Garrard the jeweller founded in London in 1753. The Company is best known for becoming the first official Crown Jeweller, appointed by Queen Victoria, and has served every British monarch since then. Benjamin Garrard, goldsmith, took over the running of the house from Robert Garrard in the later 19th-century, with his widow Blanche Garrard, being the head of the house in the early 20th-century. The White House nestles in the mapping as Eastheath Lodge but Ownership in the mid-20th- triangle of land at the junction by the early 20th-century it had century is unclear but by this of Finchampstead Road, and become the White House. time, as suburban Wokingham Evendon’s Lane, Wokingham. Distinguished by its white encroached on the countryside Now Evendons Primary School, colour and timber framing, the setting of the house, it was the school buildings have a long original main building may have turned into the White House and varied history. A building is derived from a timber-framed Preparatory School in 1947, shown on the site on Rocque’s building of late medieval date. before then becoming Evendons 1761 map of Berkshire but greater The conjoining of some of the Primary School in 2014. detail is shown on the Enclosure buildings, when it changed from Map of 1817. At this time the family home to school in 1947, led Aerial view of the White House main building would have been a to some imitation timber-framing Preparatory School, now Evendons country house lying south-west of being added, producing a very Primary School, in 1952 the market town of Wokingham. distinctive look for the building. © Historic England By the later 19th-century the main The building is not listed but has building is notated on historic a fascinating connection with the 4 Mapledurham Playing Fields in Reading Yields its Archaeological Secrets Girls’ School; Bronze Age, Iron perhaps part of a wider Roman Age and Roman settlement at settlement and farming complex. Ridgeway Primary School, Whitley, Both enclosures dated to the Early including the rare discovery of a Roman period (1st century AD) hoard of Roman bronze coins in a and probably served as paddocks pottery vessel; and a Late Bronze or animal enclosures. There Age roundhouse and evidence of were few finds but the remains later Iron Age iron production at of a large jar were recorded in Crosfields School, Shinfield Road. one enclosure ditch, suggesting Mapledurham Playing Fields in settlement was not far away. The Caversham is no exception! remains of two Roman cremation Proposals for a new primary burials were also found nearby, school and improved sports one of which contained charred fields led to a programme of seeds of wild strawberry. This may exploratory geophysical survey, have been accidentally included trial trenching and excavation in amongst the cremated remains 2018 and 2019. The archaeological or perhaps was a deliberate potential of the wider area was deposition of a favourite foodstuff In recent years, the playing fields amply demonstrated by the of the recently departed. of Reading have revealed an identification of at least two, near A trial trench at Mapledurham extraordinary range of previously square, crop mark enclosures in Playing Fields unknown archaeological sites the fields immediately to the west © Oxford Archaeology and monuments - an Early to of the Playing Fields, just over the Middle Iron Age (700 – 200 BC) boundary in South Oxfordshire. A Roman jar being excavated settlement in the grounds of the The archaeological investigations at Mapledurham Playing Fields former Elvian School, Southcote at Mapledurham Playing Fields © Oxford Archaeology Lane; a Late Bronze Age (1,100 – identified at least two further 900 BC) roundhouse at Reading Roman ditched enclosures, 5 Making the Results of Archaeological Investigations Accessible Our recent newsletters have published in some form so that In the majority of cases, the shown the number and range future generations have access results of lesser projects will of archaeological investigations to the archaeological data. This is be set out in ‘grey literature’ taking place each year in East both a professional obligation as reports, so called because they Berkshire. However, we report on well as being enshrined in planning are not formal publications. They only a fraction of the number of guidance which makes clear that are now easily accessible on archaeological fieldwork projects the results of investigations should line via archaeological practices’ that are undertaken. Many will be made publicly accessible. websites, the OASIS database be exploratory investigations, Publication is achieved in (https://archaeologydataservice. trying to identify the presence of many ways. The Berkshire ac.uk/archives/view/greylit/) and, buried remains, and not always Archaeological Journal provides of course, through the Historic succeeding! But this information an excellent vehicle for reports Environment Record, which is also has archaeological value too. It is and projects with a strong available to the public. Berkshire often as useful to known where Berkshire connection, while Archaeology can always assist you people did not settle and farm as exceptionally important projects if you want to know the results of to know where they did! may merit publication in national an archaeological project near you It is therefore always very archaeological journals, such as the in east Berkshire. important that the results of all Antiquaries Journal. Archaeological www.readingtownhall.co.uk/explore- archaeological projects, whether practices also frequently publish reading-history/berkshire-archaeology conducted by professionals, monographs, journals and papers in Archaeological publications in amateurs, or local groups and house.

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