A Watching Brief at Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury CONTENTS Page No 1 Introduction 2 2 History of the Site 2 3 Archaeological Results from the Groundworks 3 4 References and Sources Consulted 5 5 Acknowledgments 5 ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 1: The study area, from OS 1:1250 Sheet SJ 4912 (1994) Fig. 2: Principal features revealed during the groundworks 1 A Watching Brief at Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury 1 Introduction Following a series of fires at the former Abbey Station, Shrewsbury, and the removal of an oil storage depot and car tyre business, the car-park on the south side of Abbey Foregate was enlarged and improved in 1991. The garden around the Abbey Pulpit was thus exposed to the rear, and the dilapidated nature of its boundary fence left it vulnerable. In 1994 the pulpit was damaged by vandals, and in response Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council, the site owners, decided to renew the boundary wall and fence around the pulpit enclosure and tidy the garden within. The Abbey Pulpit lies within the scheduled area of Shrewsbury Abbey (Scheduled Monument No.: Shropshire 359). Scheduled monument consent for these works was granted in April 1995, with the provision that they should be accompanied by an agreed programme of archaeological investigation. In the light of a number of recent investigations in the immediate vicinity (Carver, 1975 and 1985; Hannaford, 1991; Watson, 1992), archaeological deposits were known to exist at a depth of 0.7m below ground level on the Abbey Foregate street frontage, extending to a depth of at least 1.8m at the rear of the pulpit enclosure. None of the proposed works were to exceed 0.75m depth, with the exception of a single trench of 1m depth in an area where recent made ground was known to extend to a depth of 1.8m. It was therefore considered that an appropriate level of archaeological provision would be for the proposed groundworks to be monitored and carried out under archaeological supervision. The Archaeology Service of Information and Community Services, Shropshire County Council, was commissioned by Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council to undertake the archaeological monitoring and supervision of the groundworks, which were carried out between September and November 1995. 2 History of the Site The area to the south of Abbey Foregate opposite Shrewsbury Abbey in the medieval period lay within the precinct of the Benedictine monastery; the ground to the south, between the monastic precinct and the Rea Brook, was occupied by a large fishpond. Many of the monastic buildings on the south side of the abbey survived the Dissolution only to fall victim to the creation of the present Abbey Foregate road by Thomas Telford in c1836 and a major redevelopment of the land to the south in the third quarter of the 19th century. The only monastic buildings to survive these developments were the so-called "Old Infirmary" building to the west of the study area and the Refectory Pulpit. The Refectory Pulpit (SMR No. SA1093) of Shrewsbury Abbey is thought to date to the very early 14th century (Morriss and Stamper, 1995), and comprises the only surviving above ground remains of the former refectory building, which was demolished after the Dissolution. In the 18th century, the pulpit effectively became a piece of garden architecture within the gardens of Abbey House. Despite the major redevelopment in the mid-19th century of the land to the south of Abbey Foregate, the pulpit survived and remained as the centre-piece of a small enclosed garden. The northern part of this garden was used as a builder's yard towards the end of the 19th century, being restored as a garden probably in 1944 when the Borough Council took 2 A Watching Brief at Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury over care of the monument. In the first half of the 19th century, the land to the south of Abbey Foregate belonged to one James Hiles; James Hiles was found dead under the water-wheel of the Abbey Mill in 1851 (Hannaford, in Baker, forthcoming) and in the mid 1860s the Hiles' property on Abbey Foregate was acquired by Richard Samuel France, promoter of the Potteries, Shrewsbury, and North Wales Railway (later the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Light Railway Company). France was responsible for the demolition of the Abbott's Lodgings and the clearance of the Abbey Gardens to make way for railway yards, sidings, and the Abbey Station (Morriss and Stamper, op.cit.). During the First World War the land to the west of the Abbey Station was used as a prisoner of war camp, and then mostly lay derelict until its later 20th-century use as a car-park. A small garage was sited on the street frontage immediately to the west of the pulpit enclosure, and an oil storage depot was also built on the street frontage between the garage and the Queen Anne House in the 1960s, relocating to a new site in c1990. The Abbey Station was closed to passengers in 1911 and goods in 1933 (Morriss, 1985), although the line was used to deliver oil to the oil storage depot until c1990. The station site was in use as a builders' yard until 1987, and then lay derelict and unoccupied until it was acquired by the Borough Council and included in the improved temporary car-park. 3 Archaeological Results from the Groundworks The improvement to the Abbey Pulpit garden primarily involved extending the garden to the east and west, thereby extending the wall on the street side of the garden and erecting a new fence on the other three sides. Two telegraph poles were also to be removed from within the garden, necessitating the cutting of a new cable trench. Improvements to the temporary car-park to the west and southwest of the pulpit garden would include the installation of a drainage duct outside the new western edge of the garden, the laying of new kerbs, and the erection of a new "pay and display" machine. The extension of the wall along the street frontage involved the excavation of two trenches 0.6m deep by 0.6m wide to accommodate the footings for the new wall at either end of the existing enclosure wall. The trenches revealed the foundation remains of an earlier wall along the street frontage at a depth of 0.3m below the present ground surface. On the east side of the pulpit enclosure, this earlier wall extended 2.8m further to the east than the end of the existing wall (Fig. 2; a). On the west side of the enclosure, the earlier foundations ran for 1.7m along the street frontage from the western end of the existing wall, before turning to the south (Fig. 2; b). The foundation wall consisted of re-used purple sandstone fragments (including a number of pieces of moulded masonry) bonded in a hard light pinkish-grey mortar; the stone marking the southward return at the western end of this wall was a worked block of Grinshill sandstone, possibly a re-used lintel or sill. Up to three courses of the foundation wall (with a depth of 0.3m) survived on the east of the enclosure; the wall was cut into a layer of mixed rubble and topsoil, and in turn the foundations of the existing enclosure wall cut through the earlier sandstone wall. On the western side of the existing pulpit enclosure, the hard-standing was removed 3 A Watching Brief at Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury to a depth of 0.45m to facilitate landscaping and planting of the extension to the pulpit garden. This revealed a further 2.5m length of sandstone wall foundations (Fig. 2; c) running northwest/southeast towards the western end of the surviving section of the south wall of the refectory which supports the pulpit. However, these foundations were only 0.5m wide (some 0.3m narrower than the refectory wall) and were of re- used purple sandstone and brick rubble bonded in a hard light pinkish-grey mortar of post-medieval type. It is likely that the purple sandstone foundations seen both on the Abbey Foregate street frontage at the southwest corner of the pulpit enclosure were remnants of a 19th-century wall enclosing the pulpit garden. The alignment of the north side of this wall along Abbey Foregate would suggest a construction date some time after 1836. Such a wall around the pulpit enclosure is shown on a lithograph of c.1870 (SRRC 5328, f.1, reproduced in Morriss and Stamper, op.cit., fig. 19) and less fully on other mid 19th-century photographs and illustrations (ibid., figs.15-18). The only other features of archaeological significance (because of the loss of archaeological deposits that they represent) revealed by the groundworks were two sets of underground petrol and diesel storage tanks off the Abbey Foregate street frontage to the west of the pulpit enclosure. The tanks were set in rectangular brick surrounds 2.4m long by 2m wide and at least 1m deep (Fig. 2; d), the first set 5m back from the street frontage and 1m to the west of the existing pulpit enclosure, the other set 4m back from the street and 12m to the west of the pulpit enclosure. The tanks were removed under archaeological supervision. None of the other groundworks involved in this development revealed any archaeological features or deposits. 4 A Watching Brief at Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury 4 References and Sources Consulted Baker, N J, (ed) (forthcoming): "The Archaeology of Shrewsbury Abbey", TSAHS Carver, M O H, 1978: "Early Shrewsbury: an Archaeological Definition in 1975", TSAS vol LIX Part III, 1973-4, pp225-263 Carver, M O H, 1985: Shrewsbury Heritage Project 1985, Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit report No.