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Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service
Bury Resource Centre
Hollow Road
Bury St Edmunds
IP32 7AY
The ‘Stoke Bridge and Approaches’ road scheme, included the construction of a new Anglian Water storm water relief system under the new road in 1982. It ran from west to east along Star Lane to its junction with Greyfriars Road, and then south to the river west of Stoke Bridge. The north-south soil strip, prior to the pipe trenching, revealed a number of pits and a potential sunken featured building.
Ipswich Borough Council granted the Suffolk Archaeological Unit permission to excavate the area over the course of a weekend, when the site was not operational. In view of the time constraint, the outline of 11 features over an area 13.5m x 4.5m were planned, and following a brief assessment of their date, six contexts were selected for excavation.
Of the six excavated contexts (0003, 0004, 0006, 0007, 0009, 0011), two (0004, 0011) had no finds. The others were dated by pottery, confirmed by stratigraphy. One pit was attributed to the Early Late Saxon period (c.700-850) with the partially-exposed sunken featured building dated to the Middle Late Saxon period (c.900-1000). One pit was dated to the Early Medieval period (c.1000-1200) and a shallow ditch, cut by a Post-Medieval pit, was attributed to the Late Medieval Transitional period (c.1450-1600).
Further information can be found in the Site Summary which can be accessed by selecting the 'Reports' tab on the 'Downloads' page.