Key Street, Ipswich - IAS5901

Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, 2015. https://doi.org/10.5284/1034365. How to cite using this DOI

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Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service (2015) Key Street, Ipswich - IAS5901 [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1034365

Data copyright © Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service unless otherwise stated

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Primary contact

Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service
Bury Resource Centre
Hollow Road
Bury St Edmunds
IP32 7AY

Resource identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

The updated Crossref DOI Display guidelines recommend that DOIs should be displayed in the following format:

https://doi.org/10.5284/1034365
Sample Citation for this DOI

Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service (2015) Key Street, Ipswich - IAS5901 [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1034365

Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service logo

Introduction

Key Street, Ipswich - IAS5901

Circumstances of excavation

The site was excavated by the Suffolk Archaeological Unit in advance of a new road (Slade Street), forming part of a new gyratory road system. The site was excavated by the Suffolk Archaeological Unit in 1982.

Site constraints

An area up to roughly 30m back from Key Street was excavated apart from a central access route from the street, 4-5m wide and 11m long, and a rectangular area, 7m by 13m, on the west side, 20m back from the street. The area to north was sampled with a trench, 20m long and 2m wide.

The graves at the Key Street end of the site were very shallow and damaged by later activity.

Site summary

Activity was recorded dating from the Bronze Age through to the 20th century. A 1.3m length of ditch, 80cm wide, ran east from the excavation edge and was cut away on its east side by an Early Late Saxon pit. It contained five sherds of a mid-late Bronze Age bucket urn of Ardleigh type.

Four pits and a linear feature belonged to the Middle Saxon period (MS: c.700-850). 500 sherds of Ipswich ware were recovered from the site, mainly residual in later features. There is evidence for an unknown number of Anglo-Saxon burials. Human skulls were found in Early Late Saxon pits, indicating Middle Saxon or earlier burials which have been removed by later pits.

Twenty two pits belonged to the Early Late Saxon period (ELS: c.850-900). They were all in the northern half of the site and concentrated in a line running from east-west, 25m back from the Key Street frontage, with a north-south line at right angles. Pit 0295 contained a Middle Saxon pottery group but cut Early Late Saxon pit 0293 and contained PMED brick. Pit 0238 contained four round headed pins and a nail cleaner in a decorated antler or bone container (0044/5901Cu), Pits 0079 and 0087 contained human skulls.

Only one pit and a linear feature were identified as Middle Late Saxon (MLS: c.900-1000).

Eleven pits and a hearth were attributed to the Early Medieval period (EMED: c.1000-1200).

A cemetery, two or three buildings, two ditches, five pits and a slot clearly belonged to the Late Medieval (LMED: c.1200-1450). A total of 53 graves produced skeletal remains of 61 separate individuals. They were restricted to the south-east corner of the site with none found north-west of a diagonal line extending from the south-west corner of the site to a point 20m northward along the east edge of excavation, but with no trace of any physical boundary. The cemetery continued eastwards, outside of the excavation area. The bodies were all supine, in shallow graves mainly orientated east-west. In some instances the depth of the grave was too shallow to cut the surface of the natural, making grave edges difficult to define and increasing the potential for damage after burial. The general condition of most of the bodies was poor with the bones often being fragmented or eroded.

One possible building, two walls, and four pits belonged to the Late Medieval Transition period (LMT: c.1450-1600).

A layer of rubble, overlying the LMED clay floors and cemetery, contained six 17th century tokens, a worn silver shilling of James I and an 1862 halfpenny, which was intrusive. This implies that the courtyard building shown in 1674 was demolished, ground levels raised and the site developed at the very end of the 17th century. The LMT wall was, however, retained as a tenement boundary as it appears on the 1884 OS map of the town.

All the buildings on the site were probably destroyed during a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The site was then cleared and a light structure erected to be used as William Brown’s timber yard. This structure was demolished prior to the excavation and road scheme. Two north-south piped drain runs were associated with this structure.

Further information can be found in the Site Summary which can be accessed by selecting the 'Reports' tab on the 'Downloads' page.


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