| Abstract: |
Archaeological monitoring and recording was undertaken by South West Archaeology Ltd. (SWARCH) at the request of a private client (the Client) during the commencement of groundworks on land west of Moorlands, Towednack Road, St. Ives, Cornwall. The work was
carried out by B. Morris and S. Walls in May 2022 in accordance with a WSI (Boyd 2022) drawn up in consultation with the Historic Environment and Planning Advice Officer (HEPAO) at Cornwall Council. The site was cleared of vegetation under archaeological supervision due to the potential for upstanding archaeological remains. Following the vegetation clearance, the access road was stripped across the site by a machine fitted with a toothless grading bucket and under archaeological supervision. The excavations were to the top of the natural a slightly reddish-yellow silt loam with occasional granite boulders. The site stratigraphy consisted of up to 0.15m of leaf litter, vegetation and topsoil which directly overlay the natural. Given the shallow depth of soils, and verified by local residents who spoke to us on site, the site has clearly been stripped previously, and this likely removed any evidence of any further archaeological features or deposits. Three features were noted, the broke-up concrete footing and stone of the demolished 20th century building footprint. A small square pit, c.1m x 1m was located in close proximity to the building footprint, perhaps the remains of a further small structure as it was filled with slate and
concrete rubble. The strip also ran across the curved earthwork, which demonstrated that the earthwork related to differing levels of the natural, suggesting that this earthwork may have once been a boundary, there was noticeably more stone along the lower edge of this feature,
but no trace of any ditches survived. It survived to a width of c.1m. Only the eastern end corresponds to any boundaries shown on the historic mapping, which may suggest that it is largely a modern earthwork created by partial stripping of the site previously.
No finds were recovered from the site, although an assemblage of 1990s and later finds including dozens of glass bottles, mainly rattler cider, and tape cassettes were noted. These were left on site. The concrete footing of a building constructed sometime between 1907-1936 and a possible boundary were the only features noted during the works and the level of disturbance across the site is very high, and in agreement with HEPAO at Cornwall Council, no further archaeological works are to take place as part of this development. |
