Data from Trial Trenching at Aylesbury Golf Course, Buckinghamshire, 2020 (HS2 Phase One)
INFRA Archaeology, High Speed Two Ltd., 2025. https://doi.org/10.5284/1133017. How to cite using this DOI
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This work is licensed under a The Open Government Licence (OGL).
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- ADS Collection: 4329
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1133017
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
This collection comprises reports, site records, spreadsheets, images, and GIS files from trial trenching carried out by INFRA Archaeology at Aylesbury Golf Course, Buckinghamshire from December 2020 to July 2021.
A total of 199 trenches were intended for excavation across two phases of work at Aylesbury Golf Course. Of these five trenches were descoped by Fusion (trenches 141, 162, 168, 172 and 199). Thus 194 machine excavated evaluation trenches were opened. Each evaluation trench also had 3 hand dug trial pits dug within it's footprint for finds retrieval prior to machine excavation.
Project Results: The site was divided across three fields, south, middle and north. The trenches in the south field produced evidence of ridge and furrow and landscaping relating to the modern golf course. Finds included post medieval pottery and animal bone. In the middle field a concentration of trenches in the southwest of the field (154-159;192) produced probable pits and postholes, with those from trench 155 containing Iron Age pottery alongside a ditch, potentially related to an extant bank-and-ditch boundary. A second concentration of trenches (142-144) produced pits, ditches and a large stone make-up or levelling layer, which produced finds of late medieval to post-medieval date. Trench 192 also revealed a series of intercutting ditches of probable medieval date. In the northern field the features were predominantly related to landscaping of the manor house gardens – tree throws and drainage.
Finds were mostly post medieval. A majority of the geophysical anomalies targeted by the trenches across all 3 fields appeared to be related to similar landscaping, either relating to the manorial gardens or the modern golf course. Topsoil test pits across all three areas produced predominantly post-medieval finds, with a small amount of prehistoric material suggestive of low impact, transient activity during this period, at least until the more settled Iron Age activity around trenches 154-159. There then appears to be a marked break in usage of the site until the late medieval activity around trenches 142-144, though the sparsity of further early remains may be due to the landscaping of the manorial gardens and subsequently the modern golf course.
