Newham Museum Archaeology Project Archives
Newham Museum Service, 2000. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000328. How to cite using this DOI
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This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
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London Borough of Redbridge
Lynton House
255 - 259 High Road
Ilford, Essex
IG1 1NN
England
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 265
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000328
- How to cite using this DOI
The Abbey Road Watching Brief (BA-AR 91)
[File last modified 17th March 1997]
Site Summary
Site Location: TQ 4397/8386
The site was 300m length of the Abbey Road extending south from the entrance to the Barking Retail Park to the pedestrian traffic lights.
Landowners
The Abbey Road is maintained by The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
Funding
The site was funded by The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
Background
The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham had decided that the condition of the road was so bad that it needed to be taken down to the 1910 level and re-built. This was an ideal moment to examine the pre-road surface to establish what Clapham might have seen.
The Trench
The site was approximately 300m long and 10m wide. The western half of the road was removed first in a long five meter wide strip and then re-laid and the process was repeated on the eastern side.
The surface revealed showed evidence of Victorian made ground. The exception was an area of chalk wall and mortar footing one metre wide and surviving to a depth of around thirty centimetres and spannng the width of the road. The wall was sketched and photographed and located upon an engineering drawing of the road works. There was no threat to the any of these deposits and a geotextile membrane was lain on the surface and the new road surface put down. This wall footing has yet to be added to the general plan of the Abbey remains.
Recording
The site recording comprised two context sheets, one for each half of the road, photographs, measured sketches and a copy of the engineers drawing showing the position of the recorded features.
The Finds
There were no finds.
Samples
There were no samples.
Interpretation
This chalk footing is probably dateable to the medieval phase of Barking Abbey and may well be part of one of the walls found during either BA-I 85 or BA-IE 90 in the Barking Retail Park. The overlying of plans (when they are drawn) will resolve the matter of their relationship to walls which have been previously excavated.
The curious feature of the footing was that in both halves of the site the wall carried identical circular cuts. It may be that these holes carried posts upon which a gate was hung. In which case the Abbey Road laid down in 1910 might have followed the route of a much earlier. Their was no evidence of an earlier road or any other feature because of the degree of levelling which had been undertaken before the road was constructed. Valence house has an engineers drawing showing the pre-road levels and indicating the extent to which the road was terraced into the slope.
