Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society

Excavations prior to mineral extraction revealed widespread evidence for medieval land allotment comprising fields, droveways and enclosures but without direct evidence for occupation. Other finds indicated a low level of prehistoric activity and, unexpectedly, evidence for Early/Middle Saxon occupation.

Excavations revealed, among other features, the remains of a double-flue updraught kiln, with a mortar base, stone walls and a clay lining. In its last firing, archaeomagnetically dated to between AD220 and AD280, the kiln had been fuelled by mainly coppiced oak in one flue and a combination of more varied woods in the other; perhaps to aid temperature control. It was overlain by an extensive dump of Late Roman pottery wasters. Further dumps (previously surveyed in the 1970s), which together spanned the duration of the Alice Holt industry starting in the late first century, were also sampled, producing not only familiar Alice Holt coarseware types, but also a significant number of forms not previously recognised at the site. Pieces of fired clay kiln furniture were also recovered, along with fragments of ceramic building material used either in the kiln structures or as further items of kiln furniture.

Occupation on the site began in the late tenth century (Roman and Early Saxon pottery was all residual in later features) and continued to the thirteenth, after which the area seems to have been a garden until the nineteenth century. The remains of one, possibly two, Late Saxon buildings with a long sequence of floor and occupation layers only partially survived later truncation. A possible road surface composed of large flint cobbles dates from the eleventh to twelfth century: this phase saw intensive pit digging across most of the site. Metalworking evidence was found in all areas, including crucibles and off-cuts, although no positive evidence was recovered that metal was worked on this site itself.\r\nThe building on the southern half of the site seems to have been domestic, while the north half seems to have been a butcher's yard; there is also a suggestion of a horner at work here.

The boundaries of the royal hunting forest of Buckholt are traced from the Norman Conquest onwards and are related to features in the landscape.