Preston, S., ed. (2005). Reading and Windsor, Old and New. Reading: Thames Valley Archaeological Services Ltd.

an excavation was carried out in advance of redevelopment, which revealed the remains of structures fronting Friar Street with the rears of the plots being used for pits, several of which may have been small quarries or borrow pits. A few sherds of Roman and late Saxon pottery are the earliest finds recovered from the site but the earliest structural remains are of twelfth- to thirteenth-century date. Activity on the site would appear to have been more or less continuous to the present day, although at least part of the street frontage was not occupied by any structure for a period in late medieval times. Specialist reports include

a small area excavation just south of the church of St John the Baptist revealed a series of pits dating from the thirteenth century and a group of Christian burials from the same period and later. This suggests an early encroachment onto an area that had been thought to be the market place. Finds deposited as rubbish in the pits include some suggestive of a high-status household. The site was then largely undisturbed until the eighteenth century, evidence which is at odds with cartographic depiction of it as built over in the early-seventeenth century. Specialist reports include

limited excavation within the Scheduled Ancient Monument at `The Manor', Old Windsor, revealed evidence from several periods. Stray finds of Roman pottery and tile, and perhaps some pits of this date, suggest that the extent of the Roman settlement here has previously been underestimated. There were no structural remains of Early or Middle Saxon date, but activity of this period is represented by unstratified and residual pottery, which may suggest that the church stands near the centre of the occupied area as might be expected. More substantial remains date from Late Saxon and early medieval times, with rubbish pits and building remains. The vast majority of the pottery assemblage dates to a tight range within the mid/late-eleventh to mid-twelfth century. Later medieval activity appears slight. The final phase of activity on the site, and that forming the majority of the deposits recorded, dates to the eighteenth or the nineteenth century. The main structural deposits encountered in the excavation represent buildings shown on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1863--71, with replacement structures or extensions afterwards, and with the modern development continuing the sequence to the present day. Specialist reports include