London Archaeologist 12 (1)

Report on archaeological investigations carried out in 2004 in advance of redevelopment at 163--7 Bermondsey Street, London SE1, at a site located within and adjacent to the boundary of the Bermondsey Abbey precinct. The excavations (which were restricted in depth to the formation level of the new development) uncovered three east--west aligned medieval ragstone walls, and chalk-built foundations, possibly of a room within a building, with associated pottery indicating a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century date. Another building lay to the south, separated by an alleyway in which was located a garderobe. The north wall of this building was shown through excavation to rest on a timber pile foundation. Post-medieval development was built on the same alignment as the medieval property, and sixteenth- to seventeenth-century evidence included the foundations of a room with a pitched-tile hearth overlying the earlier room with chalk-built foundations, and an east--west brick drain running along the north edge of the alleyway and fed by a brick/tile drain outlet from the room. Foundations of an eighteenth- to nineteenth-century brick building were also found. Separately authored contributions include

Interview with Clive Orton, archaeologist and editor of London Archaeologist, in which he describes his archaeological career and in particular his `significant site', the excavation by Surrey Archaeological Society in 1974 of the eighteenth-century mansion at Mitcham Grove, Merton.

The article considers the development of the Thames riverside from the Pool of London to Erith and Purfleet at the eastern boundary of Greater London, over a time-span ranging from the Bronze Age to the end of the eighteenth century. Five broad chronological phases of settlement are distinguished, each of a different type, location and function and cutting across some of the more usual period boundaries to suggest a series of step-changes in settlement type: Middle and Late Bronze Age (c. 1800--750 BC); Iron Age, Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon (c. 750 BC to c. 1000 AD); medieval (c. 1000--1550 AD); the waterfront (c. 1550--1700 AD); and settlement on drained land (c. 1600--1800 AD).

Preview of a MoLAS monograph which presents an overview of evidence for Early and Middle Saxon rural settlement and economy in the Greater London area.