Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 80

Report on an assessment excavation which revealed evidence of activities within the Roman cemetery in Handbridge, Chester, which indicate the existence there of a significant late Roman building. Demolition of this building led to the development of an industry based on glass recycling and craft production in post-Roman times. The origin of these activities is possibly ecclesiastical. Documentary evidence confirms that glassmakers were operating in Handbridge from late medieval times onwards. The excavated evidence is consistent with the documents and demonstrates industrial activities developing during the course of the medieval period and on into the eighteenth century. These comprised potting and glass working, as well as other crafts. Alongside local production, there is evidence of a lengthy tradition of imported ceramics, symptoms of commercial contacts between Chester and various British and continental ports. From the fourteenth century onwards, the industrial processes can be connected with a local merchant family involved in glassmaking and glazing, the Dalbys.

The paper presents the results of a documentary investigation and three archaeological field surveys carried out on Burton Point in Wirral between 2005 and 2006. The studies focus on the remains of what is thought to be an Iron Age promontory hillfort currently scheduled as an ancient monument. The survey results are analysed and discussed in depth within a broader investigation and comparative study of Burton Point in its local and regional context, and in terms of its position within the Irish Sea basin and Atlantic façade.

At City Road, Chester, an archaeological excavation and watching brief uncovered evidence for a late-first-/early-second-century industrial building adjacent to field boundary ditches and a buried cultivation soil. A later cultivation deposit, representing a hiatus in activity from the third century onwards, sealed all earlier features. Pits in the northeast corner of the site contained evidence for metalworking in the thirteenth to fourteenth century, while post-medieval pits, structures and layers indicate metalworking in the vicinity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The site was repeatedly cleared for both the construction of Victorian terraced housing in the nineteenth century and redevelopment for a garage in the mid-twentieth century. The report includes

The article examines the origins of the story that William the Conqueror invaded Cheshire and ravaged much of it so thoroughly that normal economic life was impossible for decades afterwards. Documentary sources, in particular contemporary chronicles and the Domesday Book, as well as the work of historians and the wider natonal picture are considered.