Northamptonshire Archaeology 16

Excavations in Chalk Lane, Northampton, 1975-197: Sheet 1: Structural, 1–36. Sheet 2: The pottery and other finds. Part 1, 37–130. Sheet 3: The other finds. Part 2, 131–211

At the beginning of 1965 the Hoveringham Gravel Co began to strip topsoil from the northern half of a field at Maxey, Cambridgeshire in preparation for gravel quarrying. As air photographs showed a number of potentially interesting monuments in the area, the writer, on behalf of the Welland Valley Research Committee sought permission from the company to undertake selective excavation. This was readily granted and the subsequent excavations were carried out intermittently between February 1965 and July 1966. In the fields to the north of the quarry are a cursus and two small pits circles of Neolithic date as well as a Bronze Age monument and ring ditches and also Iron Age settlement. In the field itself there were a number of ring ditch monuments of various diameters as well as rectilinear ditch systems related to Iron Age settlement and later boundaries. At Site E there was ring ditch, up to 9.2m diameter, with an entrance facing north with an outer concentric semi-circle of ditch segments at 19.5m diameter. A smaller single ring, 6.4m diameter, lay to the west, with an entrance facing north-east. Sherds of Mildenhall and Grooved ware was recovered, along with a some worked flint a complete cattle, and a deer rib bone and part of an antler with incised line decoration. At Site J there was a scatter of pits, four of which were excavated with three producing pottery and other finds indicating a date in the late Bronze Age. At Sites H & K, a large ring ditch nearly 50m in diameter appeared to pre-date a late Iron Age/early Roman settlement, but only a short length of the ditch was excavated. The settlement was partially excavated producing a good pottery assemblage and environmental evidence.

The south-west corner of the south aisle of All Saints Church was subject to subsidence, necessitating the underpinning of the foundations with horizontal concrete beams. In advance there was an archaeological excavation to record the stratification that would otherwise have been dug away by the contractors. The foundations of the famous Saxon tower were exposed at its junction with the south aisle, and comprised limestone rubble in a shallow trench, totally out of scale with the proportions of the tower. These supported a single course plinth of large limestone blocks. Eleven inhumation burials, with five of the graves cut into the natural having head recesses and one inhumation on a bed of charcoal, had been cut by the foundations of the south aisle. Adjacent to the tower, there were dry stone remains of a probable Norman buttress, which had been used as part of the foundations for the south aisle, which elsewhere was constructed on deep foundations of roughly coursed limestone blocks. It attributed to the Early English period. The later levels contained numerous coffined burials of post-medieval date and probably continuing to the 18th or 19th centuries.

The charter discussed in this paper records the gift by King Eadwig of an estate rated at five hides to his kinsman Brihthelm, bishop elect of Wells, in 956AD. The purpose of the paper is to look at the estate boundaries and to consider some of the wider topographical implications of the document. An appendix describes seven early carved stones preserved at Stowe, three of which are built into the fabric of the Saxon tower.

Northamptonshire is fortunate in having retained some material evidence of the great houses of the Middle Ages, the manors, granges and dwellings of the secular. The evidence from the county is collated and houses are discussed in relation to the generally accepted standard form of the medieval house, concluding that there is a wide variation in the disposition of the usual units of accommodation.