Northamptonshire Archaeology 24

Fragmentary traces of earlier occupation from the Conquest to the Antonine period were swept away by the construction of a stone wall and wide bank c.AD 170. This was accompanied by at least one saucer-shaped wet ditch while an original multiple ditch system is suspected. The total width of the defences seems to have been in the region of 60m, and appears to have included a counterscarp bank. No gates were examined, but the possibility of the survival of a putative Irchester gate or postern within the Bury Mount is raised. Identifiable activity in this defensive zone seems to have shortly come to an end, but not before a rich pit dating to pre- c.AD 175 from a well-to-do household had been dug through the tail of the rampart at the north east corner. Sterile `black earth' had then accumulated over this pit and rampart backs suggesting allotment cultivation from the Severan period running into the third century. There was no surviving trace of any refurbishment before the undated addition of the projecting bastions, possibly hollow, of uncertain form but probably some 10m square, fragments of which were located at the north-west and north-east corners of the circuit. These seem to have been accompanied by the cutting of a shallow, wet, wide Great Ditch, estimated to be some 24m wide, which survived recutting only at the south of the town. Here it contained pottery of the late fourth century, and environmental evidence for stagnant rubbish filled water and overgrown banks, as well as evidence for exotic imports and gardens. Sixth-century sherds indicated an early Anglo-Saxon presence in the walled town. There was no clearly recognisable trace of the Anglo-Saxon defences of Edward the Elder, although a probable refacing of the Roman wall may be of this date. The recutting of the Great Ditch, deeper, and with steeper sides, evidenced in the northern third of the town, is thought more likely to relate to a partial refortification of the Roman defences in the early Norman period associated with the Bury Mount, than to the Late Saxon. The Civil War ditch of 1643 was located on the same defensive line at the north of the town, and a 5m wide seventeenth-century ditch occurred in the south of the town, here overlying Roman property boundaries and not the defensive zone. Unusual finds included high quality probably Rhineland glass, carrot and possibly North African amphorae, and an Eifelkeramic jar.

Three RB sites were excavated in 1961--66 in response to identified threats that eventually led to the destruction of all three sites. The site at Bozeat comprised a stone-based, circular structure, of probable domestic use and late second- and third-century date. The site at Higham Ferrers revealed three phases of RB occupation. A rectangular stone building of second-century date was succeeded by stone quarrying on part of the site. A third phase of occupation, from the late-third to the mid-fourth centuries, comprised an unusual rectangular building with rounded corners. The remains of a mid-fourth-century coin hoard and some sherds of Saxon pottery were also found on the site. At Great Oakley, the remains of timber structures, including six post holes of a round house, were succeeded by a stone-founded, aisled building of broadly second-century date. This was interpreted as a farmstead, although no associated field system was recorded. Although limited in their extent, each of these excavations has provided useful information on Roman Northamptonshire.