Test Pit 4 - The British Queen

The pit was dug behind the large barn that stands in the grounds of The British Queen. The British Queen has been a public house since at least 1841, when Nathan Driver was the publican. It is now the only public house remaining in the village. During the 1940s, Percy Cox had a smithy there and in the 1970s the barn was used as a car workshop.


The Finds

This test pit produced a lot of rubbish!  Lots of rubble, car parts and even a whole Cinzano bottle were amongst the finds.

The pottery assemblage included single sherds of Early Medieval Sandy Ware and Hedingham Ware each dating to the 12th-14th centuries; single sherds of Staffordshire Slipware and Staffordshire Manganese Ware dating from the 17th century onwards.  However, most of the pot found was Victorian, with a total of 72 sherds.

The faunal assemblage included bones of cow, sheep/goat, pig, horse, cat and some other unidentifiable remains.

The finds from this test pit indicate that the area was first used during the medieval period, most likely as fields. This seems to have been followed by a period of abandonment until the 18th-19th century when the area was occupied again. This suggests that the area had always been open fields until the building of the British Queen public house, which coincided with an apparent episode of infilling between the main village cluster to the south and the northern residential cluster near the parish church from the 17th century onwards (also seen in test pits 15 and 22 and 26.

For an overview of the site and finds, please click on the image of the exhibition poster which is the first image in the gallery below.

For detailed analysis of the finds, please see the results sheet for this pit, which is available as a download at the bottom of this page.

For reports and maps relating to all of the test pits, please see the documents available on our results page.


Site Diary

Day One

12 noon to 4.00pm

  • Located pit
  • Removed turf
  • Initial dig
  • Weather fine
  • No issues

Day Two

10.00am to 4.30pm

  • Completed dig
  • Back-filled hole
  • Weather fine
  • No issues

Photo Gallery

Please click on a photograph to display a larger image.

Downloads

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