Test Pit 3 - 57 Whitecroft Road

The pit was dug behind the garden of 57 Whitecroft Road on land that once belonged to 17th century Bluebell Cottage.

The Finds

This test pit produced a single sherd of Romano-British ware, small quantities of Medieval Shelly Ware, Early Medieval Sandy Ware and Hertfordshire greyware all dating to the 12th-14th centuries, two sherds of Late Medieval Ware dating to the 15th-16th centuries, a few sherds each of Glazed Red Earthenware and Staffordshire Slipware and small quantities of Victorian-era sherds.

Other finds consisted of glass, plastic, clay pipe fragments, brick, tile, slate, charcoal, a metal shirt button, and a battery core. The faunal assemblage recovered from this pit included bones of sheep/goat, chicken and some other unidentifiable remains.

The single sherd of Roman pottery, found in Context 2, indicates activity in this area at that time, most likely connected with farming. Interestingly, Test Pit 16 which was located nearby, contained a larger quantity of Romano-British sherds possibly indicating the presence of a farmhouse nearby. The area then appears to have been abandoned until the medieval period and from then on has been in use ever since, including during the late medieval (Black Death) era. This is a similar picture to that observed at Test Pit 2 nearby.

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

Started off well, earth fairly easy to dig and sieve. Quite a few finds in each context. In Context 3, we found a partial skeleton of a bird, including the beak. Our youngest helper was very pleased to be able to fine excavate around the bones.

Day Two

Finished taking out bones after speaking to archaeologist and placed them in a separate finds bag. Context 4 produced quite a few finds. It was hard to sieve because of the clay in the soil. In Context 5 we had very few finds and it was very slow going. It was almost the end of the day so we decided to stop digging at Context 6. We dug out a corner down to natural at 63cm.