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In Autumn 2003 Archenfield
Archaeology excavated a site in Leominster between the River Kenwater
to the south and Mill Street to the north, which was being developed as a Focus DIY
outlet. The Kenwater is the stream which runs immediately
to the north of the centre of Leominster. Mill Street had
a mill stream running along its southern side until recently.
This stream is marked as the River Lugg on earlier maps.
To the south of the Kenwater, running through the precinct of
the medieval priory, was the Pinsley Brook. These streams, or
earlier versions of them, would have naturally changed course
many times over the millennia, and have often been turned along
artificial channels to power mills.
An initial evaluation
of this site had been carried out in the summer of 2001.
This identified the areas where there was medieval archaeology
remaining.
The
panel of judges for the prestigious British Archaeological
Awards highly recommended Archenfield Archaeology for
this project in 2004. An article about the excavation
appeared in Current
Archaeology in December 2004. [The British Archaeological
Awards are biennial - we were also highly commended for
our work on the Albion Flour Mill Site in Worcester at
the following awards in 2006].
To view plans of the site click
here
We are now including
a version of our site records on this site. We hope to
develop this further in future. To view click
here. |
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To gather more
information about the nature of the archaeology a geophysical
survey of the whole site was carried out. This filled
in gaps in the information from the evaluation and enabled
us to concentrate excavation on the south-western part
of the site.
This photograph
shows geophysical survey in August 2003 using a Geonics
EM28B which has two scanning devices which work simultaneously.
One measures magnetic susceptibility and the other conductivity.
These are mounted on a sled and linked to a fine resolution
(sub metre accuracy) Differential Global positioning system
which gives real time tracking of the readings.
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The geophysical
survey was carried out on our behalf by by Archaeophysica,
a specialist archaeological geophysics company.
This
is a plot of the results of the geophysical survey.
The Kenwater
is immediately to the south of the path.
The blue area
labelled '1' proved to have large quantities of slag (see
below).
The red linear
feature was a path composes of broken re-used tile.
view
plans |
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The topsoil
was then removed by machine and areas of stone rubble
and features were cleaned by hand.
The most immediately
obvious feature was this circular stone structure.
The only problem was that this was not what it appeared
to be. So clearly a well that the archaeologists
never considered any other possibility, it came as a surprise
when it was only a few courses deep. What was it?
Does anybody know? |
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A medieval
wattle fence in the base of a ditch. It is difficult
to see what function a fence in this position served,
but a fence in a similar situation was found beneath Barclays
Bank in Broad
Street, Hereford, in the 1970s.
[view enlarged image] |
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On
the very southern edge of the site, this medieval
wall was built up against a
raised earthen bank which must
have been on the northern edge of the Kenwater.
The wall met the bank at about 90°.
Everywhere
else the wall had been totally
removed – robbed out to
re-use the stone Presumably it had been left in place
here in order not to disturb this bank.
The
building represented by this wall was the second on the
site.
The
area seems to have been first developed in the 13th
century when a timber-framed building sitting on sandstone
foundations was erected. The second building was
more substantially built but
seems to have fallen into ruin at the end of the 14th
or beginning of the 15th century. There
was an almost total lack of finds from later periods and
the site seems to have become pasture.
Periodic
flooding since the medieval period had buried the medieval
features beneath silt.
view
plans
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Two
fragments of medieval glazed ceramic ridge tile found
on the site. These tiles were laid along the ridges of
buildings to form a waterproof seal at the point where
the stone tiles of the roof met.
More
of this material was found at the Focus site than on many
sites in the centre of nearby Hereford, a much larger
medieval town. The quantity of glazed tile here suggests
a high status building.
view plans
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The
main part of the roof was made of thin stone tiles, each
of which was pierced at one end to allow a peg to be inserted
to hang it from the timbers of the roof. Many fragments
of stone tile were found on the site.
Many
old buildings are still roofed in this fashion. These
stone tiles are waiting to be placed on the roof of Dore
Abbey in south-west Herefordshire as part of its maintenance.
photograph
courtesy of Dafydd ap Medi, autumn 2003. |
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Among
the medieval finds from the site were these two keys. |
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Although
the keys were very rusty, the X-rays show the shape of
them quite clearly |
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But
this activity had taken place on an earlier phase of river
silt. When we cut through these
silts we uncovered the gravels which had been laid down
at the end of the last Ice Age and which formed
the bed of an earlier course of the River Lugg.
In
dark earth deposits on top of
this level were fragments of wood.
Saplings of oak and wild cherry grew on the site at that
time. A sample of wood from these deposits has
been dated by Waikato University in New Zealand.
They date from
between 600AD and 720AD with a 68.2% probability of being
from between 640AD and 680AD.
This was when
Merewalh was king in Leominster and was converted to Christianity
by the Northumbrian Monk St Etfrid (see Leominster
main section).
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At
an even earlier phase was a linear
timber and stone structure. We believe this to be
a revetment for a water-course, perhaps associated
with an earlier course of the River
Lugg here. Behind this timber
was a large dump of charcoal
and slag. This is much
older than the medieval buildings and a sample
of the has been radiocarbon dated by Waikato University
in Hamilton, New Zealand.
view
plans |
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An
example of a smithing hearth base from the dump of slag,
which disappeared beyond the limit of our excavations.
This
provides strong evidence for large-scale industry in this
area. The results of the radiocarbon dating place this
in firmly in the Roman period. The dating places the activity
between70AD and 240AD with a 68% probability of a date
between 120AD and 240AD
We
therefore have a major Romano-British ironworking site
on the banks of the River Lugg.
Roman Herefordshire
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A
pair of goat horncores with attached frontal fragments
were recovered
from this phase. At the Uley
shrines in Gloucestershire,
where large numbers of goats were sacrificed to a native
form of the god Mercury, it
was suggested that particularly impressive horns may have
been cut off as ritual trophies.
The example from the Focus
has been detached with much more care
than those found at Uley or the medieval specimens from
this site.
Environmental evidence shows that in this period the area
was open, damp grassland on which livestock grazed. The
river was quite fast flowing but there some places where
slower flowing water with tall stands of waterside vegetation.
view plans |
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![[view enlarged image]](Projectimages/Leominster%20-%20Mill%20Street%20A.jpg){kind=link}