Stage 1 evaluation

The stage 1 evaluation saw 8 trenches excavated within the Severn Street factory, with trenches 1-4 within confines of the medieval town, trench 5 positioned at a right angle across the town wall, trench 7 close to the canal and trenches 8 and 9 close to Albion School, Mill Street, in an area where there Roman burials had been found.

In advance of redevelopment by the Berkeley Group (Oxford and Chiltern) Ltd, initial archaeological work on the Royal Worcester Porcelain site included a first stage building assessment and a survey of the known archaeology in the area. In addition there has been a ground penetrating radar survey in the area formerly occupied by the church of St Peter the Great.

A second stage of evaluation excavation was carried out in July and August.

Trenches 1-4

Trench 1 was located to the north of the Dyson Perrins Museum and south of King Street.  The trench was orientated east-west and measured approximately 10 x 2 metres. 

Below the modern car park surface was dark brown black, compact, well mixed rubble with brick/tile, pottery and animal bone.  The layer was removed by machine, covered the whole trench and was probably levelling material used to fill the gaps between the wall foundations.

The layer covered foundation walls and surfaces from former buildings that can be roughly phased into four buildings of post-medieval and modern date.  These remains consist of brick walls and floor surfaces orientated along the south side of King Street. The street was widened in the early 20th century, along with the demolition of houses that would have fronted it. 

A sondage was excavated at the far west end of the trench.  Two modern pits (59 filled by 60, and 87 filled by 88) and a construction trench for building 203 cut dark brown silty soil with modern inclusions (89/122). 

Below this modern make-up layer was dark brown silty clay (123) that covered archaeological features. 

A linear feature (107) was aligned roughly east-west pottery from the lowest fill (108) suggests a medieval date from the 15th century.  The feature cut red brown gravel and sand (124) that covered a redeposit of natural red gravel and clay.

Medieval pottery from ditch 108

Trench 2 was located west of trench 1 behind the Dyson Perrins Museum.

The trench was orientated east-west and measured 10 x 2 metres.  It was excavated to a maximum depth of 18.14 metres OD in a machine excavated sondage in the south-east of the trench. 

The modern car park surface (1) and its rubble make-up (452) covered friable grey black mixed sandy clay with brick, tile, pottery and charcoal inclusions that was approximately 0.40 metres thick. 

This layer covered pits 84, 96, 98, 101, 103, 131, and brick-built steps 82.   Pottery from the backfill of the pits (85, 97, 99, 102, 104 and 132) dated from the 18th century.

The pits were all roughly circular in shape and cut firm grey brown silty clay with charcoal and brick/tile inclusions (100).  This layer was approximately 1.50 metres deep and was consistent throughout the trench. 

A sondage was excavated by machine in the south-east corner of the trench to establish the depth of natural deposits. What appeared to be natural yellow green sandy gravel (135) was at a depth of 18.14 metres OD (approximately 2 metres below the current ground surface).

Brick steps (82) were recorded in the trench orientated north-south and in-filled by rubble (83).  They descended north from 20.46 metres OD before running into the section at 19.70 metres OD.

The archaeology in trench 2 suggested that its position was in the rear yards of houses that would have fronted King Street with the brick steps leading to either a cellar or onto King Street.

Trench 3 was located to the north of the Royal Worcester Seconds Shop and the south of King Street. 

The archaeology in this trench was considerably different from the post-medieval archaeology that dominated trenches 1 and 2.  This was possibly due to ground levels in this area being reduced, removing later post-medieval deposits.

Below the modern surface was mid-brown silty clay (150) that covered brick floor 147 and stone wall 148.  The tone wall was roughly coursed and ran north-south across the trench.  At its northern end and only just visible in the south-facing section, the wall turned east.  The wall and brick floor were bedded in compact dark brown silty clay (146) that dated from the 19th century.

Layer 146 covered archaeological features within the trench including a post-hole (259) lined with light red brown silty clay (260) with stone packing and a post-pad (260).   The circular post-hole had a U-shaped base and was filled by mid/light brown silty clay.   The post-hole cut an earlier pit (269) filled by loose brown silty clay (268) and dark brown black silty, humic soil (262) that contained medieval pottery dated to the 13th to 14th century, and friable red brown sandy clay (292). 

The west edge of the post-hole cut a linear ditch (287) orientated roughly north-south.  The ditch cut 292 and was approximately 1 metre deep and 1.50 metres wide, with steep consistent sides and a slightly concave base.   It was filled by dark brown gritty clay (289) in which was a Silver William II halfpenny (1089 – 1092) decorated with a cross in quatrefoil was recovered from this context.  Above 289 and within ditch 287 was compact gritty clay (305) with pottery dated from the 12th to 13th century and (288) dated to the 13th century.  The ditch is the only feature recorded in the evaluation of late-Saxon/Norman date and the pottery recovered from the second and third fills of the ditch suggest it was open for some 200 years.

The ditch cut the fill of an earlier ditch (307) on the same alignment. This fill (306) was compact red brown clay dated to the 2nd century AD.

To the east of the ditch and cut into 292 were a series of shallow cut circular features that date to the Roman period.  Pottery and an Antoninus Pius sestertius coin (138 – 161 AD) date the features to the 1st and 2nd centuries.  The most interesting feature was a sub-circular pit (290) that was filled by metalworking waste.  The pit was filled by charcoal, slag and hammerscale in a red black silty clay matrix (291) with pottery dated from the 2nd century. 

A high magnetic susceptibility reading of the deposit suggested a highly magnetic component to the fill.  This was confirmed by hammerscale recovered during from samples taken of the fill. 

There was no direct evidence of burning or extreme heat in the surrounding soil suggesting waste from nearby industrial activity. 

A Roman road/surface was orientated north-south through the trench.  The surface was constructed within a linear cut (457) and consisted of cobbles (278) bedded in compact red brown clay (279).  The cobble layer was 0.10 metres thick at 18.87 metres OD.  The clay covered an earlier layer of cobbles (300) 0.20 metres thick at 18.52 metres OD. 

Below the lowest layer of cobbles and cut into clean orange brown sandy clay (276) was a truncated pit type feature.  The feature was roughly circular with a primary fill of loose sandy silt (319).  Above this was a thin charcoal layer (318) that was covered by brown silty clay (317).  The base of the feature was at 18.37 metres OD. 

Immediately east of the road/surface was a linear feature or pit (298) filled by compact yellow brown clay (299) with slag and Roman pottery dated from the 1st to 2nd century.  This was covered by red brown clay (277) and yellow green slightly sandy clay (271) that also dates from the 1st to 2nd century.

Antoninus Pius sestertius           

Trench 4 was located in the main car park of Royal Worcester to the east of St Peter’s Street. 

The trench followed the orientation of St Peter’s Street and walls were recorded running at right angles from the street frontage.  Brick wall 239 was at the northern end of the trench, wall 326 was roughly central and wall 321 was to the south.  The central brick wall was built on the same alignment as an earlier sandstone wall (328).  A further stone wall (325) ran diagonally from west to east across the trench.  The dry stone wall consisted of large red sandstone blocks up to 0.50 metres in width.

Between the south and central wall was a compact rubble and mortar (371) layer that covered dark brown silty clay (374).  Below this were compact gritty clay (375) and compact dark brown black silty clay (377) that date to the 17th century.  This layer was consistent in the east and west sections.  Below this layer the stratigraphy in each section between the central and south brick walls was different, possibly reflecting external and internal areas of a building, with 325 forming the west (and rear) wall.  The southern end of the wall turned a right angle to the east towards the street front.  There was an opening where the wall turned east.

In the west-facing section below 377 was bright green silty sandy clay that covered wall 325 and compact green silty clay (331) with pottery inclusions dating from the 17th to 18th century.  A sondage was excavated to establish the depth of the wall and cut through clay layers 324, 344 and 351 which date from the 11th to 14th centuries.  The sondage was excavated to a depth of 16.95 metres OD.

In the east-facing section of the trench and running up to wall 325 was degraded green sandstone wall (343).  This wall was roughly coursed with no visible bond.  Below this wall was very compact silty clay with mortar and stone.

A small sondage was excavated within the internal area of the building to investigate an opening in 325.  Within the sondage four contexts were recorded.  The contexts were cobbles (approximately 0.05 metres) set in a compact clay matrix (350) compact brown gritty clays (354 and 355) and organic green brown silty clay (356).  These were probably occupation layers associated with the building and the pottery suggests a date from the 11th to 14th centuries.

To the north of the central brick wall (326) archaeological features were covered by loose light grey sandy clay (342) with mixed brick and mortar rubble.  At the north end of the trench were a brick wall and buttress (338 and 339) that were contemporary with a fragmentary quarry tile floor (337).  Few tiles remained in-situ but the floor may have originally extended towards the central brick wall. 

The wall and buttress cut an earlier cobbled surface (336) that was edged by large kerbstones orientated east-west.   The cobbles were cut by a shallow circular pit (393) that also cut loose ash and coal (334) which was south of the cobble path.  Below the ash and coal was a thin layer of clay (347) and mixed mortar and rubble (348) cut by a post-hole (453) and a later shallow scoop/depression (364).  The post-hole was 0.30 metres in diameter with vertical sides that narrowed to a concave base.  The post-hole cut 334 and various layers of compact red mudstone (333) compact green sandstone (360) and an earlier pit (370) that in turn cut onto an earlier cobbled surface. 

The cobbled surface (372) covered mid red brown silty clay that date from the 13th to 14th century and a north-south sandstone wall (380) that had been robbed in antiquity.  A shallow linear line with some mortar and degraded sandstone were all that survived.  The wall was built on firm mid-grey brown silty clay (378).

Wall 352

Trench 5

Trench 5 was located to the north of the main car park of Royal Worcester Porcelain, just west of the brick revetment wall of the canal and over where the GPR survey located the buried remains of the vicarage north of the church.

Immediately below the car park surface were the brick walls of the vicarage.  An east-west wall (187) built on sandstone foundations (252) butted a north-south wall (188) to form the north-east corner of the building.  To the north of 187 was a single skinned wall (192) that was square shaped and butted 187.  The square enclosed by the walls was filled with grey black sandy silt (201) with coal, mortar, pottery and various iron objects and dark orange brown sandy silt with similar mixed inclusions (202).

Brick wall 188 cut stratified layers in the east of the trench. 

To the south of the east-west wall and west of the north-south wall, a cellar was machine-excavated onto a quarry tile floor (198).  The entrance to the cellar was through a doorway (208) with steps leading to the ground floor.  The cellar was in-filled with loose brick and mortar rubble (200) from the demolition of the building. 

The cellar floor was removed to reveal layers of clay with cobbles and probably represent mixed flood deposits.  Pottery within these deposits dates from the 11th to 14th centuries.  The east wall of the building was built into the earlier medieval town wall (242) and the internal face utilised the dressed stone of the medieval wall.  Blocks of the internal face of the wall were removed to a depth of 0.80 metres (18.08 metres OD) to the south and 1.30 metres (17.36 metres OD) to the north.  The north area of the wall was cut by a service pipe from the vicarage building.  The cutting for the pipe removed stone from the rubble core and from the external face of the wall.  The cut extended west through the trench.

The external face of the wall was of dressed stone approximately 0.30 x 0.30 metres.  Three courses of dressed stone were exposed by excavation. 

The upper stone of the internal face was dressed.  This was mostly covered in plaster and had been re-used in the vicarage building.  The lower face of the wall was coursed rubble and the upper was faced stone.

A possible construction trench for the wall (233) cut silty clay 235 and a yellow clay with cobbles (236).  This was excavated to a depth of 16.62 metres OD.  The foundation of the wall was built on the clay deposits (236).    

Archaeological layers butted the external face and covered the top of the wall.  These layers covered the wall but were cut by the later brick wall (188) that was built into the medieval stone wall.  Pottery from the layers that butt the medieval wall dates from the 18th century. 

A trench running east to west, looking east. The walls are those of the vicarage, as is the brick floor. The wall running across the photograph from north to south is the eastern wall of the vicarage.

A metre depth of the city wall was exposed beneath the later, vicarage wall.

Trenches 7-9

Trench 7 was located on the west bank of the canal, behind Victorian factory buildings midway through the site.

Excavation revealed a series of brick surfaces of varying periods and constructions with some showing signs of repair.  Below the modern surface (452) were brick floors 424, 425, 428 and 425.   The earliest floor (425) was cut to the east by the later brick floor 424 and to the west by a modern sewage pipe (430).  The relationship between brick floors 428 and 425 was unclear. 

A series of brick walls within this trench (429, 427, and 432) are related to the building in the photo.  Large amounts of crushed coal between the bricks and their coal-stained nature suggested that the building was used for the storage of coal, probably brought to the site by barge.   

Below the upper brick floors was brick floor 428.  To the east of this floor was compact coal and occasional mortar (439).  To the south of the trench truncation by the sewage pipe disturbed the brick floor and a possible relationship with wall 429.

In the west of the trench well-preserved contexts survive and may represent the original function of the building.  These layers (448, 427, 439, 446, 444 and 445) were of burnt material, including baked clay (445).  These stratified contexts extended north out of the trench.

Trenches 8 and 9 were at the south of the site, immediately north of Mill Street and ST Albion's School.  Although the trenches were in an area of known Roman burials, no such deposits were uncovered.  The only significant archaeological feature was a 19th century waste pit.

Trenches 10 and 12 were opened in the area of St Peter's Church.

Photo of the coal sheds on the wharf - the photo dates from c1906