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One of the borehole cores (above the pink gravel on the lower left are peat and silty clays)
Trench 1 was in the part of the club which had occupied the cellar of the Wesleyan chapel
The lift to the cellar with its sliding lattice gates
Floor surfaces before excavation
Brick and stone walls below the dance floor
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A desk-based survey of the site by Ron Shoesmith identified its archaeological potential. In October 2004 Archenfield Archaeology carried out an evaluation exercise in the old Crystal Rooms night club in Bridge Street Hereford. This consisted of drilling a number of boreholes in the car park to the rear of the buildings and hand digging three small trenches within the standing buildings. The work was carried out in a two week period starting from the 7th October, 2004 and included a borehole survey of the car park and trenches within the cellars of the Wesley chapel and 13 Bridge Street. A further trench was excavated through the dance floor of the former Crystal Rooms nightclub. The borehole survey was 6 cores positioned in a cross shaped transect to give north-south and east-west sections across the survey area. The cores were drilled down to the natural gravel, with the stratigraphy from each of the cores used to give projected profiles of the underlying soil horizons. The results show that as well as sloping down towards the river, the gravel inclines down from west to east, presumably into the feature know as the ‘King's Ditch’. Three trenches were excavated measuring approximately 2m x 3m with two of the trenches in cellars, one in the Wesleyan chapel and the other in the cellar of the Crystal Rooms, adjacent to the Bridge Street frontage. The removal of the concrete floor in both of the trenches revealed natural clay and gravel. Archaeological features cut natural clay in the Wesleyan chapel.
Trench 1 Below the concrete surface was compact mixed clay (85). This was removed to reveal archaeological features cut into the natural clay/gravel horizon. The archaeological features consisted of a shallow linear ditch orientated east-west, cutting earlier inter-cutting pits. The south and west facing sections show the inter-cutting nature of the features in the trench. The latest feature was a late 17th or early 18th century ditch [91] orientated east-west with its terminus [90] in the west of the trench. This cut the upper fill of an earlier 17th/18th century pit [92] in the south-east corner of the trench. Pit 92 cut an earlier feature [94] that cut the earliest feature in the sequence, pit 96. Pit 96 was in the north-east corner of the trench and was circular in plan.
Trench 2 Trench 2 was located in the cellar beneath the front of the former Crystal Rooms nightclub. The cellar had cut away any earlier archaeological deposits that may have existed along the street frontage and natural gravel was found immediately beneath the concrete floor.
Trench 3 Trench 3 was excavated through the dance floor of the former Crystal Rooms nightclub and was approximately 1.8m x 3.6m and excavated to a maximum of 2.2m to 51.66m OD. The top layer was archaeologically unusual but of local cultural significance. This was the old Crystal Rooms carpet, which had given the ‘Rooms’ as they were often known their alternative appellation of ‘Sticky Carpets’. This was removed with care – i.e. not by hand. A standard archaeological practice to avoid contamination, normally it is the deposit that might become contaminated: not in this case! The dance floor itself was of sprung laminate wood laid over an earlier pinewood floor. The pinewood floor was nailed to joists that were fixed to a solid concrete floor. Tarmac was laid below the floorboards and joists. The concrete floor was laid on compact hardcore of mixed stone and brick rubble. Below 19th century rubble layers (43) and (44) were walls and surfaces associated with buildings, possibly of stable buildings to rear of houses that would have fronted Bridge Street/Gwynne Street. The best preserved wall was brick built and of solid construction, with an off-white lime mortar bond. The wall was orientated roughly north-south, with pottery recovered form the fill of the cut for the wall suggests a date 17th century date. A brick floor (47) and a stone flag floor (49) were also uncovered after the removal of the top two layers. The bricks of floor 47 were laid on edge, coursed in a north-east/south-west direction and had a small frog on the underside. The bricks probably date to the mid 18th century and cover 17th century deposits. Excavation of the floor surfaces revealed two walls, one running roughly north-east/south-west (71) and a second running east-west (72). Wall 71 was of coursed red sandstone bonded with either lime mortar or concrete. Later repairs to the wall (for a lead pipe that ran through it) were made using brick. The wall had three courses of stone surviving and was approximately 0.40m in depth and cut into layer (70). The east-west wall was also rough coursed sandstone bonded with either lime mortar or concrete. The wall had two courses surviving and was cut into layer 70. Below layer 70 was firm dark greyish green silty clay (86) that was similar to 70. Cut into this was a roughly rectangular feature [98] that followed the inside line of wall (71) and the inside line of a row of stake holes. The rectangular cut was possibly the inside of a building, with layers 115 and 99 composed of degraded sandstone flags from a possible floor surface. Below the surface was mixed grey-black silty clay gravel (116) dating to the 14th-15th centuries. A 16th century pit [122] in the north of the trench cut 116 and was filled by dark brown silty clay with bone, shell, pottery and charcoal inclusions (123). The fill of the pit was cut by a construction trench for wall 45. Pottery from the trench dates to the 17th century. |
