Excavation, T. Ennis, Plot L, Chelmsford Business Park, Springfield, Chelmsford, 2012 - EEX56747

An open-area excavation took place on a site that was evaluated originally in 2006. It was located immediately NW of the important 1981-91 excavation at Springfield Lyons, just outside the Late Bronze Age settlement enclosure and within the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery. A total of 22 further Early Saxon cremation burials were found. These comprised simple urned interments of burnt human remains within shallow pits, demonstrating similar character and distribution to those previously found in this northwestern part of the cemetery. The ceramic vessels, some decorated, provide a late 5th to 6th century date. Only a single burial contained a pyre/cremation burial good - a fragmentary piece of copper alloy binding strip. In addition to Saxon period burials, ditches delineating part of an enclosure system of posited Late Bronze Age date along with apparently associated pits, and presumably relating to land use in the immediate vicinity of the enclosed settlement, were found just beyond the cemetery activity. While no inhumation burials or later settlement remains were present within the area investigated, it can reasonably be predicted that these - as well as further cremation burials - continue into that part of the as yet undeveloped business park to the south.