Anvil Cottage, Church Square, St Osyth (EHER 17013)

Watching brief on a new garage adjacent to Anvil Cottage.

Watching brief, 1996 Watching brief on a new garage adjacent to Anvil Cottage, indicated the presence of stratigraphy in the core of historic St Osyth. Foundations had been excavated to a depth of 1.10m on the easternmost foundation trench. A sketch elevation shows that mixed garden soil and demolition debris (bricks, jar and bottle frags) 0.5m thick overlays the site (up to as much as 1m of the same deposit was observed in the westernmost trench). Beneath this, to the north, was the brick foundation remains of a structure (bricks suggest 17th to 18th century). This in turn cut around 0.50m, of 'brickearth' type deposit, within which were smaller layers or lenses of charcoal and red brickearth (suggesting burning) and oyster shell. No finds. <1> Site Assessment: possible stratigraphy within historic town of St Osyth <1> Historic town assessment, 1999 Market-place There is an undated medieval charter which records the granting of a fair and a market to the Abbey. The area now known as Church Square between the church and the priory grounds appears to have been a triangular market-place, that was subsequently infilled. A watching-brief (ESMR 17013) on the construction of a new garage for Anvil Cottage in the north-west corner of Church Square found a layer of a brickearth-type deposit containing lenses of charcoal and oyster shell. Although undated this layer was cut by seventeenth-eighteenth century foundations and may be medieval in origin.<2> The market-place The presumed market-place at Church Square was gradually infilled, probably from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Church Cottage and St Edmondsbury cottage (Listed Building 15/133) were certainly built in that period. The watching-brief at Anvil Cottage (ESMR 17013) recorded the presence of brick foundations of a seventeenth to eighteenth century date. The northern group of buildings in Church Square were definitely in place by the time of the Chapman and André map, whilst the southern group were built by the time of the 1840 Tithe Map. <2>