Late Iron Age and Roman occupation on Land at Crown Quarry, Old Ipswich Road (EHER 80387)

Twenty-two features were uncovered including a possible well and a pair of parallel gullies which might represent the remains of a Roman trackway were excavated. Late Iron Age or early Roman features were uncovered across the southern half of the site, some of them producing substantial assemblages of pottery.

Evaluation, 2021 Twenty-two features were recorded during this evaluation: twelve ditches, four gullies, two pits, possible well, a pit/posthole, a gully/natural feature and a land drain. Some of these features produced large assemblages of artefactual evidence but ten of them were undatable. The most significant remains uncovered were located in the southern half of the site. The broader area has previously been investigated by Essex County Council Field Archaeology Unit, an investigation which revealed evidence of occupation here during the Late Iron Age and early Roman period and identified this area of the present site as a particular focus of this activity. This evaluation has uncovered a similar concentration of remains in this area. The most notable of these deposits were located in trench T18, in which remains including a possible well and a pair of parallel gullies which might represent the remains of a Roman trackway were excavated. Late Iron Age or early Roman features were uncovered across the southern half of the site, one of them producing substantial assemblages of pottery. This investigation indicates that occupation of this site extended beyond the early Roman period, suggesting either a continuation of this activity as far as the 3rd century or a subsequent phase of activity at the site following its abandonment in the early Roman period. Of particular note in this respect were three pieces of worked stone recovered in this part of the site, two which were possibly fragments of veneer, another a possible piece of a column, which, along with the other artefactual evidence, together suggest that a high-status Roman building lies nearby. It should be noted that a conjectured Iron Age feature and a conjectured post- Roman feature detected in one of the Essex County Council Field Archaeology Unit evaluation trenches in 2006 were not observed in trench T18, just to the west, and so they must either terminate or deviate before reaching this area. In addition, remains picked up in trench T16 were not detected in a trench from the Field Archaeology Unit's evaluation, which it overlapped, though the Field Archaeology Unit's trench was not tied in to the grid referencing system, and may have been positioned slightly differently. Datable remains in the northern half of the site were sparser. Ditch F18/F19/F21, which extended along the eastern half of this part of the site, likely represented the remains of a field boundary ditch. Pottery dating from the early 16th to the 20th century was recovered from this feature, but it does not correspond to any ditches depicted on early Ordnance Survey mapping, and it is likely that it formed part of the earlier field pattern uncovered during previous investigations. None of the other features uncovered in this part of the site – a ditch, a gully and a gully or natural feature – produced any dating evidence, and so their possible relationship to other archaeological remains in the area cannot be determined. <1>