Medieval quarry pit and post-medieval pit and ditch on land South of Bromley Road, Parsons Heath (EHER 80446)

Three trenches contained a medieval quarry pit with late 13th to 14th century rubbish in the backfill, a post-medieval pit possibly used as a quarry pit and a post-medieval ditch or likely field boundary.

August 2019. Trial trenching. Three trenches contained archaeological features, comprising two pits and a ditch. The features were fairly dispersed across the Northern half of the site (in Trenches 5, 7 and 11), with the South of the site being completely absent of identified remains. The recovered evidence indicates two phases of historic land use activity on site, in the medieval and late post-medieval periods. The large, possible quarry, pit located within Trench 5 indicates that small-scale mineral extraction was occurring on-site in the medieval period, with the workings being backfilled with material containing rubbish of probable late 13th to 14th century date. Such quarrying activity is not uncommon in the rural/agricultural landscape at this time, often being located alongside roads and lanes, in fields outlying farmsteads. Part of either a large rubbish pit or quarry in Trench 11, a field ditch in Trench 7 and other modern truncation (e.g. land drainage) all demonstrate continued low-level agricultural use of the site through the late post-medieval and modern periods, presumably within fields depicted by historic mapping. <1>