SEX74304 - Land at Nun's Walk, Great Yeldham, Essex: an Archaeological Evaluation

In March 2021, an archaeological trial trench evaluation was undertaken by Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd on land at Nun's Walk, Great Yeldham, Essex. The work, which was commissioned by RPS Group on behalf of Rose Builders (Properties) Ltd, was carried out to meet the requirements of a condition that was attached to planning consent for the residential development of the site by Braintree District Council. The earliest dated archaeological features encountered by the evaluation were a shallow pit in Trench 10, from which was recovered a flint bladelet core and flint working debitage that probably dates the Early Neolithic period, and two pits in Trench 19 that contained an Early Neolithic flint blade and a sherd of pottery of a broadly similar date. There was also evidence for later Iron Age activity on the site in the form of two undated ditches in Trenches 19 and 20 that possibly pre-date a later Roman ditch system, and as residual artefacts in Roman features, including a flint core of probable Bronze Age/Iron Age date and a sherd of later Iron Age pottery. The main period for activity on the site, which was identified in its south-western half, dates to the mid-1st to later 2nd centuries AD. It consisted of part of a rectilinear ditch system on a north-south/east-west axis, forming a number of paddocks or enclosures. Several of the ditches contained relatively sizeable assemblages of Roman pottery, and a small Roman knife was recovered from one feature, suggesting that the ditch system lay adjacent to an area of occupation, probably to the south or west of the site. There was little evidence for occupation within the site, there being few pits and only three postholes in the trial trenches. In the western corner of the site two large Roman extraction pits were identified (probably dug for clay), which were up to 30m in diameter and 2.4m deep. The only feature in the north-eastern half of the site, other than the prehistoric pit in Trench 10, was another large extraction pit in Trenches 1 and 2, this probably being dug for gravel. The upper fill of this feature, which was up to 2.4m deep, contained medieval pottery and postmedieval peg-tile, suggesting that it is more recent in date, but Roman pottery was also recovered from beneath an ash deposit at a depth of 1.3m, suggesting that it may have been a Roman extraction pit that was left open at the end of the Roman period and gradually filled up in later years.