Planning and Mitigation
When the Site 6 area was originally proposed, an application was made to the Local Planning Authority for planning permission. As part of the planning application process, an archaeological evaluation was undertaken across the area to be developed. This involved digging trial trenches through the ploughsoil to see if any archaeological remains were present.
As detailed in the archaeological evaluation report, a number of pits and ditches were found in the trial trenches within Site 6. Having established that archaeological remains were present, the team then needed to know the following:
- What sort of remains are they? For example are they the remains of building foundations, or boundaries between fields?
- How old are the remains? Are they all from the same period, or are there remains of different ages present?
- How extensive are they? How much of the proposed development area contains remains?
- How much might we learn from the remains?
- How deeply are the remains buried?
This last point is of crucial importance. If archaeological remains are present, ideally we want to preserve them. If the remains are buried at depths where site development will not disturb them, they will be left intact for future generations to investigate. In the case of Site 6, most of the discovered remains are well below the level of the building foundations. It was therefore decided that a watching brief would be carried out on the development. During this phase of an evaluation, if any remains are exposed during the ground works, they are excavated and recorded by the archaeological fieldwork team. Any archaeology that is not exposed is left in place.
Archaeological remains found during evaluation
Most of the remains found so far have been of Bronze-Age or Roman date.