Auborough Street - Scarborough. No date set
The previous excavation took place in the garden of Chapman's premises off Auborough Street. We are hoping to dig a bit more, when we can find a suitable time for people to help.
Over the last 20 years we have carried out 69 excavations or watching briefs and put down about 100 trenches in the town. This represents a major body of work, of which we can be justly proud. Many of these have been small scale works and many of them have been development led where the agenda has been governed by data recovery rather than answering specific questions. We have made a decision to move away from development led archaeology and to move back to doing fewer, but longer research led excavations.
This site at Auborough Street is of immense interest to us. It is shown on the 1725 map as not built upon and has remained as such ever since - it was probably vacant in the medieval period. Moreover the eastern boundary of the site has persisted over this period meaning that it is significant. We think this site can help us answer the question 'What is the course of the northern section of the Old Borough defences?' We have postulated an alignment of the Oldborough defences which would take them (ie ditch, rampart and wall) on a more eastern course than that postulated by Peter Farmer. Maps and boundary analysis support this thesis and this site off Auborough Street (behind Niso Terrace) is in the right place to answer this. In addition we could find more evidence of the medieval pottery industry.
Field work at Wansford - Autumn 2006
In September 2006 the Society commenced field work at Wansford a small village a couple of miles south east of Driffield. This is the first time we have organised field work outside Scarborough for some years, although we have worked with other groups in the wider area.
The site is a large field, which in 2006 carried a corn crop. Earlier maps show that the present field was previously divided into smaller units. We investigated this site at the request of Society member Sheila Cadman who lives in Wansford and who has found much Iron Age/Romano-British pottery and flints while walking the field.
An aerial photograph of 1975 (see below) shows a square enclosure appearing as a crop mark close to two clumps of trees. The northern clump of trees is a relic of an earlier field boundary and helps us tie in the site with the 1892 Ordnance Survey map where the boundary seems to respect the northern alignment of the enclosure. The southern clump is an oak tree which still exists. An earlier air photo of 1947 was taken in low winter light (17 November) and shows features as shadow lines. It looks like in 1947 the southern side of the enclosure was then an open ditch.
Extract from 1975 aerial photo showing the enclosure
When the new water treatment works were being built in the south east corner of the field in 2005 a geophysical survey was carried out. The enclosure showed up clearly on this survey although it was not continuous on the north, south and east boundaries. Areas of high ferrous content were also present. Associated excavations revealed evidence of a Romano-British settlement and field systems.
We put down two trenches. Trench 1 was located just north of the oak tree and picked up the eastern side of the enclosure close to, but not on, its the northern corner. The enclosure ditch was encountered here as a feature with a slightly different fill from the natural. It appeared that the ditch had been partly re-filled and re-cut. It also appears that there was a period when the ditch had become partly filled but the fill remained open leading to the fill surface being compacted. We were also interested in why the oak tree appeared to be on a mound but found no evidence to help us in this.
Work commencing in Trench 1
Trench 2 was L-shaped and designed to pick up the western and southern alignments of the enclosure, which it did it two locations as predicted. The southern ditch was partially sectioned. It had a much more loamy fill than in Trench 1 and the finds evidence appeared to be later.
We are currently analysing the finds from these excavations and hope to do more work here comprising:-
Text and Images
Chris Hall
To find out about current fieldwork contact the Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society's Projects Officer:
Chris Hall
Projects Officer SAHS
PO Box 378
Scarborough
YO12 4WS
telephone:01723354237
email: scarborough.archaeology@btinternet.com
See the excavations database to find out about excavations carried out over the past 15 years.
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