Colchester Archaeological Trust

CAT Report 1207: summary

Archaeological evaluation on land west of the playing fields, Newmarket Road, Great Chesterford, Essex, CB10 1NS: November-December 2017
by Laura Pooley (with contributions from Stephen Benfield, Mark Baister, Emma Holloway, Chris Lister)

Date report completed: January 2018
Location: Land west of the playing fields, Newmarket Road, Great Chesterford, Essex, CB10 1NS
Map reference(s): TL 50431 43159
File size: kb
Project type: Evaluation
Significance of the results:
Keywords:

Summary. An archaeological evaluation (five trial-trenches) was carried out on land to the west of the playing fields, Newmarket Road, Great Chesterford, Essex as part of a preapplication assessment of archaeological remains. Located within the scheduled monument of the Roman town, the development site is located inside the 4th-century Roman town wall, with geophysics indicating the presence of a Roman road, aligned southwest to northeast, crossing the site.

The Roman town wall was not encountered in any of the evaluation trenches to the front of the development site, indicating that the route of the wall is likely to located slightly further to the northwest than currently projected. However, metalling was identified in two of the trenches (T1 and T4), confirming the presence of the southwest to northeast Roman road. A Roman ditch in trench T2 may also indicate internal subdivisions within Insula 4 of the town.

The evaluation also revealed that the southwestern corner of the development site had reduced by approximately 1m due to early 20th-century quarrying.