Colchester Archaeological Trust

CAT Report 1760: summary

Archaeological strip, map and record excavation on land at Dawes Lane, West Mersea, Essex, CO5 8HJ:November-December 2021
by Sarah Veasey (with contributions from Dr Matthew Loughton, Laura Pooley and Lisa Gray)

Date report completed: January 2022
Location: Dawes Lane, West Mersea, Essex, CO5 8HJ
Map reference(s): TM 0224 1366 (centre)
File size: 6824 kb
Project type: Strip Map and Excavation
Significance of the results:
Keywords: Mersea Colchester

Summary. An archaeological excavation was carried out on land at Dawes Lane, West Mersea, Essex in advance of the construction of a new residential development. Surrounded by cropmarks, previous archaeological work on the site includes fieldwalking, metal-detecting and geophysical surveys along with a trial-trenching evaluation. Fieldwalking produced small scatters of prehistoric, Roman and medieval material along with post-Roman tile/brick and post-medieval/ modern pottery. Post-medieval/modern agricultural ironwork and modern waste material came from the metal-detecting survey, and the geophysical survey identified natural linear features, historic field boundaries and drainage gullies. The trial-trenching evaluation revealed a possible prehistoric ditch, a Roman pit, a medieval/post-medieval pit, five post-medieval/ modern field boundary ditches, six drainage gullies and fifteen undated features.

During the excavation 63 features were identified: three ditches, 41 pits, two pit/tree-throws, a pit/post-hole, seven post-holes, a post-hole/tree-throw, three tree-throws, a plough scar and four natural features. Three periods were represented by a small quantity of features: the Bronze Age, medieval and post-medieval/modern. Most of the features were, however, undated.