For the last few weeks Urban Archaeology has been
running a site for L - P : Archaeology ‘somewhere in
Gloucestershire’. The site is quintessentially rural –commanding views across
the Cotswolds, sheep grazing the spoil heap, church bells counting the hours,
but archaeologically it has a decidedly urban feel.
Evaluation in 2011 showed that the
site has Late Iron Age and Roman occupation, however sealing all this is a medieval building sequence that wouldn’t be
out of place in an urban environment. For the past fortnight we have been
removing the layers of soil and limestone rubble that had developed after the
buildings went out of use, we have now defined most of the walls and are now
removing rubble and silt infilling above the floor levels. So far we have over
ten rooms of up to 6m by 6m which are terraced into the hillside and arranged
on two sides of a courtyard. The walls are of local Cotswold Stone and are
nearly a metre thick and they survive up to 1.2m high in places. Burning on
some walls suggest that some of the buildings may have burnt down although
we’ll need to get down to the floors to find out for certain.
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