Land at Sporle Road, Swaffham: An Archaeological Trial-Trench Evaluation

A programme of Archaeological Trial-Trench Evaluation was undertaken on Land at Sporle Road, Swaffham, Norfolk by Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd between 10th and 20th June 2024. The archaeological project was conducted in accordance with a Written Scheme of Investigation, prepared by PCA. The primary objective of the trial-trenching was to ascertain the presence or absence of below-ground archaeological remains in anticipation of the development of the site. A total of 24no. 50m x 2m trial-trenches totalling 1200m were excavated and recorded to give a 4% sample of the development site. Several of the trenches were targeted on geophysical anomalies Two main periods of occupation were identified during the trial-trenching. Several Late Iron Age ditches and pits were identified in the north-east of the site as well as two large chalk extraction pits. It is highly likely that the Late Iron Age to Early Romano-British activity here represented a small farmstead, perhaps founded at the end of the Iron Age and continuing in use into the Roman period. Pottery styles observed in the Iron Age and Roman assemblages indicated that it was part of a localised economy. Waste deposits were associated with dumped animal bone consisting of sheep and cattle bones. Much of the activity on site however was post-medieval as a series of field boundaries recorded on the 1840 tithe map were observed across the entirety of the site. There was evidence on the site for heavy agricultural use during the last two centuries. A series of furrows, the majority of these situated in the south-west of the site, which were perhaps excavated by steam plough, could have dated to the second half of the 19th-century, they were probably broadly contemporary with the post-medieval field system but were in places truncated likely caused as the ditches were re-dug and maintained. The 1883 Ordnance Survey map indicated that these smaller fields had gone out of use by the later 19th-century.