East Anglia Three (EA3) Converter Station, Suffolk. Archaeological Evaluation Report.

Wessex Archaeology was commissioned by East Anglia Offshore Wind Limited (EAOWL) to undertake an archaeological evaluation of the proposed East Anglia Three (EA3) and East Anglia Four (EA5) Convertor Stations, off Bullen Lane, Bramford, Suffolk, in order to inform a planning application. The Site was the subject of an ongoing Archaeological Desk Based Assessment (ADBA) in support of an Environmental Impact Assessment. As part of the baseline data gathering an assessment of geophysical survey data was carried out using acquired data and survey reports produced by RSK (2013) in association with an adjacent site, EA One (EA1). The initial results of the assessment carried out by Wessex Archaeology informed the programme of archaeological evaluation trenching. The majority of the features identified in the trenches corresponded with geophysical anomalies, with only occasional features identified through trenching that were not recorded through the geophysical survey. Some targeted geophysical anomalies were attributed to variations within the natural. Three ditched features were observed all running on a similar northwest-southeast alignment. A ditch running through Trenches 7 and 12 produced a single sherd of late medieval/ early Post-medieval pottery. To the west, a modern machine cut ditch seen in Trenches 1, 6, 9, and 15, backfilled within living memory, appears to have originally formed the western edge of an area known as Bullen Green. The boundary is visible on available historic OS mapping from 1882 to the 1970's, however, the machine cut ditch observed in the trenches is likely to have removed any trace of the original feature. To the east, a recently excavated drainage ditch, was observed in Trenches 2, 8, and 14. Of particular note were a pit and a ditch in Trench 35 located towards the northeast extent of EA4, both of which contained material of exclusively Iron Age date including pottery, metalworking slag and a loom weight. Fragments of animal and human bone were also recovered from the same contexts, and a resonably-sized mollusca assemblage was also retrieved through sampling. Though the material recovered and the extent of the features observed were limited by the targetted nature of the evaluation, the results suggest the potential presence of a small Iron Age enclosure or settlement in this area of the site.