An Archaeological Desk-Based Appraisal of Land off Ellison Street, Thorne, South Yorkshire

Redwall Developments Limited have submitted an application for the erection of a two storey block of four flats with associated car parking and landscaping upon land off Ellison Street, Thorne, South Yorkshire (Application number 00/80/3423/P/FUL). South Yorkshire Archaeology Service (SYAS) have advised that an archaeological field evaluation be carried out due to the lack of current information concerning the archaeological implications of the proposal. The evaluation is to consist of two stages; (1) a rapid desk-top appraisal of the archaeological potential of the proposed site, (2) a scheme of trial trenching to investigate the proposed site. Three trenches were excavated during the course of the fieldwork. The location of the site within the historic core of Thorne suggest occupation on the site began in the medieval period and historical cartography identifies occupation on the site by domestic dwellings were present on the site in 1825. The erection of terraced housing with associated cellars in the later nineteenth-century appears to have effected only the eastern portion of the site. The presence of a thick deposit (0.8m) of made up ground outside the footprint of these terraces suggests the possibility of archaeologically significant deposits surviving in some areas of the site. The three trenches revealed that extensive disturbance due to laying of drainage services had occurred on the site, and that numerous episodes of the dumping of rubble material had also occurred on the site. Red brick structures were exposed in Trench 3. These were interpreted as being the remains of external buildings and structures associated with the terraced housing erected on the Ellison Street frontage during the late-nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century. No evidence for earlier structures was identified during the fieldwork.