Post-Excavation Assessment Report for Archaeological Recording at Railway Cottages (C25087), Doddershall Embankment, Buckinghamshire, AC250/32

Excavation A programme of archaeological recording at Doddershall Railway Cottages, Doddershall Embankment, Buckinghamshire (Site code: 1C19RWCAR) was undertaken as part of the enabling works for High Speed Two, Phase 1. The fieldwork was undertaken between August and October 2020. The archaeological recording revealed the remains of Late Iron Age and Roman rural settlement, which developed into a high-status complex farmstead in the Mid Roman Period and continued into the fourth century. In addition, there was more limited evidence for early medieval activity, including the possible demolition and robbing of Roman period buildings and later medieval agricultural activity. This activity included evidence for Late Iron Age/Early Roman rural settlement, a Middle to Late Roman complex farmstead, with central trackway and agricultural bedding trenches and several large hollows and rubble spreads, which may indicate the location of buildings. The distribution of early medieval pottery within these hollows, along with limited amounts of Roman ceramic building material may indicate that the site was quarried for building materials in the early medieval period. Plough furrows indicate later medieval and/or post-medieval crop cultivation. A large variety and quantity of finds types and palaeoenvironmental remains were recovered during the archaeological recording, providing additional evidence of the nature of activity at the site during the Late Iron Age/Early Roman period, Mid to Late Roman period and during the medieval to post-medieval and modern periods.